The Greene County Democrat

Tag: the National Park Service director

  • Newswire : Philadelphia sues after slavery exhibits were taken down from President’s House site

    Newswire : Philadelphia sues after slavery exhibits were taken down from President’s House site

     Staff dismantling slavery exhibit in Philadelphia

    The lawsuit says the National Park Service removed the displays referring to slavery “presumably pursuant to the mandate” of an executive order from President Donald Trump.

    By Joe Kottke and Phil Helsel NBC News

    The city of Philadelphia sued the Department of the Interior and the acting director of the National Park Service on Thursday over reports that slavery exhibits were being dismantled in the city’s historic district.
    The suit, filed in federal court, seeks a preliminary injunction to restore the exhibits at the President’s House Site, part of Independence National Historical Park.
    The lawsuit says that “the National Park Service has removed artwork and informational displays at the President’s House site referencing slavery, presumably pursuant to the mandate” of Executive Order No. 14253, which President Donald Trump signed in March. 2025.
    The city said in the suit that it learned Thursday that the educational panels that referred to slavery had been removed.
    “Removing the exhibits is an effort to whitewash American history,” Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said in a statement Thursday. “History cannot be erased simply because it is uncomfortable. Removing items from the President’s House merely changes the landscape, not the historical record.”
    NBC Philadelphia aired video Thursday that shows people with crowbars taking down panels, one of which reads “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”
    The suit says the city was given no notice about the change to the President’s House.
    It calls the removal of the displays “arbitrary and capricious.”
    “Defendants have provided no explanation at all for their removal of the historical, educational displays at the President’s House site, let alone a reasoned one,” the lawsuit says.
    White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump “continues to fulfill his promise to restore truth and common sense to the United States and its institutions.” 
    “President Trump is ensuring that we are honoring the fullness of the American story instead of distorting it in the name of left-wing ideology,” Ingle said in a statement. 
    A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, said “all federal agencies are to review interpretive materials to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values” while it implements Trump’s executive order.
    “Following completion of the required review, the National Park Service is now taking appropriate action in accordance with the Order,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
    The National Park Service did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment late Thursday.
    Trump’s executive order directs the Department of the Interior in its materials not to include “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).”
    It instructs the department to “instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”
    The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” has been criticized.
    The American Historical Association said it “egregiously misrepresents the work of the Smithsonian Institution,” which the executive order criticized by name.
    “Historians explore the past to understand how our nation has evolved. We draw on a wide range of sources, which helps us to understand history from different angles of vision,” the group said March 31.
    “Our goal is neither criticism nor celebration,” it said. “It is to understand — to increase our knowledge of — the past in ways that can help Americans to shape the future.”
    The President’s House is a site where President George Washington resided in Philadelphia, and he brought slaves who were in the home, according to the lawsuit and the National Park Service’s webpage about the site. President John Adams also lived there.
    A spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association said the dismantling of the exhibit is “an insult to the memory of the enslaved people who lived there and to their descendants.” and “sets a dangerous precedent of prioritizing nostalgia over the truth.”
    The House of Representatives urged the National Park Service in 2003 to recognize the slaves there. The agency and the city entered into a cooperative agreement in 2006 to establish an exhibit about the site, the suit says.
    A memorial and panels about slavery at the President’s House have been up since it opened in 2010, according to the suit.
    The Black Journey, a group that conducts walking tours in Philadelphia about Black history, said removing the panels can’t erase the past.
    “The Black Journey is outraged and deeply disappointed by the removal of this important and irreplaceable piece of American history,” Raina Yancey, president and CEO of The Black Journey, said in a statement. 
    Yancey said the group will continue to lead weekly tours and pursue its mission “to tell the full and truthful history of our ancestors,” saying “no political action will silence this history.”
    She added that since the removal occurred, she has heard from fellow tour guides and individuals who have taken tours. 
    “Their messages make it clear: the public will not accept the erasure of history, and neither will we,” she said.
    U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., whose district includes part of Philadelphia and the President’s House, also condemned the removal.
    “Philadelphia and the entire country deserve an honest accounting of our history, and this effort to hide it is wrong,” he said in a statement.
    CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Director Ahmet Tekelioglu said the civil rights organization “stands in solidarity with the City of Philadelphia, advocacy groups, civil rights leaders, and historians.”
    Tekelioglu said the exhibit’s removal “has drawn widespread condemnation from community leaders, historians, and elected officials who argue that understanding the full scope of American history — including the brutal reality of slavery — is critical to our collective progress.”
    During the Trump administration, the National Park Service has made other changes that have backtracked on previous information.
    In February, before the executive order, the National Park Service website for Stonewall National Monument’s web page was changed to erase references to transgender and queer people.
    The Stonewall Inn is the site of a milestone in the fight for gay rights, recognition and the fight to end persecution by authorities.

  • Newswire : Vanishing Joshua Trees: Climate Change will ravage US National Parks, study says

     By Emily Holden, Guardian UK

     

    Joshua Tree National Park

    America’s national parks have warmed twice as fast as the US average and could see some of the worst effects of climate change, according to a new study. Most of Joshua Tree National park could become uninhabitable for its eponymous trees, glaciers will continue to melt away at Glacier national park, and many other of America’s most treasured beauty spots could be rendered virtually unrecognizable by climate change, Patrick Gonzalez, the lead author of the study, writes in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Even the tiniest of creatures are at risk in the worst-case predictions: the American pika, a small alpine mammal, may no longer be able to survive on park land. “We are preserving the most remarkable ecosystems, and they happen to be in extreme environments,” said Gonzalez, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gonzalez is also the principal climate change scientist for the US National Park Service but conducted and spoke about the research in his university capacity. The study finds that temperatures in national parks could go up 3 to 9C by 2100, under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenario, which shows what could happen without policies to decrease greenhouse gas pollution. With lower emissions, temperatures could still increase more than 2C (3.6F) for 58% of park land, compared to 22% of the US as a whole, according to the study. They are particularly vulnerable because most US park land is in areas that are heating up quicker: in the mountains, the Arctic and the dry south-west. Alaska parks would see the most extreme heat increases, and the US Virgin Islands parks face 28% less rainfall by the end of the century. In Glacier Bay national park, the Muir Glacier melted 640 meters between 1948 and 2000. In Yellowstone national park, trees are dying because bark beetles are thriving in warmer winters. Yellowstone will also become far more vulnerable to wildfires. The area burned could be up to three to 10 times higher by 2100. Joshua Tree national park in California could lose up to 90% of the habitat suitable for its namesake trees. Gonzalez explained that parks at a higher elevation have a thinner atmosphere that warms faster. Higher temperatures are also melting snow cover and making the ground darker so that it absorbs more heat. Parks in California and the south-west US have seen both high temperatures and record-low rainfall, he said. The research is the first comprehensive look at climate change impacts on national parks, Gonzalez said. He said he has been using the climate impacts research to develop plans for parks to adapt and reduce the greenhouse gas pollution they contribute. The Trump administration has rescinded government efforts to slow climate change. The interior department, where the National Park Service is housed, nixed a policy that would have urged management decisions based on science, including climate change research. Park officials in New England scrubbed references to climate change and flooding risks in a report this summer, according to Reveal. The National Park Service did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the study or climate change policies for parks. Jonathan Jarvis, the National Park Service director under Barack Obama who now works at UC Berkeley, said he relied on climate change projections to decide where to relocate and bolster structures in the Everglades national park in Florida, an area that has been hit by hurricanes and faces sea-level rise. Jarvis said he worries that under Trump parks won’t be able to plan long-term for climate change. “The park service manages these assets, these places, for the benefit of the American people, and they should be based on the best available sound science in the long-term public interest, not for some short-term political agenda,” Jarvis said.