Heading into the United States' Independence Day weekend in 2025, internet users shared an image allegedly showing the White House in Washington, D.C., cast in an ominous red light.
Social media users purported that this red glow appeared on July 2, 2025, and was a sign of something sinister to come. Some anticipated some sort of "scare event," as one Facebook user (archived) put it. Users on other social media platforms, particularly on X (archived, archived), also shared the sentiment that the lighting was intended to signal a message of some kind.
(X user @QTHESTORMM)
However, claims that an image depicting the White House lit up with red lights on July 2, 2025, as some sort of purported warning for a "scare event" were incorrect.
The image of the White House in question was actually a screenshot from a video depicting orange — not red — lighting on June 4, 2022, when the White House was lit up in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The observance is an annual recognition of victims of gun violence that began in 2015 and has been observed on the first Friday of June since 2017. As a result, we've rated the image miscaptioned.
Video footage of the building cast in orange light on June 4, 2022, was available to view on YouTube. At the time, major outlets such as CNN and The Hill reported on the display.
That same day, then-President Joe Biden posted video footage from a different angle as well as a statement on X (archived) reading, "Tonight, the White House was illuminated orange to honor the countless victims of gun violence — stolen from us by a senseless and preventable epidemic — and the survivors whose lives are forever changed. Enough. I urge Congress to act."
Two days prior to the White House being cast in orange, Biden made a speech to Congress urging the legislative body to take action on gun control issues.
The choice of orange as the color for National Gun Violence Awareness Day was inspired by Hadiya Pendleton, 15, who was fatally shot at a Chicago playground in 2013. According to the anti-gun-violence organization Wear Orange, "Hadiya's friends commemorated her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others."
Orange has been a popular color among anti-gun-violence advocates, including Sandy Hook Promise, an organization "founded and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012."
The orange lighting of the White House on June 4, 2022, came in the wake of a string of mass shootings in the United States, including at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.