February 19, 2026
John Kopp/PhillyVoice
National Park Service employees rehang a panel from the President's House slavery exhibits at Sixth and Market streets Thursday morning following a judge's order to do so by 5 p.m. Friday. The exhibits had been removed on Jan. 22.
The National Parks Service began restoring the President's House slavery exhibits at Independence National Historical Park late Thursday morning, one day after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration do so by 5 p.m. Friday.
A crowd of onlookers watched as NPS workers pulled the display panels from vehicles parked at the edge of the site at Sixth and Market streets, rolled them one by one on carts to the President's House and rehung them.
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U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe imposed the deadline Wednesday in an order that cited the federal government's hesitancy to immediately comply with the ruling she issued Monday to restore the exhibit. The Trump administration plans to appeal that ruling.
The National Parks Service and U.S. Department of the Interior did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Rufe's deadline.
Last month, the National Parks Service removed displays that acknowledge that acknowledge the United States' history with slavery and the nine enslaved people that George Washington kept at his Philadelphia house during his tenure as the country's first president.
The city immediately filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that the exhibits could not be changed without permission of city officials, citing several agreements. The President's House opened in 2010 as a joint endeavor between the federal government, city and the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, a group of activists that had advocated for the exhibits.
Onlookers at the President's House watch as the National Parks Service restores the slavery exhibits that were taken down in late January. The NPS began rehanging the displays Thursday morning after a judge ordered the exhibits be reinstalled by 5 p.m. Friday.
Rufe granted the city's injunction Monday, ordering the Trump administration to restore the site to its previous form, without any "additions, removals, destruction or further changes of any kind."
"As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's '1984' now existed, with its motto 'Ignorance is Strength,' this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims," Rufe wrote in the ruling. "It does not."
The Trump administration has argued that following the exhibits' completion, ownership of the President's House was transferred to NPS in 2015 and that a 2006 agreement between the federal government and the city has expired. That agreement states that the federal government need city approval to make any changes to the exhibits.
An Interior Department spokesperson said this week that the federal government believes it has unilateral authority to alter NPS exhibits across the country, regardless of past agreements. The case will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
The panels were removed on Jan. 22 in accordance with a May 2025 order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. It called for a review of displays that "disparage Americans past or living." All that had remained of the President's House exhibits were the open air structure and a monument with the names of the nine slaves.
The panels had been stored in a facility near the National Constitution Center before being put back up Thursday.
This story was updated Thursday afternoon to reflect news that the National Park Service was restoring the exhibit.
Staff writer Micheala Althouse contributed to this story.
