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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.
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