Did Trump admin say 'we don't know where' sun goes at night?

In February 2026, days after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump revoked a long-standing scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, a rumor spread online claiming the administration had also ruled that "when the sun disappears at night, we don't know where it goes." 

An X user shared the claim on Feb. 14, 2026, adding that the U.S. was "governed by the dumbest people" (archived): 

We are governed by the dumbest people. 

"New ruling from Trump admin says when the sun disappears at night, we don't know where it goes. All remaining top scientists have been taken from their positions & tasked with getting to the bottom of this."

While some posts appeared to take the statement at face value, the rumor originated with a satirical story by Alexandra Petri, a humorist who writes for The Atlantic. There's no evidence that anyone within the Trump administration made such a statement.  

Petri's Feb. 14 article (archived), labeled "humor," read, in part:

Trump Administration Announces That We Don't Know Where the Sun Goes at Night

After deciding carbon dioxide does no harm, it was the logical next move.

A new ruling from the Trump administration says that when the sun disappears at night, we don't know where it goes. All remaining top scientists have been taken from their positions and tasked with getting to the bottom of this.

Her bio on The Atlantic's website also made it clear she writes humorous content: 

Alexandra Petri is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic in 2025, she wrote a humor column for the Washington Post. She won the 2025 Thurber Prize for American Humor for her book AP's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up).

Petri frequently writes satirical analyses of prominent news events, such as a mock guide to identifying "domestic terrorists" following protests in Minnesota against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and another article that poked fun at Trump after he confused Iceland and Greenland. 

She published her satirical article on the Trump administration's ruling about the sun after the Environmental Protection Agency revoked the scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health on Feb. 12, 2026. A document announcing the action read, in part:

In this action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is rescinding the Administrator's 2009 findings of contribution and endangerment and repealing all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines to effectuate the best reading of Clean Air Act (CAA) section 202(a)(1).

Scientists decried the move, arguing that erasing this finding did not make it untrue. This decision "is a rejection of the most basic laws of physics," Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and head of the World Weather Attribution project, reportedly told the scientific journal Nature. The new ruling complied with Trump's Feb. 19, 2025, executive order calling for more deregulation.

Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about the Trump administration in the past, including a rumor that a federal judged dismissed charges against former FBI Director James Comey because the federal prosecutor had misspelled his last name as "Homey."

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.