The Trump administration’s effort to reshape how U.S. history is told at national parks led rangers across the country to flag hundreds of exhibits, panels and other material for potential removal, according to an internal spreadsheet obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.
The flagged material included more than 600 instances where National Park Service employees thought the administration might want information altered or removed because it conflicted with President Donald Trump’s mandate last March that parks present U.S. history in a way that celebrates progress over the decades, along with the “grandeur” of the country’s iconic landscapes.
Employees noted for NPS leadership everything from park brochures to educational films and wayside panels.
In one case, a park in Florida that includes a former sugar plantation sought leadership review of images displaying torture devices used to control enslaved people. In another case, a Delaware park asked about its mention of “colonization” in a brochure. At a Philadelphia national park, which last month removed an entire exhibit on slavery at the behest of the Trump administration, staff had earlier flagged additional references to slavery that could run afoul of the administration’s perspective on history, according to the spreadsheet.
