More attemped murder by the Trump regime

In Minnesota and beyond, the Trump regime is testing whether we'll put up with murdering people who oppose their cruelties.

In Philadelphia, they are testing whether we'll let them kill our knowledge of our past. 

The Trump administration’s claim that it has the power to rewrite American history along its preferred ideological lines was tested in federal court on Friday, as a judge considered whether to order the National Park Service to reinstall displays commemorating nine enslaved African people who worked at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia. (New York Times, gift article)

The original home was demolished in 1832, but the Park Service had preserved the foundation as the site of an exhibit which included the story of our first President's enslaved workers. On January 23, they tore out the display.

A description of the site's historical significance from the National Park Service website:

Examine the paradox between slavery and freedom at this site - once the home of Presidents Washington and Adams and their households -  through the voices of those who lived there, including Washington's enslaved servants. A memorial wall recognizes those who toiled in bondage.

George Washington and John Adams, our nation's first two presidents, took up residence here while Philadelphia was the temporary capital of the U.S. In what Washington called "the best single house in the city..." these two presidents negotiated treaties and presided over divisive cabinet meetings. Washington's large household included family members as well as indentured and enslaved servants. Adams, never a slaveholder, employed a small staff of servants.

I wonder how long that informational text will survive. Actually, I wonder that it is still there when I went looking at the NPS site today (2/1/2026).

The New York Times has more on the Trump regime's plans for the Park Service:

... internal Park Service documents reviewed by The New York Times indicate that more changes to America’s birthplace are in the works. The documents show that the Trump administration has ordered the Park Service to remove or revise other signs about slavery at Independence National Historical Park. 

At the Liberty Bell Center, the administration wants to take down or cover up a sign about “the contradiction between the ideals of the Revolution and the reality of more than four million enslaved people,” as well as a sign that acknowledges the systematic deprivation of civil rights from Black people after the Civil War. 

And at Independence Hall, Trump officials have asked the Park Service to revise text presented on an iPad that highlights the irony of keeping enslaved people in an office directly above the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed. 

... On Friday, Judge [Cynthia] Rufe compared removing the stories of Ms. Judge and Mr. Posey [enslaved individuals] from the site to removing a monument to U.S. soldiers who liberated a Nazi death camp.

“What if they just decided to tear down that monument like it didn’t happen?” she said. “You can’t erase history once you’ve learned it. It doesn’t work that way.” 

Kareem Abdul Jabbar - basketball G.O.A.T. and all around wise American - has thoughts on this brazen historical vandalism:

One thing I always say is this: you can’t fix what you refuse to see. And right now, we’re watching a strategy that’s more than a century old play out again.

The Lost Cause movement rewrote the Civil War into a noble struggle for states’ rights. It worked because people wanted it to work. They wanted a version of history that didn’t force them to confront the brutality of slavery or the racism that survived long after slavery ended. By 1920, that mythology had made its way into textbooks across the country. Enslaved people were suddenly “workers.” Oppression became “tradition.” And we’re still dealing with the fallout today.

The tactics are the same. Label the facts as propaganda. Claim you’re restoring “balance,” as if comforting lies deserve equal weight with documented truth. Erase the evidence before anyone can study it too closely. Same playbook as a hundred years ago, updated for the digital age.

I’m not sure we fully understand what’s lost when we let this happen. When you strip away the uncomfortable parts of history, you don’t make the country stronger: you make it weaker. And without context, it becomes easy to blame the victims. 

He goes on to ponder what we've come to:

... people get exhausted. I know I am. Instead of building something new, you spend all your energy fighting to restore what was already there. That’s not an accident. I think about the kids who will visit Independence Hall after these exhibits are gone. They’ll hear about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and walk away believing the founding was a pure, noble moment. Nobody will tell them that the same men who wrote “all men are created equal” owned human beings and didn’t see a contradiction. It’s not about “putting down” great men, or even judging them by 2026 standards. It’s about truth.

Ignorance has consequences. Without knowledge, it becomes easier to convince the newer generations that racism is just individual prejudice instead of a system built over centuries. It becomes harder for them to recognize injustice because they don’t have the historical tools to identify it.

You can’t challenge the status quo if you don’t know what the status quo was built on.

And that’s corrosive. And that’s the point.

History isn’t supposed to make us comfortable. It’s supposed to make us better. We owe our kids and ourselves the truth, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Exhaustion is real, but accepting lies is not an option.