Our national parks hold more than precious landscapes. They carry vital parts of our history, and the Trump administration is dead set on erasing that reality.
In 2025, Trump released an Orwellian-sounding executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” directing the Department of the Interior to remove any public exhibits that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” or show our nation as as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed”.
Exhibits at our national parks tell the story of American history, but they can’t defend themselves. And they can’t tell their stories alone. As one ranger told us, “Park rangers are America’s storytellers. People often forget that, because of all the bears and waterfalls, but it’s a big part of our work on behalf of the people. And when we unionize, we are in a stronger position to tell and protect those stories.”
The exhibits that were removed in response to the order mentioned inconvenient truths like slavery and genocide. They explained the living conditions of enslaved people at George Washington’s Philadelphia residence. Facts about climate change and reminders to use reusable water bottles were removed. The Trump administration even pulled the Pride flags down at Stonewall National Monument.
Of course, rangers fought back. Last month, after several groups including the Association of National Park Rangers filed a lawsuit, a federal judge ordered all removed exhibits to be restored (though due to a government appeal, the exhibits have yet to be replaced).
This is a fight to protect history and the parks themselves. After slashing the Bureau of Land Management’s budget last year, Trump just used the agency’s lack of resources as a rationale for reducing the size of two sacred public monuments by over 3 million acres.
Here’s what one ranger shared with us after that announcement:
“We’ve felt for a while that we could lose our public lands. These places are full of irreplaceable cultural, historic, scientific, and natural value and they need protection. These changes go against what the majority of the public want and once we lose these lands they could be gone forever.”
Right now, rangers are organizing not just for a union contract, but because they know that union protections–like those against layoffs–also protect the parks and the history within. Unionized rangers are protected rangers, who can push back more strongly on Trump’s rewriting of history.
In solidarity,
The Labor Force
Sources:
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5742101-nps-national-parks-trump-climate-change-slavery/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/02/us-national-parks-history-censorship
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ordered-restore-slavery-signs-national-parks-censorship-12069456
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/