Trump administration can remove history and climate info from US parks, court says

The Trump administration does not have to reinstate materials related to climate change, immigration and slavery that it has removed from national parks, a US appeals court ruled on Thursday.

It’s the latest twist in a legal battle over how history is remembered at American public monuments.

At the behest of Donald Trump, the federal government has over the last year dismantled plaques and signage deemed to be “ideological indoctrination”, a move the president characterized as the restoration of “truth and sanity to American history” in a 2025 executive order.

In May 2025, the US secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, instructed the National Park Service (NPS) to flag for removal any images, descriptions and narratives that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living”.

The National Parks Conservation Association and the Association of National Park Rangers, among other advocacy groups, have challenged the removals in court, filing a February lawsuit against the Department of the Interior and NPS.

The Trump administration was then dealt a blow, when in June, a US district court judge sided with the non-profits and ordered the federal government to reinstall any removed materials within 21 days.

In her motion, the Massachusetts district judge Angel Kelley said the White House’s actions “set a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization”.

But on Thursday, a three-judge panel with the US court of appeals for the first circuit determined that a lower court erred in its finding that the advocacy groups would suffer “irreparable harm” if the contested materials were not promptly put back.

According to the ruling, the district court’s determination that the Trump administration was erasing certain histories and degrading public trust did not amount to “any specific harms likely to be experienced by the plaintiffs”.

The appeals court also wrote that the non-profits did not present specific evidence demonstrating a link between Burgum’s mandate and their allegations of reputational harm and reduced membership as a result of the removals.