New Jersey
Prosecutors drop racketeering case against Democratic power broker, co-defendants
New Jersey’s acting attorney general said Tuesday she will not ask the state Supreme Court to review the dismissal of racketeering charges against Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III and those charged alongside him.
The decision by Jennifer Davenport, who was recently appointed by new Gov. Mikie Sherrill, came nearly three weeks after a three-judge appellate panel upheld a state judge’s decision to toss the criminal charges. The indictment had been obtained by Matt Platkin, who served as attorney general under Sherrill’s predecessor and fellow Democrat Phil Murphy.
“In light of the Appellate Division’s decision, we have concluded that our prosecutorial resources would be best spent on other matters,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. “Our office remains committed to prioritizing public corruption prosecutions in this time of deepening mistrust in government.”
The charges stemmed from a June 2024 indictment announced by Platkin at a news conference at which Norcross himself took the unusual step of appearing in person and sitting directly in front of the attorney general.
Norcross and five other defendants were accused of running “an enterprise” going back to 2012 to use their political influence to craft legislation to serve their own interests. But in a nearly 100-page ruling, the state judge found the prosecution’s allegations did not amount to criminal coercion or extortion and are time-barred.
Norcross and his lawyers have long maintained his innocence, claiming the indictment was politically motivated, an allegation Platkin has repeatedly denied.
Norcross, who served as executive chairman of the insurance firm Conner Strong & Buckelew, has been widely viewed as among the most influential unelected Democrats in the state. He was a Democratic National Committee member until 2021 and previously served as the head of the Camden County Democratic Party.
Florida
Man indicted for supplying banned drugs in case involving U.S. sprinter Marvin Bracy-Williams
Federal authorities charged a Florida man Tuesday with providing banned substances to an athlete in a case involving the 45-month doping ban handed to Olympic sprinter Marvin Bracy-Williams last year.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Orlando announced the indictment of Paul Askew of Jacksonville for violating the Rodchenkov Act, a law enacted in 2020 that allows U.S. authorities to prosecute doping crimes involving international events.
Prosecutors said Askew could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Askew did not immediately respond to messages left by The Associated Press at an email address and phone number listed in his name. The court records showed he was in the process of being assigned an attorney.
Bracy-Williams ran the 100 meters at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and won a silver medal at the world championships in 2022. But he mysteriously disappeared from sprinting in 2023 before agreeing to his ban last November after a case brought to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s attention by a whistleblower.
That led to the sprinter testing positive for a banned substance. The case continued with Bracy-Williams’ attempt to hinder the investigation and ended with him providing “substantial assistance” to authorities, who uncovered other cases, USADA said at that time.
The indictment alleges that between July 2023 and January 2024, Askew conspired with others to influence international sports competitions by providing performance-enhancing drugs to an athlete.
Events allegedly impacted included the 2024 Paris Olympics and Olympic trials, the 2024 world indoor championships, a 2023 Diamond League meet in China and the 2023 Prefontaine Classic in Oregon, the indictment said.
USADA released a statement saying it was grateful for cross-agency coordination that included the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Athletics Integrity Unit, which handles doping cases for World Athletics.
The law and “the ability to hold accountable those who conspire against the rules is more important than ever as the U.S. prepares to host a mega decade of sporting events, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the statement said.
Washington
Federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
The government “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, wrote in her Tuesday order. “From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Trump officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia.
In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted the government has “purposely—and for no reason—ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go.”
That country is Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants can only be detained as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.
“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained,” Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday. “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today.”
The government should now engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.
Louisiana
Actor Shia LaBeouf arrested after alleged fight during Mardi Gras
Actor Shia LaBeouf has been arrested after being accused of hitting two men early Tuesday morning during Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, police said.
LaBeouf was charged with two counts of simple battery, New Orleans police said in a statement.
Officers were called to a business around the French Quarter at about 12:45 a.m. after allegedly “causing a disturbance and becoming increasingly aggressive” inside, police said. Police did not say what type of business it was.
An employee tried to remove LaBeouf and once outside, the actor allegedly hit a man “multiple times with closed fists,” police said.
Witnesses told police that LaBeouf left the area but later returned and continued to act aggressively.
“Multiple individuals attempted to restrain him, releasing him in hopes he would leave,” police said.
The man who was first allegedly hit by LaBeouf told police the actor hit him again. Another man told officers that LaBeouf also allegedly punched him in the nose.
“He was held down until officers arrived,” police said.
LaBeouf was taken to a hospital for treatment of unknown injuries and after being released, he was arrested and taken into custody by police.
Court and jail records did not list an attorney who could speak on behalf of LaBeouf. Emails to LaBeouf’s publicists were not immediately returned.
LaBeouf has had several run-ins with the law during his career, including an early 2017 New York arrest for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct that was captured on a livestream video. He was sent to court-mandated rehabilitation.
Later that summer, he was arrested in Georgia for public drunkenness and accused of disorderly conduct and obstruction, when he was on location filming “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” and sentenced to probation. In 2020, he was charged with misdemeanor battery and petty theft in Los Angeles.
That year, the English singer and actor FKA Twigs, whose legal name is Tahliah Barnett, also filed a lawsuit alleging LaBeouf was physically and emotionally abusive to her during their relationship, which they settled in July.
Barnett said LaBeouf put her in a constant state of fear and humiliation, once slammed her into a car, tried to strangle her and knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease.
LaBeouf apologized in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. He also denied the accusations in the lawsuit in a 2021 filing, saying any injuries done or damages incurred by Barnett were not his doing.
The 39-year-old first gained acclaim as a child for his role on the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens,” and continued working steadily into adulthood. He is perhaps best known for his roles in 2007’s “Transformers” and in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.”
LaBeouf shares a daughter, born in 2022, with actor Mia Goth.
Missouri
Bayer agrees to $7.25 billion proposed settlement over thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer.
The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments on Bayer’s assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Roundup without a cancer warning should invalidate claims filed in state courts. That case would not be affected by the proposed settlement.
But the settlement would eliminate some of the risk from an eventual and uncertain Supreme Court ruling — both for Bayer and for patients seeking damages.
Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputes the assertion that the weedkiller’s key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But the company has warned that mounting legal costs are threatening its ability to continue selling the product in U.S. agricultural markets.
The settlement still needs the court’s approval.
Washington
Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.
A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant U.S. history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.
The changes at exhibits came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.
The groups behind the lawsuit said that a federal campaign to review interpretive materials has escalated in recent weeks, leading to the removal of numerous exhibits that discuss the history of slavery and enslaved people, civil rights, treatment of Indigenous peoples, climate science, and other “core elements of the American experience.”
The suit was filed by a coalition that includes the National Parks Conservation Association, American Association for State and Local History, Association of National Park Rangers and Union of Concerned Scientists. It comes as a federal judge on Monday ordered that an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former home in Philadelphia.
The park service removed explanatory panels last month from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital. The judge ordered the exhibits restored on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.
Besides the Philadelphia case, the park service has flagged for removal interpretive materials describing key moments in the civil rights movement, the groups said. For example, at the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, officials have flagged about 80 items for removal.
The permanent exhibit at Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park in Kansas has been flagged because it mentions “equity,” the lawsuit says. A Pride flag was removed at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City that marks the launch of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park said settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” for the park to be established and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing.
“Censoring science and erasing America’s history at national parks are direct threats to everything these amazing places, and our country, stand for,” said Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the parks conservation association.
“National parks serve as living classrooms for our country, where science and history come to life for visitors,” Spears added. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”
The Interior Department said Tuesday it has appealed the court’s ruling in the Philadelphia case.
“The National Park Service routinely updates exhibits across the park system to ensure historical accuracy and completeness. If not for this unnecessary judicial intervention, updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days,’’ an Interior spokesperson said in an email.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials from the Philadelphia exhibit must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal’s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently.
Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, began her written order with a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” and compared the Trump administration to the book’s totalitarian regime called the Ministry of Truth, which revised historical records to align with its own narrative.
“You cannot tell the story of America without recognizing both the beauty and the tragedy of our history,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the advocacy groups.
Trump’s “effort to erase history and science in our national parks violates federal law and is a disgrace that neither honors our country’s legacy nor its future,” she said.
Prosecutors drop racketeering case against Democratic power broker, co-defendants
New Jersey’s acting attorney general said Tuesday she will not ask the state Supreme Court to review the dismissal of racketeering charges against Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III and those charged alongside him.
The decision by Jennifer Davenport, who was recently appointed by new Gov. Mikie Sherrill, came nearly three weeks after a three-judge appellate panel upheld a state judge’s decision to toss the criminal charges. The indictment had been obtained by Matt Platkin, who served as attorney general under Sherrill’s predecessor and fellow Democrat Phil Murphy.
“In light of the Appellate Division’s decision, we have concluded that our prosecutorial resources would be best spent on other matters,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. “Our office remains committed to prioritizing public corruption prosecutions in this time of deepening mistrust in government.”
The charges stemmed from a June 2024 indictment announced by Platkin at a news conference at which Norcross himself took the unusual step of appearing in person and sitting directly in front of the attorney general.
Norcross and five other defendants were accused of running “an enterprise” going back to 2012 to use their political influence to craft legislation to serve their own interests. But in a nearly 100-page ruling, the state judge found the prosecution’s allegations did not amount to criminal coercion or extortion and are time-barred.
Norcross and his lawyers have long maintained his innocence, claiming the indictment was politically motivated, an allegation Platkin has repeatedly denied.
Norcross, who served as executive chairman of the insurance firm Conner Strong & Buckelew, has been widely viewed as among the most influential unelected Democrats in the state. He was a Democratic National Committee member until 2021 and previously served as the head of the Camden County Democratic Party.
Florida
Man indicted for supplying banned drugs in case involving U.S. sprinter Marvin Bracy-Williams
Federal authorities charged a Florida man Tuesday with providing banned substances to an athlete in a case involving the 45-month doping ban handed to Olympic sprinter Marvin Bracy-Williams last year.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Orlando announced the indictment of Paul Askew of Jacksonville for violating the Rodchenkov Act, a law enacted in 2020 that allows U.S. authorities to prosecute doping crimes involving international events.
Prosecutors said Askew could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Askew did not immediately respond to messages left by The Associated Press at an email address and phone number listed in his name. The court records showed he was in the process of being assigned an attorney.
Bracy-Williams ran the 100 meters at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and won a silver medal at the world championships in 2022. But he mysteriously disappeared from sprinting in 2023 before agreeing to his ban last November after a case brought to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s attention by a whistleblower.
That led to the sprinter testing positive for a banned substance. The case continued with Bracy-Williams’ attempt to hinder the investigation and ended with him providing “substantial assistance” to authorities, who uncovered other cases, USADA said at that time.
The indictment alleges that between July 2023 and January 2024, Askew conspired with others to influence international sports competitions by providing performance-enhancing drugs to an athlete.
Events allegedly impacted included the 2024 Paris Olympics and Olympic trials, the 2024 world indoor championships, a 2023 Diamond League meet in China and the 2023 Prefontaine Classic in Oregon, the indictment said.
USADA released a statement saying it was grateful for cross-agency coordination that included the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Athletics Integrity Unit, which handles doping cases for World Athletics.
The law and “the ability to hold accountable those who conspire against the rules is more important than ever as the U.S. prepares to host a mega decade of sporting events, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the statement said.
Washington
Federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
The government “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, wrote in her Tuesday order. “From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Trump officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia.
In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted the government has “purposely—and for no reason—ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go.”
That country is Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants can only be detained as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.
“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained,” Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday. “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today.”
The government should now engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.
Louisiana
Actor Shia LaBeouf arrested after alleged fight during Mardi Gras
Actor Shia LaBeouf has been arrested after being accused of hitting two men early Tuesday morning during Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, police said.
LaBeouf was charged with two counts of simple battery, New Orleans police said in a statement.
Officers were called to a business around the French Quarter at about 12:45 a.m. after allegedly “causing a disturbance and becoming increasingly aggressive” inside, police said. Police did not say what type of business it was.
An employee tried to remove LaBeouf and once outside, the actor allegedly hit a man “multiple times with closed fists,” police said.
Witnesses told police that LaBeouf left the area but later returned and continued to act aggressively.
“Multiple individuals attempted to restrain him, releasing him in hopes he would leave,” police said.
The man who was first allegedly hit by LaBeouf told police the actor hit him again. Another man told officers that LaBeouf also allegedly punched him in the nose.
“He was held down until officers arrived,” police said.
LaBeouf was taken to a hospital for treatment of unknown injuries and after being released, he was arrested and taken into custody by police.
Court and jail records did not list an attorney who could speak on behalf of LaBeouf. Emails to LaBeouf’s publicists were not immediately returned.
LaBeouf has had several run-ins with the law during his career, including an early 2017 New York arrest for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct that was captured on a livestream video. He was sent to court-mandated rehabilitation.
Later that summer, he was arrested in Georgia for public drunkenness and accused of disorderly conduct and obstruction, when he was on location filming “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” and sentenced to probation. In 2020, he was charged with misdemeanor battery and petty theft in Los Angeles.
That year, the English singer and actor FKA Twigs, whose legal name is Tahliah Barnett, also filed a lawsuit alleging LaBeouf was physically and emotionally abusive to her during their relationship, which they settled in July.
Barnett said LaBeouf put her in a constant state of fear and humiliation, once slammed her into a car, tried to strangle her and knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease.
LaBeouf apologized in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. He also denied the accusations in the lawsuit in a 2021 filing, saying any injuries done or damages incurred by Barnett were not his doing.
The 39-year-old first gained acclaim as a child for his role on the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens,” and continued working steadily into adulthood. He is perhaps best known for his roles in 2007’s “Transformers” and in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.”
LaBeouf shares a daughter, born in 2022, with actor Mia Goth.
Missouri
Bayer agrees to $7.25 billion proposed settlement over thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Agrochemical maker Bayer and attorneys for cancer patients announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer.
The proposed settlement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments on Bayer’s assertion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Roundup without a cancer warning should invalidate claims filed in state courts. That case would not be affected by the proposed settlement.
But the settlement would eliminate some of the risk from an eventual and uncertain Supreme Court ruling — both for Bayer and for patients seeking damages.
Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputes the assertion that the weedkiller’s key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But the company has warned that mounting legal costs are threatening its ability to continue selling the product in U.S. agricultural markets.
The settlement still needs the court’s approval.
Washington
Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.
A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant U.S. history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.
The changes at exhibits came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.
The groups behind the lawsuit said that a federal campaign to review interpretive materials has escalated in recent weeks, leading to the removal of numerous exhibits that discuss the history of slavery and enslaved people, civil rights, treatment of Indigenous peoples, climate science, and other “core elements of the American experience.”
The suit was filed by a coalition that includes the National Parks Conservation Association, American Association for State and Local History, Association of National Park Rangers and Union of Concerned Scientists. It comes as a federal judge on Monday ordered that an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former home in Philadelphia.
The park service removed explanatory panels last month from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital. The judge ordered the exhibits restored on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.
Besides the Philadelphia case, the park service has flagged for removal interpretive materials describing key moments in the civil rights movement, the groups said. For example, at the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, officials have flagged about 80 items for removal.
The permanent exhibit at Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park in Kansas has been flagged because it mentions “equity,” the lawsuit says. A Pride flag was removed at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City that marks the launch of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park said settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” for the park to be established and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing.
“Censoring science and erasing America’s history at national parks are direct threats to everything these amazing places, and our country, stand for,” said Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the parks conservation association.
“National parks serve as living classrooms for our country, where science and history come to life for visitors,” Spears added. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”
The Interior Department said Tuesday it has appealed the court’s ruling in the Philadelphia case.
“The National Park Service routinely updates exhibits across the park system to ensure historical accuracy and completeness. If not for this unnecessary judicial intervention, updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days,’’ an Interior spokesperson said in an email.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials from the Philadelphia exhibit must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal’s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently.
Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, began her written order with a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” and compared the Trump administration to the book’s totalitarian regime called the Ministry of Truth, which revised historical records to align with its own narrative.
“You cannot tell the story of America without recognizing both the beauty and the tragedy of our history,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the advocacy groups.
Trump’s “effort to erase history and science in our national parks violates federal law and is a disgrace that neither honors our country’s legacy nor its future,” she said.
