“Scan here to report any history that you don’t want to remember.” — a visitor at Manzanar National Historic Site, the WWII Japanese incarceration camp in California.
On March 27, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It directed the Interior Department to scrub monuments and markers of content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum extended the order to signs, exhibits, and films across National Parks on May 20, 2025. The placards were posted at park entrances nationwide by June 13. Each asked visitors to flag any sign “negative about either past or living Americans,” or anything that failed to emphasize “the beauty, grandeur, and abundance” of the scenery.
The public had notes.
Of the 35,700 comments the Park Service later released, an analysis by the conservation organization Center for Western Priorities found that 0.1% flagged a historical sign.
At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a comment asked the Park Service to take down a display of gay and lesbian activists marching for equality, calling it “woke propaganda” that “does not belong with the Liberty Bell displays.” One at Castillo de San Marcos in Florida objected that signage describing how Native peoples faced “extinction or assimilation” was “wildly overblown” and “damages the U.S.” Those were the comments the order had asked for and thought it would elicit. But the rest had other thoughts.
The word fascist surfaced often, typed out by hand. Whitewash ran higher, though most of it came from a single form letter pasted in a few thousand times.
Two themes dominated the individual comments. Some defended Native and Indigenous history, asking the Park Service to keep the name Denali, which Trump changed back to Mount McKinley, and to keep calling Sand Creek a massacre. More wrote about the parks themselves: the firings, the budget, the Endangered Species Act, the talk of selling public land. Burgum garnered a category of his own, with many visitors addressing him personally and profanely.
Since Trump took office, the Park Service has lost about a quarter of its permanent staff to firings and Secretary Burgum’s reorganization, sold as a cost-saving measure. When the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a watchdog of current and former government workers, asked the Interior Department to document the savings, it said it had kept no records, in what PEER called “a profound degree of maladministration.” The next budget proposed cutting park operations by over $730 million. Visitors kept reporting a scarcity of rangers. The firings account for it.
On June 12, 2026, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley gave the administration 21 days to put back what it had taken down. The ruling ran 63 pages. Trump’s own order had warned against a “widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history… driven by ideology rather than truth.” Kelley found the administration doing “exactly what they profess to counteract,” an effort she called “a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.” It had taken “a white-out pen” to the nation’s history.
The administration had timed the removals to the country’s 250th anniversary, on July 4, 2026. Kelley made that her deadline. The White House spent a year preparing a celebration with the difficult parts removed, and now has until the Fourth of July to put slavery, Sand Creek, and abolitionist Harriet Tubman back.
All 35,700 comments sent to the tip line can be read at this link. What follows is just a portion of what National Park visitors had to say:
“I would like to report the Fascist in Chief, Donald J. Trump, for being a stain on this country … Thank you for your attention to this matter.” — Alcatraz Island, California.
“I’d like to report an act of vandalism. Someone has posted a particularly crude and dim-witted sign in front of Boston Mills Visitor Center.” — Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio.
“I’d like to report the signs that are asking me to report signs that accurately portray American history.” — Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado.
“This smells distinctly like fascism, besties.” — Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Wisconsin.
“You call this a canyon? Needs to be at least 100% wider … Please blast at least 500 yards from both walls to demonstrate American greatness.” — Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.
“Warning: This petroglyph information sign promotes a round Earth orbiting the sun. Report to MAGA for immediate flattening!” — Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.
“Too many rocks. Overwhelming.” — Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona.
“Lately I see a lot of bears in the park wearing left-leaning, Kumbaya rainbow t-shirts … We need to trap these bears and send them to California.” — Olympic National Park, Washington.
“The people residing here are constantly spewing misinformation and Russian propaganda. In accordance with EO 14253, please correct their false narratives.” — The White House and President’s Park, Washington, D.C.
“Per EO 14253 … enslaved labor and breaking treaties should not be minimized.” — Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota.
“Only that sign is negative. The rest is just history, you walnuts. Stop being a bunch of snowflakes … Put on your big kid pants.” — Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
“The mountain is called Denali, and no other name but the name that the indigenous peoples came up with before whites murdered and pillaged their way through.” — Denali National Park & Preserve, Alaska.
“I’m dismayed by the federal snowflakes trying to turn Americans into a Stasi, reporting on thought crimes … a new low … since the Red Scare.” — Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.
“Need more rangers. Need less birthday parades that no one attends.” — Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming.
“Where are all the employees? I’ve been coming to this park for more than 50 years and on my last visit I saw no rangers.” — Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee & North Carolina.
“Hire back all the Park Services staff you fired, you morons.” — Prince William Forest Park, Virginia.
“Need more staff. Also, Doug Burgum is a dick head.” — Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming.
“I found something that fails to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of Zion … It’s funding cuts, ranger firings, canceled research, dismantling endangered species protections, drilling, mining, and selling public lands.” — Zion National Park, Utah.
“Need more programs about Native American history. Also, and I say this very respectfully, Donald Trump can eat a pile of Grand Canyon mule shit.” — Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.
