We came across the posts on the following topic on the social media platforms Tiktok, X, Instagram and Reddit:
We came across multiple social media posts expressing alarm that the webpage of the US Constitution had been removed from the website of the White House shortly after Donald Trump had been inaugurated for his second term as the US president on 20 January.
News reports and social media posts commenting on the removal began the emerge on 21 January, the day after the inauguration.
We conducted our own check by visiting the White House webpage for the constitution and found that at the time of writing, on 23 January, the page remained offline, with a ‘404 Page Not Found’ message displayed.
When we conducted a keyword search on the removal, we found that the removal of the website had been reported by some news and factchecking sites, but that the removal was intended to be temporary.
Some news sites, such as USA Today and AP News, obtained comment regarding the page removal from principal White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields, who was quoted as saying:
‘It’s day two. We are in the process of developing, editing and tweaking the White House website. As part of this ongoing work, some of the archived content on the website went dormant. We are committed to reloading that content in a short timeline’.
NBC News points out that it is ‘standard for a new president to remake the White House website to reflect their administration’s goals and values’.
However, some commentators noted that the text on the page was non-partisan, and have speculated that the revisions to the page for the constitution are related to Trump’s decision to end recognition of birthright citizenship, something that has been guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution since the 19th century.
Others suggested this was a harbinger of more nefarious intentions, such as a desire to stay in office beyond his second term.
One Change Among Many
Various news reports revealed that the page of the US Constitution was not the only one to have been removed. The Spanish-language version of the White House website had also been removed, along with all its social media channels.
Pages for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and a statement on site accessibility for the disabled had also been removed, along with pages promoting tourism, equity and internships.
Bio pages for former US presidents including Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were all also down.
A number of federal agencies also appeared to have had pages removed that related to reproductive rights, and several also had removed pages that made reference to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes. Pages that made reference to climate change had also been removed.
We conducted checks on several of these pages independently and confirmed that all the pages we checked continued to be offline.
Significance Still Unclear
Our search indicates that the removal of the page of the constitution was one among several changes made to the White House and federal government agency websites following Trump’s inauguration.
Changes to these sites are usual during changes of administration, but the unusual removal of the page for the constitution appears to have aroused panic due to its foundational nature in US politics and fears among Trump’s detractors of his preferences for autocratic behaviour.
There is precedent for removal of some of these sites by Trump—his team removed web pages about LGBTQ+ rights and climate change when taking office in 2017, along with the Spanish-language version of the White House website. Such pages appear to have been affected once again.
It remains to be seen whether the removal of the page for the constitution is a cause for concern, and Trump’s press secretary has assured that the removals are temporary, albeit without directly referencing the page for the constitution.
As such, we find it true that the page for the US Constitution has been removed from the White House website, though such claims are lacking some context.
This claim was also checked and found to be true by Snopes, which added a note that explained the context behind the site removal.
