Slavery exhibits at the President’s House have been swapped for the Trump administration’s version

President Donald Trump’s administration has installed its own version of history at the President’s House, swapping storied panels on the brutality of slavery at the site for displays that experts say sanitize George Washington’s role as an enslaver.

The replacement caps a monthslong legal battle that was the first direct skirmish between Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and the Trump administration, over the site on Independence Mall.

The change happened overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, hours after the city hosted MLB All-Star game events near the site, allowing the government to switch out the displays and shutdown the television screens while avoiding public scrutiny during the takedown.

As of Wednesday morning, about a dozen U.S. Park Police were roaming around the site. The Park Police are typically stationed in Washington D.C., New York City, and the San Francisco metropolitan areas, but were present for Tuesday’s All-Star festivities.

Roughly a week prior to the changes, park employees installed security cameras near the site, which one worker explained as being for the upcoming MLB All-Star game festivities in Philadelphia. The cameras were still present at the site Wednesday morning.

The overhaul of the President’s House exhibit, which memorializes the nine people Washington enslaved at his Philadelphia residence, comes a little more than a week after the city celebrated the United States’ 250th birthday on July Fourth and tourists from around the world saw an incomplete version of history as the exhibit hung in limbo.

On July 3, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit gave the Trump administration the final go-ahead to replace the panels.

The city argued in a court filing last week that the court violated federal rules by not giving the city time to respond and attacked last month’s Third Circuit’s ruling paving the way for the new panels as too broad. But the court denied the city’s requests.

The site now features the 11 panels proposed by the Trump administration, which were first reported by The Inquirer in April, in addition to more than a dozen smaller panels that detail governmental processes, the lives of various historical figures, and a panel dedicated to the escape of Ona Judge and Hercules, two people enslaved by Washington who fled to freedom.

Though the panels do mention slavery and the people Washington enslaved, the new exhibits mostly offer a broad timeline of U.S. history that warps the original intent of the President’s House.

The Trump administration’s panels significantly stray from the goal of the site outlined in the park’s foundation document in 2017: “It would explore the historic context of the site in the context of its ties to slavery and the lives of the enslaved who lived at the site.”

The new panels also soften Washington’s role as an enslaver.

For instance, one display says: “Caught between his private doubts about slavery and his public responsibilities as president, George Washington navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.”

“Privately, George Washington often expressed discomfort with the institution and a desire to see it abolished,” the panel continued. “Yet as a Virginia plantation owner, his wealth and livelihood were deeply tied to it.”

Later in that panel, the Trump administration writes: “Slaves living in the President’s House experienced a greater modicum of autonomy than elsewhere in the South such as to explore the city and sometimes even attend the theater, with Washington buying the tickets.”

Another panel called “Enslaved People at the President’s House,” discusses the lives of each of the nine individuals enslaved by Washington, but it reframes Washington’s role.

“President Washington knew and trusted his enslaved house staff enough to buy them tickets for the circus and theater and to let them venture out into the city’s markets on their own,” the panel says.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department said in a statement Wednesday that the “new panels are full of historical context and highlight the momentous events that took place in the President’s House and other sites at Independence National Historical Park.”

The spokesperson said that the panels “acknowledge the evils of slavery, including its injustice and hypocrisies” and properly tell the story of the nine individuals enslaved by Washington.

“By telling the full story, every triumph, every challenge, and every step towards a more perfect union we strengthen our shared understanding and ensure that future generations inherit not just the land we love, but the truth of the journey that brought us here,” the spokesperson said.

Michael Coard, leader of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, a group that has fought to protect the President’s House, said Wednesday morning that stakeholders were “not surprised, we saw it coming” and were reviewing all possible legal avenues and advocacy options.

“If you stay prepared, you don’t have to get prepared, and we have been prepared since 2002,” Coard said.

The drastic alterations are a culmination of about a year of turmoil since the Trump administration began scrutinizing the site last year as part of the president’s executive order to review or remove content at national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

In January, the administration abruptly removed of all the exhibits at the President’s House, provoking a legal battle waged by the City of Philadelphia and non-stop advocacy from stakeholders who helped develop the President’s House in the early 2000s.

Removals also happened at national parks around the country.

The installation of the new exhibit marks the end of a phase in the city’s legal battle against Trump’s administration, the first of his second term.

The city sued in January when the slavery exhibit was abruptly dismantled, asking a judge to issue an injunction ordering the panels be restored. Judge Cynthia M. Rufe issued a blistering opinion on Presidents Day ordering the restoration, comparing the Trump administration’s action to the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984 novel.

The administration installed roughly half of the removed panels before Rufe’s deadline, but left the site’s walls half bare after appealing to the Third Circuit and securing an administrative stay.

A unanimous Third Circuit three-judge panel — which included Trump, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama appointees — held in June that the city had no rights over the exhibit after having donated the President’s House to the National Park Service.

No changes followed on the ground after the ruling because of litigation in federal court in Boston that challenged the legality of display removals in national parks and historic sites nationwide, leading a district judge to order the Trump administration to restore all removed items.

But on July 2, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stayed that order, clearing the final legal obstacle preventing the federal government from installing the new panels.

This is a developing story and will be updated.