Request:
In November 2025, the United States Supreme Court announced a hearing date on President Donald Trump’s “allegedly illegal” demolition of the White House East Wing.
Rating:
Rating: False
Rumors circulated online in November 2025 that the US Supreme Court announced a hearing date on President Donald Trump’s “allegedly illegal” demolition of the White House East Wing, where the demolition was completed in October.
According to rumours, the high court decided to hear the case after the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced a $10 billion lawsuit against Trump, who has repeatedly said he wanted to build a large ballroom on the grounds of the White House.
The vast majority of posts mentioning this issue read, “BRIEF: Supreme Court sets hearing date for Donald Trump’s alleged illegal demolition of the White House East Wing after the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a $10 billion lawsuit against him for violating federal environmental and heritage protection laws.”
Users shared this rumor on multiple social platforms, including on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok and X (archived).
(Jessie Janice/Facebook)
In short, the rumor was false. Until the end of November, the Supreme Court had not fixed any hearing date regarding the demolition of the White House East Wing. Also, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced no such lawsuit against Trump. Posts from early November indicated that users promoted the rumor after believing fabricated news reports in videos partially generated by artificial intelligence. AI-generated, ad-filled WordPress blog articles followed the promotion of those partially fake clips.
Elliot Carter, a spokesman for the NTHP, told Snopes via email, “Nothing about the rumor is true. We have no lawsuit against Trump regarding the demolition of the East Wing. And we are not doing anything involving the $10 billion figure.”
The National Trust previously published a letter in October saying it was “deeply concerned” about the demolition of the East Wing, as well as asking that construction be halted to allow officials to review plans for the Trump ballroom.
We have also contacted the Supreme Court to ask if it would like to confirm the false nature of the rumor or comment on the matter, and will update this story if we receive more information.
As we previously reported, Trump said in July that his construction of the ballroom would not “interfere with the actual building” — an assertion that turned out to be untrue.
How AI-generated videos started the fake rumor
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no media outlets reporting on the Supreme Court setting a hearing date on the East Wing, nor did further searches find any credible news about the NTHP announcing a lawsuit against Trump.
Those searches, however, found videos about the Supreme Court request from Facebook and TikTok accounts both under the name Breaking News. Those clips possibly started the rumor in early November.
On November 4, a Facebook profile named Breaking News posted a video that received more than a million views with a caption that read, “BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Sets Hearing Date for Demolition of White House East Wing.” That video contained AI-generated footage of judges berating Trump in various courtroom settings, as well as authentic footage of Chief Justice John Roberts and the East Wing demolition.
A Google search revealed two links to a TikTok account also named Breaking News — with the handle @breakingnewsusa24 — that hosts one or more videos promoting the false rumor. As of this writing, the links appeared in Google search results but the account itself was inaccessible, indicating that TikTok or the user removed the content.
We contacted the Facebook account via Messenger to ask if they had a TikTok account with the same name and will update this article if we receive more details.
AI-generated articles contributed, too
Later in November, Facebook (archived) and Threads (archived) users published posts containing links to ad-filled, AI-generated WordPress blog articles, indicating that they aimed to profit from promoting the false rumor.
The answer generated by the AI of the Bing search engine, displayed on the search results, named one of those WordPress blogs as a source, and incorrectly stated the Supreme Court rumor as true. That article appeared on topnewsource.com, an unreliable website on which we had previously reported.
We determined that the users generated the AI articles based on three factors, the first of which was language that resembled AI-produced narratives of the past. For example, the topnewsource article began with the words, “In a stunning legal development.” The article then ended with the same kind of dramatized, forward-thinking words often found in AI-generated stories, which read, “The hearing is expected to capture the nation’s attention, as the Supreme Court deliberates on what could become one of the most consequential preservation cases in modern American history.”
In addition to those primary AI indications, some AI detection websites including Copyleaks and ZeroGPT — tools that are not by themselves a completely reliable source for detecting AI-generated content — have determined that someone likely used an AI tool to write the topnewsource article.
Users looking to profit from false rumors by publishing large numbers of ad-filled blog articles do not take the time to carefully and manually write their stories in the same way that traditional journalists write stories.
For further reading, we previously reported on how users residing in Vietnam and other countries tried to capitalize on the July 2025 flood in Texas with fabricated and AI-generated content.
Sources:
“AI Detector – Free AI Checker for ChatGPT, GPT-5, Gemini & More.” Copyleaks.comhttps://copyleaks.com/ai-content-detector.
“AI Detector – Trusted AI Checker for ChatGPT, GPT5 & Gemini.” ZeroGPT.comhttps://www.zerogpt.com/.
“National Letter of Confidence Regarding the Proposed Construction of the White House Ballroom.” National Trust for Historic Preservation21 Oct. 2025, https://savingplaces.org/stories/national-trust-letter-regarding-proposed-construction-of-white-house-ballroom.
Superville, Darlene. “The Demolition of the East Wing Was Jarring.” But White House History Buff Sees Silver Lining.” The Associated Press29 Oct. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/trump-ballroom-white-house-east-wing-mclaurin-f3ca84b49843b3eb3c14ad6d48f117c3.