A U.S. District judge invoked anti-totalitarian author George Orwell to deliver a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s removal of items honoring the history of slavery in the United States from a Philadelphia exhibit.

“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,” declared U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe.

The lawsuit by the City of Philadelphia against U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum concerned the removal of slavery exhibits at The President’s House, which is part of Independence National Historical Park.

Judge Rufe wrote that, “in its argument, the government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control. Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984.”

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She also quoted from the iconic novel. A portion of that quote reads:

“The largest section of the [government’s] Records Department . . . consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of the Times [a newspaper] which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophesies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.”

Rufe wrote that the U.S. government “asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power.”

She also blasted the government’s actions, which “impede the separation of powers instituted by the Constitution.”

“Defendants acted in excess of their authority as agencies authorized by Congress within the executive branch,” she added.

In her 40-page memorandum, posted by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Judge Rufe found that removal of historical panels and other items would constitute irreparable harm, and ordered that “Defendants reinstall all panels, displays, and video exhibits that were previously in place..”

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President Donald Trump’s latest rant contradicts the White House’s version of events surrounding his continued focus on renaming New York’s Penn Station “Trump Station” — as the president also continues to appear to tie funding for the already-approved New York-New Jersey Gateway Tunnel project to a potential name change.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt last week specifically stated that President Trump “floated” renaming Penn Station (and Washington-Dulles Airport) with Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, as TIME reported.

Trump had claimed that it was Leader Schumer who made the suggestion.

Now, Trump is claiming that multiple politicians suggested the name change, as did various union leaders.

“Also, the naming of PENN Station (I LOVE Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York, and ‘eating New York’s lunch!’) to TRUMP STATION, was brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads, not me – IT IS JUST MORE FAKE NEWS!”

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New York’s Pennsylvania Station was named for the Pennsylvania Railroad — which built the original terminal over a century ago — not the state of Pennsylvania.

The president also attacked the Gateway Tunnel project, calling it a “future boondoggle” that will “cost many BILLIONS OF DOLLARS more than projected or anticipated” and be “financially catastrophic for the region.”

Some mocked the president’s remarks.

“A completely unhinged tantrum from someone who didn’t get their way,” commented U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ). “??I don’t know one person in NJ, Republican or Democrat, who doesn’t see the power and value of the Gateway Tunnel Project.”

The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg asked, “Does he think Penn Station was named after the Commonwealth?”

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The United States is facing a major test of American democracy as experts warn that the Trump administration is dragging the nation into “some form of autocracy,” NPR reports.

The U.S. has already crossed the threshold and become an “electoral autocracy,” Staffan I. Lindberg, the director of Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, told NPR.

“I would argue that the United States in 2025-26 has slid into a mild form of competitive authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die. “I think it’s reversible, but this is authoritarianism.”

“Under competitive authoritarianism,” NPR explained, “countries still hold elections, but the ruling party uses various tactics — attacking the press, disenfranchising voters, weaponizing the justice system and threatening critics — to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor.”

Levitsky cited several critical points in September as examples, including the Trump administration’s threat against ABC parent company Disney following host Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks on the killing of Charlie Kirk.

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“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said.

He also cited Trump’s proposal to use American cities as “training grounds” for troops.

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military,” Trump said, as the Military Times reported.

The president “told the commanders that defending the homeland was the military’s ‘most important priority’ and suggested the leaders in attendance could be tasked with assisting federal law enforcement interventions against an ‘invasion from within’ Democratic-led cities, such as Chicago and New York City.”

“No different than a foreign enemy,” Trump said, “but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

Levitsky, NPR reported, “said this is the kind of language dictators in South America used in the 1970s — leaders like Augusto Pinochet in Chile.”

NPR notes that the “next big test” could come during the midterms.

Kim Scheppele, a Princeton University sociologist who has studied the authoritarian tactics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, warned that in 2014 Orbán’s government “disenfranchised almost all the Hungarians in the U.K., most of whom were oppositional to Orbán,”

Dartmouth College professor of government Brendan Nyhan warned, “The way Election Day works in this country, there are no do-overs.”

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