Advocates for history, science and the national parks are suing the Trump administration over its efforts to rewrite informational displays at park sites nationwide, including several in Arizona.
A coalition that includes the Marana-based Association of National Park Rangers filed suit in a Massachusetts federal court on Tuesday seeking to block what the administration is calling its campaign to “restore truth and sanity to American history.”
The lawsuit contends the initiative actually aims to purge references to climate change, multiculturalism, civil rights, slavery, the mistreatment of Indigenous people and other topics addressed at the nation’s parks that “do not align with the administration’s preferred historical and scientific narratives.”
Grand Canyon National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, all in Arizona, are cited as examples in the legal filing.
At Sunset Crater, a sign describing basalt bubbles was reportedly ordered removed because it included an image of a visitor holding a gay pride flag, while at Grand Canyon, displays were taken down on the environmental damage caused by settlers, ranchers and tourists and how the federal government claimed tribal land to establish the park.
A new lawsuit against the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service cites several park sites in Arizona, including Sunset Crater National Monument, pictured here in 1997.
Items flagged for removal at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument allegedly include descriptions of destructive grazing practices and the accelerating rate of global warming, as well as a booklet that talks about the endangered Sonoyta mud turtle and Sonoran pronghorn.
Elsewhere, the lawsuit accuses the administration of targeting signs about the impact of climate change on the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park and displays about enslavement at Harper’s Ferry National Historic Park and other sites dedicated to the fight to end slavery.
Last month, Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park took down an exhibit on the nine people once enslaved there by George and Martha Washington, but a federal judge this week ordered the display to be restored pending a separate legal challenge of its removal.
“Our members, current and former employees of the National Park Service, have worked for decades to tell true and accurate stories to the visitors of national parks,” said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers. “To deprive visitors of those stories, even those we should no longer be proud of, and to give them incomplete information is unthinkable. We want to see this ‘erasure and sanitizing’ of history and science halted and the damage already done repaired.”
The revisions stem from an executive order issued by President Trump last March seeking to stamp out what he called corrosive, negative messaging at the nation’s parks and museums and restore them to “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
In May, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered the Park Service and other department agencies to review all information on display at their sites and remove any content that “inappropriately disparages” past or present Americans or describes natural features in ways unrelated to their “beauty, abundance or grandeur.”
Burgum’s secretarial order called for such material to be replaced with “appropriate content” developed in coordination with the Interior Secretary’s own Office of Communications.
Hundreds of interpretive signs and other materials have already been removed or identified for removal by the Park Service, starting last summer and accelerating during the first two months of this year, according to the lawsuit.
The coalition suing to block the revisions also includes the National Parks Conservation Association, American Association for State and Local History, Union of Concerned Scientists, Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and Society for Experiential Graphic Design. The groups are being represented in court by Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal services organization with a history of suing the Trump administration.
They argue that Burgum’s order provided “no factual basis whatsoever for its insinuations that existing signs and exhibits promoted a ‘false reconstruction of American history’ or included ‘partisan ideology.’”
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is one of several Park Service sites in Arizona cited in a new lawsuit against the Trump administration.
They also accuse the administration of violating its own directive against displays that “disparage Americans past or present” by installing plaques in the White House – a Park Service site – that disparage Joe Biden, Barack Obama and other past presidents.
They are asking the court to strike down the secretarial order and require the administration to restore all of the interpretive material removed so far.
“Censoring science and erasing America’s history at national parks are direct threats to everything these amazing places, and our country, stand for,” said Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources for the National Parks Conservation Association. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”
In addition to Burgum and the Interior Department, the lawsuit names the Park Service and its acting director, Jessica Bowron.
An endangered Sonoyta mud turtle swims in Quitobaquito Springs at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2020. A brochure about the turtle is mentioned in a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its effort to rewrite interpretive material at national parks.
The Interior Department’s Office of Communications did not respond to a request for comment on the legal filing.
In response to a previous inquiry about possible revisions to interpretive material at Saguaro National Park, Interior’s press office stated that some routine sign maintenance and updates have been “inaccurately linked” to the secretarial order, including displays recently removed at Grand Canyon.
“Claims that parks are erasing history or removing signs wholesale are inaccurate,” the Jan. 29 statement said.
As for Saguaro, the Interior press office stated that “no requests for changes have been made . . . at this time.”
