A Republican-appointed federal judge has ordered the restoration of slavery exhibits at an historic US site, rejecting claims that the executive can decide what historical truth should be.

“Happy Presidents Day!” a journalist  declared Monday in response to a federal judge’s opinion that compares President Donald Trump’s administration removing displays about slavery from a historical site in Philadelphia to the actions of the propaganda agency in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Judge Cynthia Rufe – appointed to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by former Republican President George W Bush – began by quoting the iconic 1949 critique of totalitarianism: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean, and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”

The judge then wrote that “as if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims – to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.”

“The President’s House is a component of Independence National Historical Park that........

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