Trump administration sued over slavery exhibit removal

Philadelphia filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, the day it learned that educational panels referencing slavery were quietly removed from a President’s House Site exhibit.

Workers were seen dismantling display panels at the site Thursday afternoon, according to video footage from WPVI.

Located in Independence National Historic Park, the President’s House Site is where the nation’s first executive mansion once stood. It housed George Washington and John Adams, who conducted presidential business there through the 1790s until the White House’s completion in 1800. Nine of Washington’s slaves had lived at the site.

Independence National Historical Park was created through an Act of Congress in 1948 to protect key American Revolutionary sites, including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

But it wasn’t until 2003 that the U.S. House of Representatives urged the National Parks Service to recognize the existence of the mansion and the slaves who were forced to work there.

In 2006, the city of Philadelphia and the NPS entered into an agreement aimed at restoring the President’s House and designing exhibits prioritizing the history of Washington’s slaves, according to the federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The agreement went through several revisions over the next few years, including in 2009 when it specifically outlined that Philadelphia would be responsible for the design, fabrication and installation of the President’s House Project which would then be “owned, maintained, managed and interpreted” by the NPS.

Philadelphia alleged in the lawsuit that the President’s House and the interpretative displays in it are all part of a single exhibit under the 2006 agreement and its later revisions. The President’s House Site ultimately opened in 2010.

“The 2006 Cooperative Agreement and its Third Amendment also expressly call for explaining the lives of enslaved people living at the President’s House,” Philadelphia said in its lawsuit.

“Additionally, the city has an equal right with the NPS under these agreements to approve the final design of the President’s House Project.”

Philadelphia said that, in addition to collaborating on its design, the city paid $3.5 million toward the overall project and also secured additional funding through grants from the Delaware River Port Authority and addition sources because of the large national and local public interest in its creation.

“Any attempt to remove the exhibits would cut away from the public benefit the city expected when it committed and secured the funds,” Philadelphia said in its lawsuit.

Philadelphia brought the lawsuit against the National Park Service and Interior Department on three causes of action under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, accusing them of acting unlawfully when they removed the exhibits from the President’s House Site.

The city argued the agencies acted arbitrarily by making the change without explanation, improperly reversed long-standing interpretive policy, and exceeded their legal authority by altering a site Congress directed the Park Service to preserve and interpret as part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

Philadelphia is seeking a court judgment declaring the removal of items referencing slavery unlawful, along with a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from damaging any items removed from the site and requiring the federal government to take steps to ensure their safety and preservation.

The city is also asking the court to order the President’s House site restored to its condition as of last Wednesday, before the exhibits were removed, and to permanently block the federal government from removing the educational panels referencing slavery in the future.

Kenyatta Johnson, the president of the Philadelphia City Council, called the Trump administration’s actions “an effort to whitewash American history” in a statement.

“History cannot be erased simply because it is uncomfortable,” Johnson said in the statement.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last March, accusing the administration of President Joe Biden of advancing “corrosive ideology.”

“At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — where our Nation declared that all men are created equal — the prior administration sponsored training by an organization that advocates dismantling ‘Western foundations’ and ‘interrogating institutional racism,’” Trump said.

Trump also alleged that the Biden administration “pressured” rangers at Independence National Historic Park “that their racial identity should dictate how they convey history to visiting Americans because America is purportedly racist.”

“Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” Trump said.

“This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

The news comes as Trump ramps up efforts to exert his vision and influence over U.S. artistic and cultural sites and heritage ahead of America’s 250^th anniversary celebrations.

Trump on Friday shared three renderings of a proposed triumphal arch that he plans to build in Washington, D.C. And earlier this month, the president directed the heads of executive departments and agencies to withdraw the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations, including cultural bodies.

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