The Trump administration wants to sanitize George Washington's role in slavery at President's House [View all]

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Published April 8, 2026, 3:49 p.m. ET


After President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled exhibits about the horrors of slavery at the President’s House Site earlier this year, the federal government planned to replace them with its own account of history. Details of those replacement panels remained unclear until now.

Digital renderings of 11 new panels uploaded to the government-owned President’s House web page Tuesday provide a broad timeline of U.S. history that includes slavery, the Underground Railroad, and the Civil War. But the panels are less focused on George Washington’s role in upholding slavery and frame the founding father’s enslavement of nine African individuals at his Philadelphia home during the first presidency in a more sympathetic light.

The replacement of the panels came to a halt after a federal judge in Philadelphia ordered the original panels to be restored to the site on Independence Mall. The government was within days of installing the panels when Judge Cynthia Rufe issued her injunction in February, the Department of the Interior said at the time.

But the newly revealed digital renderings show the Trump administration’s willingness to reframe history ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary this summer and portray Washington in a more favorable light. For instance, on one panel titled “Presidents Washington and Adams on Slavery,” the Trump administration writes that “Caught between his private doubts about slavery and his public responsibilities as president, George Washington navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.”

Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/presidents-house-panels-philadelphia-slavery-george-washington-history-20260408.html