Just a short walk from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall — where the ideals of the American founding were once argued and proclaimed — a separate piece of the nation’s story has become a point of serious contention.
The President’s House, an early home occupied by presidents George Washington and John Adams, hosts an outdoor exhibit that the National Park Service has described as exploring “the paradox between slavery and freedom.” The exhibit highlights the lives of enslaved individuals, including Oney Judge, a woman held in bondage by George and Martha Washington who escaped in 1796 and successfully evaded all attempts to bring her back.
In January, the National Park Service pulled panels related to slavery from the site, following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump directing federal agencies and cultural institutions to review and revise programs that the administration says promote “divisive ideology.”
Administration officials argue the changes bring balance back to institutions they believe placed too much emphasis on America’s historical wrongs. Critics counter that the moves restrict meaningful conversations about slavery and race.
The removal sparked a legal fight, and a federal judge ordered the panels put back in February. However, a federal appeals court ruled last month that the Trump administration has the authority to remove and replace the exhibit.
Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association nonprofit, said the controversy carries consequences well beyond Philadelphia, raising fundamental questions about whether historic sites can offer unfiltered interpretations of the past.
“When you take down those panels, you are sanitizing, softening, whitewashing and erasing American history,” Spears said.
As the country marks 250 years since its founding, the argument over what history deserves to be included has grown into a broader national debate: Should America’s story be told primarily as a tribute to founding ideals and national accomplishment, or should it offer a more complete picture that includes slavery, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, immigration, exclusion, and the long struggle of marginalized communities to claim the rights the founding documents promised?
Museums, historic sites, national parks, and cultural organizations across the country spent years developing events designed to bring millions of visitors to semiquincentennial celebrations. Those plans have now become tangled in a wider conflict over historical memory, national identity, and political influence.
In Florida, the Stonewall National Museum Archives and Library — one of the country’s foremost LGBTQIA+ archives — is confronting its own set of pressures.
Stonewall president Robert Kesten said the loss of funding could hamper the museum’s ability to preserve and share historical records, as corporate and private donors grow increasingly hesitant to support organizations they consider politically controversial. The museum anticipates losing between $70,000 and $90,000 in county grant funding before year’s end. Kesten attributed those cuts to Florida Republican officials he said have been opposed to LGBTQ+ inclusion.
“That’s a hell of a lot of money for an organization like ours to make up,” he said.
The museum’s current exhibit features Baron Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian military officer who played a key role in shaping George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Historians have long debated his sexuality, and some scholars and LGBTQ+ advocates point to him as a possible prominent gay figure from the founding era.
Kesten said that American history has long been skewed disproportionately toward the experiences of white, Christian, and heterosexual men. “And if you are anything else, you are expendable.”
Historians, museum leaders, and cultural advocates told Reuters that the federal push risks shrinking the range of stories that museums and historic sites are able to share with the public.
The dispute is playing out even as museums that offer broader accounts of American history continue to attract large audiences. Last year, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., recorded 1.4 million visits, while the National Museum of the American Indian drew more than 620,000.
The Smithsonian Institution did not respond to a request for comment on whether its museums had altered exhibits or curatorial work in response to Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture said its programming for the 250th anniversary will “explore the nation’s pursuit of a more perfect union.”
“History is remembering the full scope of the past, whether it supports or undermines a political goal,” said Howard University history professor Ibram X. Kendi.
Separately, updated application language for federal grants tied to African American history and culture museums caused many institutions to opt out of applying, according to John Dichtl, president and CEO of the American Association for State and Local History. He said the change could leave some long-established museums facing financial uncertainty.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a small federal agency that administers the grants, now states it welcomes projects that “foster in all generations a greater appreciation…through uplifting and positive narratives of our shared American experience.”
“It makes one wonder what was pushed out of the way to make room for that,” Dichtl said. The Institute of Museum and Library Services did not offer a comment.
Administration officials have pushed back against accusations of erasing history, saying the goal is not to eliminate difficult chapters but to restore greater focus on the nation’s founding principles, including freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
The White House-backed Freedom 250 initiative has promoted patriotic education and public programming connected to the nation’s founding through a public-private partnership. Its “Freedom Trucks” — mobile museum exhibits housed inside tractor-trailers — have traveled the country featuring displays on the Declaration of Independence, George Washington, and the Revolutionary War, with limited representation of slavery and minority experiences from the founding period.
“Our role is to integrate different initiatives so Americans can celebrate through one connected experience,” said Keith Krach, CEO of Freedom 250, in a May interview with Reuters.
Clifford Murphy, director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, said the institution’s work surrounding the 250th anniversary is grounded in presenting American history as both a celebration and a reflection, even amid wider debates over historical erasure.
For many historians and academics, the concern is not the act of celebrating the founding era but what they believe is being left out of the conversation.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and scholar who helped develop critical race theory, said public institutions risk promoting celebration while downplaying the harm caused by policies and systems that shaped the nation.
“If our mainstream institutions are not going to critically engage with our past, then we have to ask: What is your role in this democracy?” Crenshaw said.
Ann Burroughs, president of the Japanese American National Museum, said preserving difficult history is essential. She noted that more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — the majority of them U.S. citizens — were incarcerated during World War II. She described the internment camps as “a very dark part of American history” and said the museum has not changed its programming in response to Trump’s order and has since declined to apply for federal grants.
“It tells the story of confronting the truth about race and why it’s important for us to stand up against authoritarianism,” she said.
For Indigenous communities, advocates say their history has long been pushed to the margins of American education and public memory, often reduced to a brief mention around Thanksgiving.
“This has been a continuum of failure, but even more so now,” said Joshua Arce, president of the Partnership With Native Americans nonprofit.
