Claim:
In November 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a hearing date regarding President Donald Trump’s “alleged illegal” demolition of the White House East Wing.
Rating:
A rumor circulated online in November 2025 that the U.S. Supreme Court announced a hearing date regarding President Donald Trump’s “alleged illegal” dismantling of the White House East Wing, where demolition finished in October.
According to the rumor, the high court decided to hear the case after the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced a $10 billion lawsuit against Trump, who repeatedly said he wished to build a large ballroom on White House grounds.
The vast majority of posts mentioning this matter read, “BREAKING: The Supreme Court sets a 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 across 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. As of late November, the Supreme Court had not set any hearing dates regarding the White House East Wing demolition. Also, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced no such lawsuit against Trump. Posts from early November indicated users promoted the rumor after believing fabricated news reports in videos partially generated by artificial intelligence. AI-generated and advertisement-filled WordPress blog articles followed the promotion of those partially fake clips.
Elliot Carter, a spokesperson for the NTHP, told Snopes via email, “Nothing about the rumor is true. We don’t have any lawsuit against Trump regarding the East Wing demolition. And we we’re not doing anything involving the figure $10 billion.”
The National Trust previously published a letter in October saying it was “deeply concerned” about the East Wing demolition, as well as requesting construction be paused to allow officials to review plans for Trump’s ballroom.
We also contacted the Supreme Court to ask if it wished to confirm the false nature of the rumor or comment on the matter, and will update this story if we receive further information.
As we previously reported, Trump said in July that his ballroom construction wouldn’t “interfere with the current building” — a claim that turned out to not be true.
How AI-generated videos started the false rumor
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo located no news media outlets reporting about the Supreme Court setting a hearing date regarding the East Wing, nor did further searches find credible news about the NTHP announcing a lawsuit against Trump.
Those searches did, however, locate videos about the Supreme Court claim from Facebook and TikTok accounts both named Breaking News. Those clips possibly started the rumor in early November.
On Nov. 4, a Facebook profile named Breaking News posted a video receiving more than 1 million views with a caption reading, “URGENT NEWS: Supreme Court Sets Hearing Date for White House East Wing Demolition.” That video featured AI-generated clips of judges reprimanding Trump in several courtroom settings, as well as authentic footage of Chief Justice John Roberts and the East Wing demolition.
A Google search displayed two links for a TikTok account also named Breaking News — with the handle @breakingnewsusa24 — hosting 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 TikTok or the user removed the content.
We contacted the Facebook account via Messenger to ask whether they owned the similarly-named TikTok account and will update this article if we receive more details.
AI-generated articles contributed, as well
Later in November, Facebook (archived) and Threads (archived) users published posts containing links leading to advertisement-filled, AI-generated WordPress blog articles, indicating they aimed to profit from promoting the false rumor.
The Bing search engine’s AI-generated answer, displayed above search results, cited one of those WordPress blogs as a source, wrongly declaring the Supreme Court rumor as being true. That article appeared on topnewsource.com, an untrustworthy website on which we’ve previously reported.
We determined that users generated the articles with AI based on three factors, the first of which was language resembling past AI-produced tales. For example, the topnewsource article began with the words, “In a stunning legal development.” The article then ended with the same sort of dramatized, forward-thinking wording often found in AI-generated stories, reading, “The hearing is expected to draw nationwide attention, as the Supreme Court deliberates on what could become one of the most consequential preservation cases in modern American history.”
Aside from those primary indications of AI, some AI-detection websites including Copyleaks and ZeroGPT — tools that are not alone an entirely reliable source to detect AI-created content — determined someone likely used an AI tool to write the topnewsource article.
Users looking to profit on false rumors by publishing massive numbers of ad-filled blog articles would not take the time to carefully and manually write their stories in the same way traditional journalists author stories.
For further reading, we previously reported about how users residing in Vietnam and other countries attempted to capitalize on the July 2025 Texas flash floods with fabricated, AI-generated content.
