Interior Secretary Burgum ordered National Park Service to review and remove public content deemed to disparage Americans

On May 20, 2025, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued Secretary's Order 3431, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," to implement Executive Order 14253. The order directed the National Park Service and other Interior land-management bureaus to review every piece of public-facing interpretive content — signs, exhibits, museum displays, brochures, audio tours, and digital media — and to identify and remove content that "inappropriately disparages Americans past or living" or, for natural features, "emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur" of the landscape.

Acting under the order, the National Park Service removed or flagged for removal signage and interpretive materials at sites across the park system, including exhibits on slavery, immigration, and climate change. Reported examples included a Fort Sumter display describing how climate change could eventually submerge the fort, interpretive materials at Glacier National Park on the disappearance of its glaciers, and an exhibit at the President's House site in Philadelphia examining the paradox of slavery and freedom at the nation's founding. The order set an initial deadline of September 17, 2025, for content removal and instructed bureaus to post signage asking visitors to report materials they considered negative about past or living Americans.

Updates

2026-06-12 — Federal judge ordered removed park materials restored within 21 days [3]

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston issued a preliminary injunction in a case brought by the National Parks Conservation Association and other groups, ordering the Interior Department to reinstall the removed signs and exhibits within 21 days — by the nation's 250th anniversary. Kelley wrote that the removals set "a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization."

2026-07-02 — Appeals panel ruled the administration need not reinstate the materials [2]

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit determined that the district court had erred in finding the advocacy groups would suffer irreparable harm, holding that the plaintiffs had not shown specific harms linking Burgum's mandate to their claimed injuries. The ruling relieved the administration of the obligation to promptly restore the removed content.