US judge sets Friday deadline for Trump administration to restore slavery exhibit in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA — A judge in Philadelphia has set a Friday deadline for the Trump administration to restore an exhibit on the nine people enslaved by George Washington at his former home on Independence Mall.

Senior U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe issued the deadline Wednesday even as the Justice Department appeals her order to reinstate the exhibit.

The administration has argued that it alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties. Park service workers last month abruptly removed exhibits from the Philadelphia site, prompting the city and other supporters of the exhibit to sue.

Rufe on Monday granted an injunction ordering that the materials be restored while the lawsuit proceeds and barring Trump officials from creating new interpretations of the site’s history. The administration on Tuesday filed a notice of appeal with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in Philadelphia.

Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, compared President Donald Trump's administration to the totalitarian regime in the dystopian novel “1984,” which revised historical records to align with its narrative. She said the federal government does not have the power “to dissemble and disassemble historical truths.”

“If the President’s House is left dismembered throughout this dispute, so too is the history it recounts,” Rufe wrote in the 40-page opinion. “Worse yet, the potential of having the exhibits replaced by an alternative script — a plausible assumption at this time — would be an even more permanent rejection of the site’s historical integrity, and irreparable.”

A day later, an Interior Department spokesperson said it had planned an alternative display “providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall."

The historical site is among several where the administration has quietly removed content about the history of enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people and Native Americans.

Millions of people are expected to visit Philadelphia, the nation's birthplace, this year for the 250th anniversary of the country's founding in 1776.