Judge quotes 1984 in ruling ordering White House to preserve records

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The White House is seen from the Washington Monument on May 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Graeme Sloan/Getty Images)

A federal judge opened his ruling ordering the Trump administration to start complying with the Presidential Records Act by quoting one of the most famous passages from 1984, the classic George Orwell dystopian novel about a totalitarian state.

What they're saying:

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past," U.S. District Court Judge John Bates began in his emergency order to uphold a request by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s alleged effort to circumvent the act.

Big picture view:

Bates’ injunction will require the White House Office, the National Security Council, the US DOGE Service, and advisers to the president to comply with the law and preserve all presidential and vice presidential records, the American Historical Association (AHA) wrote in a statement celebrating the decision. 

Those records are also barred from being sent via text message or using a service that automatically deletes messages without a copy being made for preservation.

What they're saying:

"The court’s decision helps ensure that the American people—not the White House—retain ownership over the historical record of the presidency. It reaffirms a basic democratic principle: presidents do not get to decide unilaterally what history will remember and what the public will never see," said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight, another plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The backstory:

The lawsuit was filed, as was a similar one by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), acting at the request of the White House to look into the matter, asserted that the Records Act, which was passed in 1978, was not constitutional. 

The OLC determined that the law violated separation of powers and Congress had exceeded its powers when it passed the measure. The day after the OLC’s finding, the White House Counsel David Warrington offered new guidance on maintaining records. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit was filed just days later, and soon after that the plaintiffs filed for the injunction requiring the records covered under the act in question to be preserved.

The AHA and American Oversight’s lawsuit claims that the Trump administration’s move could prevent the public from accessing hundreds of millions of records and threaten transparency in the federal government. They argue that preserving those records is vital to preserving the nation’s history. They described the OLC memo as an attempt to concentrate power in the presidency and defy the other two branches of government by not following a law enacted by Congress and defying the Supreme Court ruling in Nixon v. Administrator.

The judge's ruling

Bates’ order stated the law was likely constitutional and noted that in the nearly 50-year history of the law, which was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, no other administration had made such a claim. Saying the plaintiffs were likely to succeed, the judge also agreed with the plaintiffs that there would be irreparable harm without the injunction, saying that documents that are improperly preserved or destroyed are lost to history.

FOX Television Stations has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment on the ruling and will update this story with any response.

What's next:

The injunction will go into effect on Tuesday, May 26, at 9 a.m.

Bates’ order requires the White House to circulate copies of the injunction to everyone affected and the Trump administration has until Thursday, May 28, to tell the court how they plan to follow the order.