cOdiNg eRroR

There is no such ”coding error” that can cause omissions as specific and surgical as these.

It was 100% intentional, plain and simple.

The coding error was pushing the commits to the wrong branch and releasing to prod right away instead of waiting for the next big distraction first.
they think their constituents are stupid...
... oh wait, they are.
or an AI

Why don't gifs work for me? This is just a still picture on my phone...
- must be a coding error
- What app/frontend are you using?

I feel like anyone who's ever coded before, or has even just read Animal Farm, can see right through this.

Coding error?

It's a website.

And are you telling me a government website isn't using some sort of logging system? You got white house employees checking people in bathrooms.

The coding error was getting caught.
The code is "do we have full control? Yes, then delete." The intern tought they had full control already.
No one thought to log the backspace key.
Playing devil's advocate here: most websites are generated by programs, so it's possible it could be a coding error. That said, for it to plausibly be a coding error in whatever generator they're using, they'd have to store the Constitution with each paragraph in a separate file. That's the only way I could possibly see a "coding error" exclude the stuff that was excluded.
Edit: That is to say, obviously it is not a coding error. The text of the Constitution would be stored in one file because 1. that makes sense, and 2. storing per paragraph would add to overhead. And stuff in the middle of files doesn't just get deleted by a coding error.
- Giving people the benefit of the doubt is how we are in this situation to begin with, screw your fucking head on right
  There have been no changes to the Constitution that would have required them messing around with it at all. It's a static document except when there are amendments, and the most recent amendment was in 1992.
  It's clearly bullshit. I can imagine the page disappearing entirely due to a coding issue, but the deletions were precise and clearly intentional. To what end, I can only imagine.
- Do you know of anything else missing? If it was a "code" error, like in a Drupal site or something it would likely delete other stuff. Most U.S. government websites are modernized during the Obama administration or newer. This stuff doesn't happen due to code.
  The text/tweet/whatever really feels just like made up words to convince non technically literate people it was a mistake.

How funny that the specific clauses taken out are the right to 'a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful.'

You know. The parts the ICE routinely ignore?

That's a super weirdly specific coding bug. So strange.

Translation: "Fuck, we didnt expect people to notice this quickly. shit shit shit. okay.. okay.. we're putting it back... for now"

don't worry, my hourly diff's will find it when they remove it again.

There have been no changes to the Constitution that would have required them messing around with it at all. It's a static document except when there are amendments, and the most recent amendment was in 1992.

It's clearly bullshit. I can imagine the page disappearing entirely due to a coding issue, but the deletions were precise and clearly intentional. To what end, I can only imagine.

As a dev, this type of thing could easily happen by mistake. But they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
The text of the document isn't where changes likely took place (if we assume this was a bug). The webpage is an annotated version of the constitution with links between headers and "essay" pages containing explanations, references, interpretations, and context. The webpage has dynamic and styled components. It's possible to break these things in any number of ways. But like I said, no reason to be charitable. If they want us to believe it was a mistake they can prove it.
Just as an example, one thing that could happen is the "essay page" for part(s) of Sections 9 and 10 could have been modified, with the new version having a different URL, and the static page generator was still pointing at the old URL which is no longer valid, which caused the whole section to be invalid, which caused them to be omitted (instead of failing noisily, due to developer incompetence).
- Also the deletions were not precise. They start in the middle of section 8 listing the government's power to "provide and maintain a Navy" and "provide for calling forth the Militia".
- would you look at that, at least someone in this whole thread has a brain and I assume actually worked on websites before
Could be a database thing. Articles and sections being linked to through keys
The keys get deleted "Accidentally" and text doesn't appear
To see if anyone is watching....👀

Wow what a weird thing, go ahead and show us how this could happen and maybe show us the log of who pushed those changes. I mean you are a library after all we should make this a learning experience

Did you really think no one would notice?

They were hoping, I'd bet...

For posterity purposes. Section 9&10 are missing from the site.

Section 9
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Section 10
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

🤦
Y'all living under an authoritarian dictator. Well, he's trying his hardest to be. Literal parallels with Putin but also more Hitler-ish.
At least all the WW2 vets are gone and didn't end up seeing this.
- Not quite all of em yet.
Second half of Section 8 is missing as well

Error was someone noticed.

The "coding error" is that they had someone remove it and hit publish too soon

No, the coding error is that parts of it sre still there.

Also the end of Section 8: https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20250601021212/20250806023110/https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

🤡

Gonna get hate on this, here we go. It was a dumb mistake. "Come now, let us reason together."

(Not trolling you guys or simping for Trump. I'd honestly like to hear any rebuttals.)

Nah, don't think it was a "coding error" but when whoever explained whatever to whoever, that's how it was interpreted. Or, public relations figured that would be a more acceptable answer than whatever dumber mistake was made. LOL, somebody fucked up the copy/paste?

They seemed to have cut off entire blocks, big chunks off the end of Article 1. Plenty of other items in there than what we're talking about. If they had been more surgical I'd be screaming.

Who the hell wanting to read the Constitution goes to constitution.congress.gov? I've looked up bits of text 100 times, wasn't even aware this site existed. Besides, not like this is the one authoritative online copy, it's not even the only government copy.

The site isn't high on the search results from either Google or Bing, and it was even lower yesterday. Feel free to check me! Search "united states constitution" then "united states constitution before:2025-08-04".

What would the Trump administration, or anyone else, have to gain? The only people looking here are probably already familiar with these vital chunks, not like the administration can say, "Nuh uh! That's not in the Constitution!" All risk, no reward. Anyone thinking this was nefarious has to confront that question head on.

Lastly, with all the staffing cuts and an inept administration, a dumb mistake fits Hanlon's Razor quite nicely. I could also see some MAGA staffer pulling this on purpose, dumb enough to think it would make a difference.

tl:dr; No damn cat, and no damn cradle.

You know in movies when the head of a crime organization thinks there's a leak so he tells 5 people 5 different places where the next shipment is coming in to see if the cops go to any of the locations?
It's kind of like that, in this case the media is the cops. (It's not a perfect analogy)
Change things, see who notices, see what you can get away with. They're testing to see if anyone is watching, I bet this kind of low hanging fruit is happening all over so they can find a weak spot and exploit it.
If you do this to everything you're bound to find somewhere vulnerable.
Maybe money doesn't make it to FEMA. No one notices? Perhaps it ends up in a memecoin. Someone does notice? Oops, accounting error! Silly us, we figured it out though. Nothing to see here.
- OK! I can bite on that! But still, changing the stupid website changes nothing IRL. I could see a staffer pulling this on his own, OR, try this on:
  Trump's being told that he can't do X, Y or Z because Constitution. "I don't like that. We should change that." Some idiot takes that as an order? I've seen stupid shit exactly like that in private enterprise.

Was it AI-generated code mayhaps?

what the fuckkkkkk

We didn't anything wrong but if we did, it was a name honest mistake