As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, there will be no shortage of speeches about freedom, patriotism, and the genius of the American experiment. The principles established at our nation’s founding — free and fair elections, checks and balances, an independent judiciary, and the right to organize — have enabled generations of Americans to demand and secure cleaner air, safer water, and a healthier environment. But one of the clearest tests of whether we believe in that experiment is whether we will keep learning from our history or attempt to hide it.
The rewriting of history is happening in the parks and historic sites our children visit on field trips and families explore on vacations. Those signs and exhibits shape our civic identity and collective memory — which is why efforts to rewrite or erase what Americans see and learn in these places should alarm people across the political spectrum.
Earlier this year the National Park Service removed panels at George Washington’s Philadelphia home that named and told the stories of the people enslaved there.
In a scathing opinion invoking the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, a federal judge ordered those panels restored (a ruling overruled by an appeals court June 18). But the effort to sanitize the historical record — our shared understanding of what America is, was, and hopes to become — extends far beyond a single site.
Leaked memos indicate pressure to “re-evaluate” signs addressing Indigenous displacement and the brutality of slavery. References to climate change based on decades of research have been removed. At historic battlefields language describing broken promises to Native peoples has disappeared.
Targeting the National Park Service is strategic. Rewriting history is a core element of the autocrat’s playbook. From Mao Zedong’s “Four Olds” campaign to Saddam Hussein etching his name into Babylon and Vladimir Putin rewriting history to attack Ukraine, autocrats have long understood that history is power. Rewriting the past is the first step toward manipulating the present.
Over time America’s public lands have become some of our country’s most extraordinary, literal monuments to democracy. Their landscapes inspire awe; their exhibits tell the layered, unfinished story of who we are. Establishing these beautiful parks was a bipartisan undertaking, with Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson playing critical roles.
When officials alter or remove signage because it is deemed “negative” or “disparaging,” they signal that politics has more value than truth. Trust erodes — not just in parks, but in census data, environmental science, public health guidance, and the concept of evidence.
Sanitized memory makes democratic backsliding easier to justify: If the past was harmonious, present warnings can be dismissed as exaggeration. Controlling the narrative helps authoritarians normalize corruption.
Such efforts can start small: a removed sign, a quiet memo, a directive to “review language.” If no one objects when history and science disappear from a national park, the next set of lies may come easier. Stealing our history helps them steal our future.
Courts have slowed these actions, but they should be a last defense, not a civic strategy. The responsibility of guarding the historical record cannot rest solely with judges.
So what can be done?
First: Don’t look away. A removed sign may seem minor, but it’s not. Don’t assume someone else will object, and don’t tell yourself the erasure is just temporary.
Second: Document changes. Photograph altered signage. Archive public webpages. Support historians, archivists, librarians, and journalists who preserve records. In an era of information volatility, documentation is civic infrastructure.
Third: Engage locally. Ask park officials, school boards, and state agencies what policies guide interpretive changes. Attend meetings. Submit public comments. Insist on transparency. Public lands belong to the public, not to any single administration.
Fourth: Contact your elected representatives. Congress controls oversight and funding, so tell lawmakers historical distortion and suppression of science are unacceptable. Demand hearings and budget protections for public institutions from political interference.
Fifth: Defend scientific integrity alongside historical truth. The removal of climate references and rewritten signage reflect the same impulse to subordinate fact to power. A government that distorts the past cannot credibly prepare for the future.
Finally: Build solidarity. An attack on park historians is also an attack on teachers. An attack on climate science is also an attack on public health. Autocrats want our attention fragmented; our defense against that tactic lies in collective civic engagement.
The best way to honor the country is to trust Americans with the full story, including the achievements and failures, the ideals and contradictions, the beauty of the land and the people too often left out of its telling.
And we should use those lessons to bring forth a better future so that 250 years from now our legacy is what we saved, not what we lost.
