Donald Trump took power Monday as the 47th president of the United States, quickly issuing a series of clearly illegal executive orders and making changes to social media accounts and websites controlled by the president’s office. Perhaps one of the most shocking changes to the president’s internet footprint involves the U.S. Constitution. Anyone who now Googles the Constitution and follows the link to the White House website currently sees a error 404.
Before January 20, 2025, the White House website featured a page describing the Constitution and the history of its ratification. The site, as it appeared during Joe Biden’s presidency, is available on the Internet Archive. Return machine and shows a page about the White House that included four pages visitors could navigate to, including Presidents, First Families, Grounds, and Our Government.
By clicking on Our government took visitors to a page explaining the U.S. system, including the judicial, executive, and legislative branches “whose powers are vested in the U.S. Constitution.” This mention of the US Constitution included a hyperlink that directed people to the page which now displays a 404 error. The page’s disappearance went viral on Instagram, thanks to a liberal influencer Mercedes Chandlerand it should be noted that the text on all of these pages was nonpartisan and reads like anything you might encounter in a college textbook on government.
“Can anyone from the MAGA movement enlighten me on how the party that claims to care about the Constitution removed it from the website? Chandler said. “Is it because you don’t want us to know what’s in there?”
Chandler then speculated that this might be related to the fact that Trump issued an executive order on Monday to no longer recognize the concept of birthright citizenship in the United States, something that has been guaranteed by the 14th Amendment since its ratification in the 19th century. after the civil war. attorneys general of 18 states sued the federal government Tuesday over the executive order, given its blatant violation of the Constitution.
Obviously, any kind of major change to a website can break all kinds of links. Perhaps the Trump White House simply put the information about the Constitution elsewhere? If so, we can’t find it.
Scrolling to the bottom of the main page of whitehouse.gov, you will find a section called “About the White House.” There are three main buttons to click on, including The White House, Camp David, and Air Force One. But clicking on one of those pages doesn’t show you any information about the U.S. Constitution. In fact, we no longer find a single mention of the word “Constitution” on the White House website, outside of press releases, which is strange.
The Trump administration made further changes to federally controlled websites on Monday, including removing the website. reproductiverights.gov. The site was launched in 2022 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden to give Americans information about birth control and abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the abortion rights at the federal level in a landmark case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. .
The Reproductive Rights website told Americans that employers are required to cover access to health services like birth control under the Affordable Care Act, a fact that is currently being challenged in court. The reproductiverights.gov site is also archived by the Return machine.
Other social media accounts controlled by the White House also made the change midday Monday, including those for X, Facebook and even lesser-known sites like Flickr. And even though few Americans visit Flickr these days (and Trump aides have yet to post any new photos there), the lesser-known sites can actually be interesting places for news to accidentally break. For example, we wouldn’t have this photo of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shaking hands with Donald Trump in the fall 2019if the White House photographer hadn’t posted it via Flickr.
Stay safe out there, friends. It will become much, much worse for Americans before the situation improves.