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Title: Sections on habeas corpus and nobility titles were temporarily removed
from Congress' US Constitution website

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:29:56 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/computing/sections-o...

Key sections of the US Constitution were temporarily removed from Congress'
website. Provisions including habeas corpus (due process) and the prohibition
of nobility titles (like, say, King) vanished from the digital version of the
document. They've since been restored. 404 Media first reported on the edits
after users on Lemmy forums spotted them.

There are many ways to read a copy of the US Constitution. But the Library of
Congress' online version is one of the easiest to find. Alongside its
counterpart hosted by the National Archives, it's an official digital
communication from the government. Those two websites also sit atop Google's
search results for "US Constitution."

So, when key sections vanish from the website, it's worth noting. And when
they coincide with those that the Trump administration has said it wants to
remove, it's a bit more eyebrow-raising.

Portions of Section 8 of Article I, along with all of Sections 9 and 10 of
Article I, were missing. "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall
not be suspended" was part of that. Also gone was "No Title of Nobility shall
be granted by the United States." Ditto for the provision banning foreign
emoluments for US officials.

The Lemmy thread that first caught the changes includes the complete list of
edits. The National Archives version wasn't edited.

404 Media notes that, before these edits, the website hadn't changed
significantly since first being archived by the Internet ArchiveΓÇÖs Wayback
Machine. (That archive goes back to 2019.) The US Constitution hasn't changed
since 1992.

Bluesky

The Library of Congress said it was a mistake. "It has been brought to our
attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution
Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the official account posted
on Bluesky. "We've learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been
working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon." It was changed
back sometime around 2PM ET on Wednesday.

The Trump administration doesn't have official control over the Library of
Congress, which runs the website. But in May, the president fired Librarian
of Congress Carla Hayden. (White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt
claimed she "did not fit the needs of the American people." Trump then named
Todd Blanche, one of his former defense lawyers, as acting Librarian of
Congress. The Senate must confirm a permanent replacement.

This isn't the first time official government websites have removed text that
the Trump administration finds inconvenient. In March, The NY Times listed
hundreds of words the administration removed from public-facing websites and
other materials. They include terms like "activism," "disability,"
"equality," "female," "prejudice," "pollution," "racism," "sex,"
"transgender" and "women." ("Men" wasn't on the list of banned words.)

Of course, deleting text from the website doesn't change the legally binding
document. ("You realize that they still exist even if you don't post them,
right?" Jehosaphat Q. Blatte snarked on Bluesky.) But given the current state
of affairs, you may want to look elsewhere to bone up on your rights.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/computing/sections-o...
titles-were-temporarily-removed-from-congress-us-constitution-website-
182956441.html?src=rss

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