Several parts of Article 1 of the US Constitution appear to have been removed from the official US government website. As of July, the Wayback Machine reveals the complete original language on the website of Congress, indicating that the revisions occurred within the last month.
Several Reddit threads have found alterations in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, including the removal of large portions of Section 8 and the complete deletion of Sections 9 and 10. The snapshot below shows the archived version of the site on the Wayback Machine on the left and the current site on the right, with the content marked in yellow removed.
These parts mostly address the powers that Congress has and does not have, as well as constraints on the authorities of particular states. The removal includes portions on habeas corpus, which protects citizens from wrongful detention.
Some of the sections’ text is missing, as evidenced by a trailing semicolon at the conclusion of Section 8, where text used to exist.
The Library of Congress tweeted on Wednesday that the missing sections were “due to a coding error”, which will be “resolved soon”. When approached by TechCrunch, a Library of Congress spokesman declined to explain what caused the code issue or how it was introduced.
Changing the language of the United States Constitution on the website has no effect on US law, but it is consistent with senior Trump administration official Stephen Miller’s threats to suspend habeas corpus earlier this year.
A White House representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
