Judge Ruins Trump Admin's Plans For Orwellian Removal Of Slavery Exhibit

Ignorance is strength!

Feb 18, 2026

Beyond anything else, beyond governing, beyond policy, the Trump administration has sought to fundamentally alter and reimagine the United States’s culture and understanding of itself, in the hope of creating a land of which our nation’s worst internet trolls can be proud. One of the ways they’ve sought to do that is by gaslighting the nation and trying to pretend slavery barely ever happened, or was not that bad, or whatever it is they can come up with to minimize it (and practically every other horrible thing people in power in this country have done).

One way they’ve been trying to do this has been requiring the National Parks Service (NPS) to take down exhibits, plaques, films and anything else that does not fall in line with their viewpoint, or suggests that anything bad has ever happened to anyone in America, or celebrates the achievements of anyone who is not a white Christian heterosexual man. From taking down the pride flag at Stonewall to barring the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts from showing a film depicting the harsh conditions faced by the immigrant women who worked in the city’s textile mills, they’ve been on quite a tear.

However, it’s not all going according to plan. A federal judge — a Bush appointee, mind you — has ordered the National Parks Service to reinstate an exhibit on slavery in the Philadelphia mansion that served as the president’s residence and base of operations during the terms of George Washington and John Adams.

On January 26, the NPS raided The President’s House, which is part of Independence National Historical Park. Since its inception in 2003 (it was only discovered to have been the presidential residence a few years earlier), it has been intended to not just commemorate the presidents who lived there and their families, but those who worked there as well — including nine slaves George Washington brought with him there. This was meant to bring the park in line with the administration’s plan:

to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.

Because who cares about the truth, right? After all, if people hear bad things about the United States, they might be less inclined to die for it in war.

May I remind you, by the way, that in 2003, George W. Bush was President, both chambers of Congress were controlled by Republicans and at least half of the Democrats were more or less pretending to be Republicans, because of the Iraq War. This was not some big “woke” venture. Because, you know, at that time, it was generally agreed upon that slavery was a very bad thing and not something that should be forgotten about.

Anyway, in response, the city of Philadelphia sued the administration, arguing that it violated its agreement with the city for the management of the Independence National Historical Park. Since 1948, there have been multiple agreements between the city and the federal government establishing that “no changes or alterations shall be made in the property within the Independence Hall National Historic Site, including its buildings and grounds, or in Carpenters’ Hall, except by mutual agreement between the Secretary of the Interior and the other parties to the contracts.”

The administration argued that the government has a right to free speech and to make everything associated with the federal government align with their particular point of view. That point of view is, apparently, that it’s better to just pretend that George Washington never owned any slaves, because people might think that was bad.

“Although many people feel strongly about this one way, other people may disagree or feel strongly another way. Ultimately, it is in this context that the Government gets to choose the message it wants to convey,” the defendants insisted in court. “The message that the Government chooses to convey is for the Government to choose. I don’t get to choose what that message is. And it’s our position that the City doesn’t either.”

Incredibly, US District Judge Cynthia Rufe did not buy that argument, comparing it quite unfavorably to George Orwell’s 1984.

“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not,” she wrote at the beginning of the ruling.

“The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power,” she added elsewhere.

The administration does not intend to just let this go, and will keep fighting for its right to its own version of history. However, a spokesman claimed on Tuesday that they were totally going to add some slavery stuff to the exhibit anyway.

“The National Park Service routinely updates exhibits across the park system to ensure historical accuracy and completeness,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “If not for this unnecessary judicial intervention, updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days.”

I think we can assume that by “a fuller account,” they mean claiming that the slaves actually had a great time working for George Washington and were probably better off than Black people are now, as both Charlie Kirk and JD Vance-inspirer Curtis Yarvin have argued. It’s really the only interpretation that would be in line with that mandate to not “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

It’s safe to say they probably wouldn’t mention Oney Judge, Martha Washington’s maid, who escaped to live a free life in New Hampshire, which they made a specific point of eliminating in their seizure of the exhibit’s materials. The judge also found that the removal of Judge’s story in particular was a violation of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act of 1998.

Donate Just Once!

The ironic thing here is that, in an effort to suppress history they think might make America look bad, they’re creating new history that those like them in the future will be trying to suppress so that “America” doesn’t look bad. Like, literally everything they are doing right now is something that, in the future, those like them are going to want to pretend never happened. The conservatives in the future will have to insist that children not be taught that the Trump administration sought to erase these things or wanted to act as though slavery never happened or that Stonewall, somehow, had nothing to do with LGBTQ+ people.

It’s an endless cycle that could stop at any time if they just decided to stop being assholes, but they never will.

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!