Leaked documents reportedly shows the administration’s push to remove “anti-American” narratives from parks and museums
US President Donald Trump. © The White House via X Account/Anadolu via Getty Images
The administration of US President Donald Trump is seeking to purge “anti-American”
narratives from the country’s national parks and museums, several media
outlets have reported, citing a leaked government database. Among the
themes reportedly identified for removal are racism and climate change.
After
returning to the White House in 2025, Trump prioritized combating what
he calls ‘woke bias.’ He has since signed several executive orders
rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the
federal government and its regulated industries.
On Monday, an anonymous group describing itself as “civil servants on the front lines”
published the database, which presumably includes hundreds of
submissions by national park employees regarding last year’s executive
orders, which instruct parks to remove any content “that inappropriately disparages Americans...or that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur” of natural features.
According
to the Washington Post, most inquiries concern sites and exhibits that
deal with historical instances of violence against African-Americans and
the civil rights movement, along with such topics as slavery,
abolitionism, the Civil War, and relations between Indigenous peoples
and white colonizers.
The group that published the database said that it shows how the Trump administration is “trying to use your public lands to erase history and undermine science.”
A
spokesperson for the US Department of the Interior, which manages
federal lands and national parks, told Reuters that the documents had
been “edited before being inappropriately and illegally released to the media in ways that misrepresented the status of this effort.” The official described them as “draft, deliberative internal documents [which] are not a representation of final action taken by the department.”
“Employees who altered internal records and leaked in an effort to hurt the Trump administration will be held accountable,” the spokesperson added.