An appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration can reinstall interpretive panels that critics say whitewash the history of slavery at the site of President George Washington’s home in Philadelphia.
The signs would be in the same area where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. A message seeking comment was left Friday with the National Park Service.
The new educational panels were designed to replace ones put up in 2010 that told the story of how nine slaves lived in the home along with George and Martha Washington in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.
Their removal stemmed from Trump’s 2025 executive order calling for federally owned or controlled historic sites not to display information to “disparage Americans past or living” and to focus on the “greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Friday’s ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit of Appeals, which is based in a courthouse across an intersection from the President’s House site, was a technical one to allow implementation of a ruling made last month.
