President Trump’s March 2025 executive order and subsequent directives have prompted the removal or alteration of factual displays on federal lands, including exhibits on slavery, Native land seizures, Japanese American internment and climate change. Multiple lawsuits challenge the moves as unlawful censorship; a federal judge ordered panels about nine enslaved people at Washington’s Philadelphia residence restored, and the Interior Department has appealed. Critics warn the policy echoes the propaganda tactics of Orwell’s 1984 and could set a dangerous precedent for politicizing public history and science.
Orwellian Turn: Trump’s Push To Rewrite History And Silence Climate Science
President Donald Trump, who often labels journalism he dislikes as "fake news," has taken a step further by pressing national parks, monuments, museums and other federal sites to replace established facts about the nation’s history and environment with sanitized, politically favorable narratives.
Under an executive order signed in March 2025, the administration directed the Interior Department to ensure that federal sites do not "inappropriately disparage Americans, past or living." Interior Secretary Doug Burgum then ordered the removal of what he described as "improper partisan ideology" from parks and other federally managed sites. Critics say the language is exceptionally broad and allows politically motivated censorship of historical and scientific displays.
Examples And Legal Pushback
The order has led to the removal or alteration of displays addressing slavery, the seizure of Native American lands, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and ongoing discrimination against racial minorities, women and LGBTQ+ Americans. Because the president has publicly dismissed climate science, the administration has also restricted exhibits on climate change: explanatory panels at Glacier National Park that described how warming temperatures are shrinking the park’s glaciers were among those removed.
Multiple advocacy groups and organizations have filed lawsuits arguing the removals constitute unlawful censorship that undermines public education. In a notable early victory, a U.S. District Court ordered the National Park Service to restore panels at the Philadelphia site that served as President George Washington’s official residence when the city was the nation’s capital; those panels recounted the lives of nine enslaved people Washington kept there. The Interior Department has appealed that ruling.
Why This Matters
The administration’s actions have drawn comparisons to the propaganda and history-rewriting depicted in George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which a state-run "Ministry of Truth" erased inconvenient facts and revised the historical record to match political priorities. Allowing an executive branch to dictate which historical facts and scientific findings may be presented on federal lands risks setting a dangerous precedent: future administrations could reorder public memory to suit partisan aims, potentially changing the public "truth" with each new presidency.
"The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don't let it happen. It depends on you." — George Orwell
Removing or altering exhibits does not change the historical reality that slavery existed in America for nearly 250 years, that Native Americans lost land through coercion and broken treaties, or that human-driven climate change affects glaciers and ecosystems. No president has the constitutional authority to erase documented facts from public institutions; when the executive branch overreaches, the courts, Congress and civil society are the proper checks.
If this campaign succeeds, it would injure public education, distort civic understanding and weaken democratic norms. Courts, lawmakers and citizens should resist efforts to convert public history and science into partisan propaganda.
A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, a contributor to NewsNation, a former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor.
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