House Dems raise challenge to Interior’s scrubbing of US history

In a letter, the lawmakers urged appropriators to stop any funding for the department's review of historical references at national parks and other public lands.

March 20, 2026

House Democrats are now amplifying their effort to stop the National Park Service and its sister agencies from rewriting historical references deemed inappropriate by the Trump administration.

Heeding the adage to follow the money, 52 Democrats on Thursday urged two key members of the House Appropriations Committee to stop funding the campaign that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum casts as “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and that skeptics deride as censorship.

"If the Department of the Interior is successful in altering and erasing these stories, the public’s ability to fully understand and learn from our complex history may be compromised," the lawmakers wrote, adding that "true patriotism requires honest engagement with both our moments of achievement and those of moral failure."

But Interior press secretary Aubrie Spady countered Friday in a statement that "anyone who views this crucial restoration effort as anything other than the preservation and protection of American history is simply ignoring the facts."

"Federal agencies are reviewing interpretive materials to ensure they are factual, clear, and aligned with shared national values," said Spady. adding that as the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence "we should be championing the greatness of this country not dividing Americans which is exactly what the Biden administration did."

In their new letter that describes national parks as "living laboratories and public classrooms," the Democrats led by Rep. Jared Huffman of California want Interior's fiscal 2027 appropriations package to include language blocking further action on Burgum's Secretarial Order 3431.

Burgum's order required all of Interior's land management agencies to examine “all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” and remove content deemed to “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The individual Interior agencies have subsequently compiled lengthy spreadsheets listing site language that may violate the order. An internal NPS spreadsheet previously obtained and reported on by POLITICO’s E&E News included more than 600 entries.

"The order has led to the arbitrary flagging of thousands of interpretive signage and educational materials across public lands and historic sites and resulted in the alteration, and in some cases removal of historic exhibits across the National Park System and other Interior-managed sites," the Democratic letter states.

Interior agencies have not made public a comprehensive list of what changes have actually been made out of all the items flagged as potentially problematic. Instead, some of the examples of what has actually been changed at parks have come from local news accounts, as with a Jackson Hole News & Guide report that Grand Teton National Park removed a sign that noted an explorer featured in the visitor’s center took part in a massacre of Piegan Blackfeet women, children and elders.

Huffman is the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. The letter was directed to Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho and Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine. Simpson chairs the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and Pingree is the panel's ranking member.

Pingree's office declined to comment Friday on the new letter, but the veteran appropriator previously voiced her own alarm in a letter to Burgum sent last September.

"The attempt to whitewash history is something that should not be tolerated in any form — including at many NPS historical sites that call attention to and educate about the full scope of our nation’s story," Pingree wrote.

Simpson's office could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

House Natural Resources Committee Democrats previously wrote Burgum in January, asking a number of questions about the alleged removal of exhibits on slavery and climate change from national parks. Burgum has not responded to the January letter, the Democrats said.


By:  Michael Doyle
Source: Politico Greenwire