Edit: as pointed out in a comment below, the official cause is coding error
Compare with the original, from a few weeks back
Half of section 8, governing Congressional power over the military is removed.
Section 9 had, among other things:
- Habeas Corpus the right to get a court hearing instead of arbitrary imprisonment
- a ban on foreign emoluments for the US officials (eg: payments from foreign governments)
Section 10 reserved foreign policy for the federal government instead of the states.
Technically this should be removed as it’s not a news article discussing the edit, but it’s important enough that I’ll leave it for now.
EDIT Story has now been picked up by Alternet:
https://www.alternet.org/trump-constitutional-crisis/
Edit 2 The missing sections are now restored.
Full text here:
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
(Removed sections in bold)
Section 8: Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings;-And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Section 9: Powers Denied Congress
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: Powers Denied to the States
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 it’s 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 Controul 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.
how is this not a bigger deal?
Because we dont know for sure that its not some really dumb technical problem instead of yet another announcement of the intent to turn the US into a dictatorship.
A fuckup that specifically in line with what the Führer wants is no accident
What possible ‘technical problem’ could do this? It’s not like the whole page has just gone offline. Specific sections of text are missing. And this is text that should never need updating.
They’re doing annotated sections. If the backend loads sections or parts of sections separately, a corrupt database might cause a problem like this. Also could load each article into a buffee…and article I was too long to fit, so it got truncated.
There is a lot more opportunity for technology to break in interesting ways than most people expect.
Its also sometimes helpful to give an adversary a face-saving way to back down, and a technical problem can be a way to do that.
Section 8 stops at the same point on two independent pages. Is it possible they’re both referencing the same source file? Maybe. But why would this ever get truncated? This isn’t some dynamic page that will have to buffer blocks of text of unknown length. It just doesn’t pass the smell test that the site suddenly can’t display correctly a block of text that hasn’t changed at all in over 200 years. And the sections that are deleted just happen to be those areas that Trump hates the most.
Regardless, we should screaming about this from the mountaintops. If there is one website on the federal government that you do not want to have displayed incorrectly, it’s the fucking Constitution.
I’ve seen over confident jr programmers think that they got it all right and deploy code without checking plenty of times.
Remember “DOGE” is also an effort to update all kinds of servers and codebases to like nodeJS or whatever current flavor of server the new programmers think is cool.
I’m not going to say it might not be intentional, but Hanlon’s razor is still my default for now. (Not with the climate and DHHS pages though, that shit is fascist data manipulation for sure).
The way I see it, a technical problem isn’t impossible. But considering the sections removed and the general political climate, I’d call it extremely unlikely
Also, it kind of doesn’t matter. Incompetence isn’t a defense for positions with the most responsibility and power.
Okay, so explain this: why can I archive various random pages on congress.gov, but when I try to look at archives for the 14th amendment, I get complaints that I can’t access it from ‘this site’ (archive.org)? I can view the live page, but I can’t archive it and then see the result. I’m also having issue archiving the current Article 1 page (as mentioned further under this post).
Edit: To me, the 14th amendment issue hints that: a) that page in particular requires cookies and b) it intentionally won’t load for/from archive.org – but this is not consistent for other pages so it seems extra fishy.
Stop it. You’re watching your rights being selectively erased so you can be deported while Trump gets private jets as bribes, stop it.
Stop what, making this post which alerted people to the problem?
They are coming up with ridiculously convoluted and unlikely excuses and downplaying the severity of it, this is an intentional assault on your freedoms and literal life in some cases, this isn’t a stupidly designed application that gets portions of text through separate calls and quietly ignores when some calls fail and presents the output as if its complete.
It’s possible that this combination of idiotic schema/application design and silent exception handling results in exactly the rights Trump is openly attacking being stripped out of the official .gov constitution document, but the odds are so incredible low why even hypothesize that? Why give them an out they didn’t even attempt themselves?
It’s possible that this combination of idiotic schema/application design and silent exception handling results in exactly the rights Trump is openly attacking being stripped out of the official .gov constitution document, but the odds are so incredible low why even hypothesize that?
“Exactly the rights Trump is openly attacking” includes “providing and maintaining a navy”?
Your confirmation bias is showing.
You can’t seriously be this naïve… I mean, c’mon now
What? What could possibly convince you this is a technical problem?
You don’t have to be convinced that it is a technical problem in order to not be convinced that it isn’t a technical problem.
I assume you are familiar with the concept of uncertainty.
Most likely, it’s because they couldn’t source enough electrons for the full text as they have to be imported at great cost and are hit with extremely high tariffs at the moment.
I mean probably something like that.Because it chops off text from one point in a section to the end of said section. If someone fucked up editing the site, this is a possible result.
I’m not saying that’s for sure what happened, but it’s definitely within the realm of possibility since they fired all the competent people.
Put it in the pile of big deals.
The gish gallop of fascist policies.
To be fair, it’s because the website is not the constitution.
yea that is a pretty stupid take
Because a plurality of voters wanted it to happen.
Except for the Musk/Trump voter fraud.
And the Constitution has ways for it to be amended. There were no votes on that.
Idgaf if its the official process or not, every single Trump voter should be told this is what they voted for. They should all feel responsibility for everything that happens, start to finish. They did this. They asked for this. They voted for this.
If fascists didn’t make up the (near-) majority of politically active citizens like you’re insinuating, then maybe your institutions wouldn’t have immediately crumpled like wet paper.
The rule of law is literally dead in the US. Trump’s team has repeatedly brazenly broken the constitution and showed that no-one is willing to stop him. It literally couldn’t matter any less what the constitution says, because the opposition is too chickenshit to do even the bare minimum to defend it, because there is no meaningful popular support for active pro-democratic action in the US and that’s a hard fact.
Overwhelming popular apathy is Putin and Xinping’s key to power, and Americans are even worse because these inbred morons really unironically thought that the second amendment was meant to prevent tyranny.
Benjamin felt a nose nuzzling at his shoulder. He looked round. It was Clover. Her old eyes looked dimmer than ever. Without saying anything, she tugged gently at his mane and led him round to the end of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written. For a minute or two they stood gazing at the tatted wall with its white lettering.
“My sight is failing,” she said finally. “Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?”
For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
That was a sad day.
I just threw that whole page into multiple archive sites, so when they revert it later and claim nothing happened, there’s still a log.
There’s also a ton of booklet copies everywhere.
I didn’t mean making copies of the legit version, I meant a copy of this modified fascist version. Since TACO I’m assuming it will get reverted soon and we’ll get gaslit.
It’s just so fucking stupid and terrifying at the same time.
They don’t got to burn the books, they just remove them.
They don’t care if the whole country screeches and rages about it, they only care about how people will have gotten used to it in ten years time. People adapt very fast to new normals, and that’s their plan, to push a new normal on all of us so they can have their techno-feudalist empire with kings and barons sacking misbehaving states and other nations who have oil, because it’s a lot more profitable to take someone’s resources than try to maintain an equitable production and high-tech service economy like we all thought we were going to have.
Yes, and it’s not just adults.
Children are brought into this world with no experience of how things used to be different. The ruling class has mastered taking advantage of children.
The ruling class has mastered taking advantage of children.
In more ways than one.
Holy shit, it’s indexed in search engines but 404s:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/
Removed here too:
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/
Here are sections 9/10 on another government website, just to make sure I’m not crazy: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#1-9
Yeah that pretty much confirms it wasn’t just a text based whoopsie. Which… there’s no real reason to be modifying the contents of that page anyways. Even the browse article 1 section no longer has links to section 9 or 10.
I mean… they could be automated indexes and something got accidentally deleted from a database?
I am playing devils advocate and grasping at straws here, though. The implications are also profoundly stupid (especially since other .gov websites are intact).
Except that going to Article 8…
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/
Article 8 ends at Clause 12 about the Army. In the original there are 18 Clauses.
So it’s not just that 9 and 10 are gone, the details for 8 stop at the exact same point!
That’s really getting into deeply unlikely to be an accident territory.
Yeah that would make sense to automate if the text was changing frequently. But … it’s not.
And yet it seems to be.
I see what you did there
Could still be some standard database.
Again, I emphasize, I am grasping at straws here… An accident or corruption like this would be an incredible coincidence.
Help! I tried to archive https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/ – but it won’t show up in archive.org. It tells me I can go to:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250806054229/https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/ but when I look at the URL, it seems to be redirecting to July 21st (https://web.archive.org/web/20250721170235/https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/), which does not look like the live page. When I try to dif, I see the July page, too.
Did the government break wayback, too?
I thought I read an article recently about the government taking over one of the archive sites.
It isn’t part of the government, but was designated an official federal depository library . There are over 1000 such libraries, but archive.org is the most ‘digital’.
The wayback machine can’t really archive errors, it just assumes the content is gone.
Wayback does have some option to archive error pages, I’ve seen recently… hmm
I can’t get it to work either.
That’s what they got up to while everybody was busy with the Epstein stuff.
Is this getting media attention?
So far as I’m aware, its circulating among environmental journalists, but not the broader press yet
Who discovered this initially? This lemmy thread is the earliest record I’ve been able to find of it.
I’m not seeing it anywhere. So I’m mass-texting people.
It wont be a big deal until people know. Start harassing your friends and family and get the word out.
With every month that passes, comes greater confirmation that investing in a firearm is the right call. That sucks, because training is expensive as heck on my budget. Hopefully, I won’t have to use my shotgun.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that blood will tell the direction that North America ultimately takes. The original Constitution was written in red, and I expect a renewed one to also drip with crimson.
The tree of Liberty must refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots from time to time. I do agree with you. That time is perhaps drawing near.
That time is perhaps drawing near.
That time has passed and y’all still sitting on your asses.
No, it’s not here just yet. People still aren’t ready to risk dying because they are starving and have no hope for tomorrow. As long as the bread and circus are here, there will be no bloody revolution. It takes a very long time to push people that far and we aren’t quite there just yet. But you and Korg and start the revolution today if you wish and call all to your banner.
Oh, and one thought to keep in mind as you start that bloody revolution is that historically, revolutionaries make for poor leaders after the revolution. Because they are mostly very unwilling to give up the power the revolution gave them. Best have a solid plan for the transition to peaceful government after the revolution.
[…] "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. […]
Excerpt from the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer. Longer excerpt available here.
No, it’s not here just yet.
Tell that to the people being ICEd.
checks watch Is it time to start murdering people yet? Because we are definitely going to get a better government by allowing a bunch of edge lords to start killing anything they think is bad.
I did plainly state that revolutionaries tend to not be very good at governance if they win. They are very often captivated by the absolute power and refuse to give it up.
We are already a murderous society. We would not create a better society by going to war with each other. I shudder to think of the government that would arise if we give in to violence again.
Nor will we create a better society if we let tyrants rule either. For most people, the choice is about how you choose to die-- kneeling in front of the pit you just dug or on your feet and fighting for something that might not be much better.
But no matter which you choose, you will probably die.
Oi piss off with “North America”. Fight your own fucking fight, you fucked it up and you can fix it.
Maybe we’ll help in a small way, because unfortunately the US has made itself everyone else’s problem, but otherwise ya’ll gotta deal with your bullshit and actually learn something.
What do you think os gonna happen to Canada and Mexico when the US goes full fasc? You think Canada is gonna be allowed to jut chill up there? Or do you think tabks are gonna come rolling into Toronto just like they did in Austria during the anchsluss?
I think that it’s absolutely going to be our problem, but I also believe that every person from the US just assuming we’re going to solve all their problems, while they’ve barely done anything to stop it themselves, can go fuck themselves.
They have hurt so many people and now they expect everyone to rush in and save them? Piss right the hell off.
No one here is expecting Europe to solve our problems, aside from maybe some deeply unserious liberals who think that politics begins and ends at voting. I have never seen someone suggesting the rest of the world comes in to “save” America. You’ve invented a strawman in your head and are now saying that it is what everyone in the US believes.
But America’s problems are very much the world’s problems, and as America begins to accelerate towards collapse, the rest of the world will feel the affects as well.
That’s great for you, but a) the person at the top of this thread says “the direction North America takes” and, as Canadian, excuse me, and b) I have seen others even on this platform say things like how Canada has to go save the US from itself via military intervention. Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened.
Absolutely the US has made it so that as it fails catastrophically it has a lot of tools to try to take everyone else down with it and yes, I understand that means we can’t just ignore the problem, but what was once hope that we could work together to help them has turned into finding ways to untangle ourselves from them and work with more serious countries. It’s gone from “let’s treat this wound” to “there’s necrosis and we need to amputate”. The US has shown the world over and over again that it hates everyone else, that it thinks itself superior and that it has no interest in being civil about any of it. It is a dangerous and self-serving country that can barely handle the basic fundamentals of democracy and human rights and is currently going backwards at an alarming rate.
If they want to isolate themselves from everyone else, and that seems to be the goal, then let ‘em. Even though it will be hard, the rest of the world can pick up the slack. The US doesn’t deserve or need to be in charge and I don’t care how uncomfortable that makes you.
Canada has a population similar to California and a GDP that os a little over half of California’s. Anyone who thinks they could invade the US is not living in reality. It seems to me like you are in circles filled with morons. Canada and Mexico have economies that are entirely dependent on the US market. 2/3rds of Canadian trade is with the US, 97% of Canadian oil is exported to American refineries. The US doesn’t have to try and do anything to take Canada and Mexico down with us, theor fate will almost inevitably tied with ours, same as what would happen to the EU if Germany suddenly imploded. The time for Canada to insulate itself from America’s economic swings was 10 years ago.
I don’t think the American empire is a good thing and at no point have i indicated that i do. But you are delusional if you think Canada will be better off in the short term when America goes up in flames. Your best option is that the Canadian economy implodes. Your worst option is a full on fascist invasion by the US military. If America is Nazi Germany, then Canada is our Czechoslovakia/Austria. At this point, Canada is all but guaranteed to go down with the US.
I don’t think it will be better off in the short term, and have been fairly clear about that. I also said that I am fully aware how entangled everything is and that we need to work to get away from the US even though it will be difficult. It appears you are far too fucking stupid to read what has been written so explicitly and that’s just not the basis for a conversation so bye, dumbass.
Like it or not, nations don’t exist independently of one another.
It’s exactly that isolationist attitude, the delusion that people and their issues stop at the imaginary lines we’ve drawn, that helps lead to situations like the US is experiencing.
It’s true, but the US fucking everyone’s shit up and ruining lives for decades only to immediately beg for us to fix it while doing barely anything on their own? I say let them suffer for a bit, a consequence will do them good.
And I’m not isolationist, I just want them to fuck off.
I just emailed 404 Media about this.
I contacted my representatives. They’ll make some noise, if nothing else.
Same. We’ll see if they read my essay of a message.
Damning.
“What the founding fathers wanted.”
Who cares what those slave-owning genocide fantasists wanted.
I get your point but I think they were making a /s kinda comment
I think these are probably the main bits they wanted to remove (both Article I section 9):
- 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 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.
Pure speculation to be clear, but they removed only the end of section 8, and probably removed section 10 because it would have to be numbered differently. Habeas Corpus has been causing them trouble, they’ve been stealing money pretty blatantly already, and bill of attainder/ex post facto laws seem convenient to them.
Ex Post Facto so they can pass a law allowing Trump to run for a 3rd term.
And give him a title of nobility.
So individual states can now legally build armies and go to war with the backing of foreign powers? Am I reading this right?
Also, habeas corpus is gone?
I am calling dibs on Finland and moving north to one of the snowy states. Come at us fuckers. I dare everyone to come at us.
This needs to get posted at Reddit. I can’t, I’m under a seven day ban.
There’s one up that I see in white people twitter, but it has a stupid title.
Reddit will just pull it anyway and ban the person. Just like you
It is there, I saw it there before I saw it here
Update from the Library of Congress says they’ll fix it and gave a weak excuse, for now they’ve added a banner to the website saying its not accurate
At least they are not doubling down
https://bsky.app/profile/librarycongress.bsky.social/post/3lvqilhwb6k2x
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me a thousand times while I gargle Trump’s balls, call me MAGA.
