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The Week The Judicial Branch Didn't Exist On The White House Website

The new White House website was updated Monday to include a Web page for the judicial branch.
Drew Angerer
/
Getty Images
The new White House website was updated Monday to include a Web page for the judicial branch.

In elementary school, you learn there are three branches of the federal government. But if you had looked on the new Donald Trump White House website before Monday morning, you would have only seen two: the executive and legislative.

Until Monday morning, the judicial branch Web page was not included on the White House website. On the menu, only the executive and legislative branches were listed.
Whitehouse.gov / Screenshot by NPR
/
Screenshot by NPR
Until Monday morning, the judicial branch Web page was not included on the White House website. On the menu, only the executive and legislative branches were listed.

From Jan. 20 until about 11 a.m. Monday, perhaps one of the key differences between Barack Obama's White House website and President Trump's was the exclusion of a Web page for the judicial branch.

The judiciary did not appear on a general menu leading viewers to main pages, such as the pages for the executive and legislative branches.

But after Monday's update, the page almost exactly matches that of the page under Obama's administration.

This addition comes after many people commented about the nonexistent page on social media this past weekend.

Websites like the National Archives and the Internet Archive allow viewers to look back at the White House sites from previous administrations. Should someone want to see exactly how it looked under presidents Clinton, Bush or Obama, they can access the "frozen in time" sites.

Other changes under President Trump include climate change and health care being bumped from the "Top Issues" list. And LGBT rights was taken off the site. And a Spanish version of the site is yet to come.

As Politico reported, the Trump White House will be keeping a design and shell similar to the website under Obama — "with a larger reboot planned a bit later in 2017."

Cecilia Mazanec is the NPR digital news intern.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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