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| - A rumor circulating online in early February 2025 claimed U.S. President Donald Trump's administration replaced the standard 50-star U.S. flag with a nine-star flag on government websites. This matter specifically concerned the very top portion of some .gov websites displaying a small, icon-sized American flag with the words, "An official website of the United States government."
For example, one Snopes reader's email read, "Has the American flag on usa.gov website been changed to have 9 stars instead of 50?" Another reader inquired if the flag appeared after Trump took office in January 2025.
Numerous users shared this rumor on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and X. Several of the users spreading the claim said the flag originated with the Confederacy and the U.S. Civil War, referencing it as the Confederate First National Flag, United Confederate Veterans Flag or Confederate Veterans Flag, among other names. According to some users, the nine stars represented the first nine states to secede from the Union in the early 1860s.
However, the rumor the second Trump administration replaced the present-day, 50-star flag with a nine-star flag was false. While the small flag icon possibly first appeared during Trump's first term in 2017, the image remained visible throughout the entirety of former President Joe Biden's time in office. The icon-sized flag image has remained part of the U.S. Web Design System's government website resource on digital.gov (upper left corner) for at least several years, and simply existed as part of a banner to alert users to websites' official government affiliation.
Our evidence
Users specifically cited cdc.gov, ssa.gov, state.gov, usa.gov, va.gov and others, as examples of the supposed nefarious change. However, these websites all displayed the same nine-star American flag and "official website" wording since before Trump's second term began. Page captures from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and the Archive.today service — including for cdc.gov, ssa.gov, state.gov, usa.gov, va.gov and others — confirmed Trump's second administration did not add the small flag.
Speaking of usa.gov, the website featured a special page about the standard American flag, recognizing that "the flag's 13 red and white stripes represent the 13 original colonies" and that "its 50 white stars on a blue background represent the 50 states." That page existed since at least 2015, during former President Barack Obama's administration.
The origins of the 9-star flag image
We traced the origins of the small nine-star American flag image to the U.S. Web Design System government website, located on digital.gov. The website contained "guidance for U.S. government websites and social media."
One page on the website specifically documented how some government websites should uniformly implement the same top banner, reading, "An official website of the United States government." An unnamed user added a note on Oct. 9, 2022, saying the user added the ability for websites to hide the flag icon if needed, saying, "The flag icon in the banner is purely decorative and we can safely remove it from the screen reader readout."
Breaking down the Civil War claims
As for the claims involving the Confederacy and Civil War, the Historical Americana Co. website hosted the one and only image we located so far of a slightly similar-looking flag, labeling it as an "authentic antique 9-star flag." But that flag displayed all nine stars in a grid, while the image appearing on government websites showed stars in a purposely offset manner. If someone chose to replace the American flag on government websites with a nine-star version of the flag representing the Confederacy, why choose an apparently lesser-known design, and then change the arrangement of those stars?
Also, while the prominent Confederate "Stars and Bars" flag did feature nine stars, those stars always formed a circle, not a grid. Further, that flag's design was only relevant for 45 days, from May 18 to July 2, 1861, until more states seceded from the Union and the number of stars increased.
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