President Trump's Interior Department asked visitors at U.S. national parks to report exhibits that cast Americans past or present in a negative light, and the response, released by the National Park Service on May 22, 2026, came mostly from people rejecting the effort.
Between June 2025 and January 2026, the agency collected more than 35,000 comments across 475 park units, according to records published after a Sierra Club Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. An analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found that only 47 comments about 0.1% flagged signage or backed removal, while the rest largely criticized the policy.
Highlights
- The National Park Service released more than 35,000 comments after a Sierra Club FOIA lawsuit.
- The Center for Western Priorities found only 47 comments supported flagging signage or removal.
- Many commenters used the form to criticize Trump’s order rather than report park exhibits.
- A Philadelphia slavery exhibit became a legal flashpoint after panels about people enslaved by George Washington were removed.
By May 2026, the preservation project Save Our Signs calculated that officials had pulled or altered at least 58 signs and exhibits, according to its Removal Tracker. Among the topics most frequently targeted were slavery, climate change, Native American history, and women's contributions to the conservation movement, a pattern documented by Jenny McBurney, a government publications librarian at the University of Minnesota and a core member of the group.
The public feedback campaign that invited complaints drew a flood of backlash instead
Image credits: The White House / Flickr
The dispute began on March 27, 2025, when Trump signed Executive Order 14253, titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed up with his own secretarial order on May 20, 2025, putting the directive into action.
Burgum directed park units to post QR-code signs soliciting public feedback on any content that failed to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features. His stated goal was to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of their heritage.
In June, NPS Acting Director Jessica Bowron sent a memo to regional directors, operationalizing the policy: all park units were required to post the QR code signs by June 13, 2025, and to conduct a full review of exhibits, films, brochures, and waysides by mid-July.
Image credits: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Burgum's personal role in the policy later became a story in its own right. When a Scripps News reporter asked him about the QR code signs appearing at parks across the country, he responded that it was the first he had heard about it and that he was completely unaware of it. That answer raised immediate questions when reporters and critics noted that Burgum's own signature appeared on the secretarial order mandating the signs.
Critics, including the Sierra Club, called the effort an attempt to censor or sanitize history on public lands.
The Sierra Club filed FOIA requests on July 31, 2025, seeking records from the Department of the Interior and land bureaus. The group later said the released comments showed widespread opposition to the Trump administration's approach, according to its May 2026 statement.
The comments ranged from measured objections to blunt profanity. The acronym FDT, which stands for F*** Donald Trump, appeared more than 4,000 times, according to the Center for Western Priorities' analysis.
Image credits: swampt01 / Flickr
One National Park visitor, quoted by a FOX affiliate, wrote that Trump's idea of having Americans call in and snitch on each other is straight out of the fascist playbook, adding that he is literally acting like Hitler or Mussolini.
Another commenter, responding about Rocky Mountain National Park, wrote: This feedback applies to all parks, stop cutting the funding and staffing for the National Park Service. Also, do not sell our public lands to private interests.
Not every comment opposed the administration's direction. A visitor to Virginia's Booker T. Washington National Monument wrote that a sign there was blatantly misleading, politically loaded, and clearly designed to push a modern agenda by hijacking a respected historical figure, according to LiveNOW from FOX.
Another visitor to Missouri's Harry S. Truman National Historic Site complained about exhibits on intersectionality and equity frameworks, according to FOX 35 Orlando.
A slavery exhibit in Philadelphia became a flashpoint in the national park signage battle
Image credits: Mrsbethbarton / Wikimedia Commons
The fight moved from comment forms to court after the National Park Service removed panels in January 2026 that described the lives of nine people enslaved by George Washington while he lived in Philadelphia. Philadelphia sued over the removal, according to CNN.
On February 16, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe ordered the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to restore the site to its previous condition. The Sierra Club also reported the ruling in a separate statement.
Some visitors argued that difficult history belongs in the parks. After visiting Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, one person wrote, We had a great time learning about the development of this site, including the difficult parts of our American story.
Image credits: John Dillenbeck / Wikimedia Commons
For now, the numbers tell the clearest story: a federal effort to solicit complaints about park history produced tens of thousands of responses, but only a tiny share supported removing or flagging exhibits. The rest turned the form into a public rebuke of Trump and the policy itself.