The National Park Service (NPS) is overseeing efforts to change what information is available to visitors. Executive Order 14253, signed by President Donald Trump on March 27, 2025, entitled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” promises to “restore federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage.” The order instructs Parks to remove any signs that portray the U.S. in a negative light.
The agency’s task is enormous. More than two-thirds of the country’s 433 national park sites are dedicated to preserving and interpreting our nation’s history and culture. The agency manages more than 26,000 historic structures, and nearly 185 million historic artifacts.
But As Little Rock Public Radio, and its sister station KUAF both report, University of Arkansas History Professor Matthew Stanley says the president’s executive order runs counter to the purpose of national parks. “People don’t come to the National Parks or to a museum to encounter a simple, sanitized, glorious, triumphalist, uncomplicated, mythologized version of the past that a, you know, first grader might comprehend as the past. They don’t, they don’t, that’s not what they come for. Most people come because they’re curious.”
Across the political spectrum, more than 3 in 4 Americans (78%) agree that national parks should not remove photos, signs or other materials that tell factual aspects of America’s history, directly refuting the administration’s push to censor educational and historical materials from public access. That’s according to a new poll from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which surveyed a representative national sample of 3,000 adults (18 years and older). It was conducted from October 27 - November 2, 2025, by YouGov. The margin of error for this poll is +/-2.14%.
Among the changes in Arkansas is a map at the Fort Smith National Historic Site, which has been flagged to update Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Professor Stanley says changing historical narratives lends itself to growing inequity. “We don’t want a version of history that conforms to the interests and prerogatives of the super-rich and the elite of the ruling class.We want one that includes a variety ofsources, perspectives that includes, you know, all Americans and everyone who’s helped, you know, shape a story of this country for better or worse. And that’s just not what the Trump Administration is interested in.”
Prof. Stanley says the president’s directive leads him to one logical conclusion: “When uncomfortable facts are called subversion, or woke, or something to be suppressed. And there’s a word for that. And it’s state propaganda.” Some of the exhibits removed were deemed to reflect “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans, including, among others, materials related to slavery, racism, and other forms of historical discrimination, pollution, climate change, or any reference to transgender people.
