The Trump administration is reviewing materials at national parks after employees flagged signs, exhibits and publications they said could be “disparaging” to Americans, according to screenshots and internal documents shared with The Associated Press.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March directing the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, to ensure public property does not contain elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” and to “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people” and “the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.” The department told parks to identify potentially inappropriate materials by July 18 and encouraged the public to provide feedback. "As we carry out this directive, we’ll be evaluating all signage in the park along with the public feedback we’ve received," said Interior Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace. "This effort reinforces our commitment to telling the full and accurate story of our nation’s past."
Internal agency documents and screenshots obtained by the National Parks Conservation Association and shared with the AP list dozens of items that park employees identified for review. The material spans topics including pollution and climate change, the history and legacy of slavery, the destruction of Indigenous cultures and the environmental costs of development. The documents indicate the Interior Department planned to remove or cover any signage inconsistent with the executive order and reinstate it after edits; The New York Times reported the administration aimed to remove all "inappropriate" material by Sept. 17.
Examples cited in the documents include a park sign titled "The Air We Breathe" that discusses how human-caused pollution from power plants, cars and other fossil-fuel sources threatens health and vegetation. At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, employees flagged interpretive signs about sea-level rise linked to climate change, writing that such messaging might "reduce the focus on the grandeur, beauty and abundance" of the landscape. Climate scientist Carlos Martinez of the Union of Concerned Scientists said national parks are important venues for educating the public about environmental threats and that removing such information could limit public understanding and action.
Books and exhibits related to slavery were also marked for review. At the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in South Carolina, a gift shop carrying Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was flagged. At the Washington Monument, someone identified a book that discusses George Washington as a slave owner. At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, park descriptions of the whipping, kidnapping, rape and other brutalities inflicted on enslaved people were highlighted for reassessment, and an exhibit naming slave owners was flagged at another site. Cedric Haynes, vice president for policy and legislative affairs at the NAACP, said slavery was central to American economic growth for more than two centuries and that naming individuals responsible for its atrocities is critical to understanding contemporary inequalities.
Panels addressing the treatment of Indigenous peoples drew scrutiny as well. A Sitka National Historical Park panel that recounts efforts by missionaries and both Russian and American authorities to remove the Sheet'ka Kwaan from their lands, culture and language was identified as "concerning text." At Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, a panel discussing imprisonment of Plains Indians was flagged because it referred to tribes having a choice of extinction or assimilation, language an employee said could be considered negative toward the United States. Jessica R. Cattelino, an American Indian studies professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said cutting those stories because they make some people uncomfortable would be a disservice to the cultural and ecological value of the lands. Brenda Child, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe and a professor at the University of Minnesota, said more accurate portrayals of Indigenous history have only recently become common and that efforts to suppress that history are unlikely to succeed.
Accounts of the Everglades’ urbanization and agricultural development were flagged on the grounds that they "could be conceived as being disparaging to the development of Industrial America." The Everglades, a subtropical wilderness that protects more than 1.5 million acres and serves as a major source of drinking water, has been degraded by decades of development and farming. A large, bipartisan, state-federal restoration project approved in 2000 aims to undo past harms. Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said keeping accurate accounts of mistakes made by previous generations is essential to avoid repeating them.
The review has prompted concerns from conservationists, historians and Indigenous leaders who say sanitizing or erasing difficult aspects of American history would undermine public understanding of how natural and social systems have been shaped. Alan Spears, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, said suppressing uncomfortable parts of history will not make them disappear and that national parks must be able to tell those stories if they are to help bring people together.
The National Parks Conservation Association obtained the internal information from an anonymous source within the Interior Department and provided it to the AP. The Interior Department has said it will work to ensure park signage and materials tell a "full and accurate" story consistent with the executive order while also responding to public input. Park officials and outside experts said the decisions about what to remove or revise will shape how millions of visitors encounter the nation's history and environmental challenges in publicly managed spaces.