In March of this year, the database of staff submissions was leaked by an anonymous group that calls themselves the “civil servants on the front lines”.

The Guardian verified the contents of the database with multiple NPS staff.

The leaked database – which includes nearly 2,000 images and files of flagged park material – provides a rare and detailed look into how Trump🤡’s executive order was implemented and the broad swathe of park history and science that was at risk of censorship.

Several entries show staff were unsure about what to do or guessing at what they should submit. A sign at the National Mall in Washington DC, describing a now defunct waterfront wharf, was flagged for a brief reference to enslaved dock-workers.

“You might hear the shouts of hundreds of dockworkers, many of them enslaved people until the end of the Civil War in 1865,” the sign read. The submitter wrote: “is the word ‘enslaved’ ok here?”