Library of Congress blames "coding error" for missing sections of online Constitution

[pnwmom]

Source: Axios

The Library of Congress on Wednesday pointed to an unspecified "coding error" that led to key parts of the U.S. Constitution being deleted from the Constitution Annotated website.

Why it matters: The missing sections included foundational provisions, such as the right to habeas corpus — which protects people from unlawful detention — and the foreign emoluments clause.

Those constitutional principles have risen to the forefront of political and legal debate amid the president's immigration crackdown and foreign dealings.
As of Wednesday around 2p.m. ET, the text had been restored.


Read more: https://www.axios.com/2025/08/06/constitution-missing-sections-coding-error

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Does it seem likely that a coding error led to the deletion of these two sections, from material that had been online for decades?

[Deuxcents]

1. I was gonna ask how many times has this error occurred before this adm but I'm guessing, never

[jls4561]

2. Who's doing the coding? Is it one of Eloon's flying monkeys?

[C_U_L8R]

3. Why are they recoding the Constitution anyway

There was nothing wrong with the site and the specific deletions raise plenty of suspicion. Traitors gonna do that traitor thing, no matter what.

[Ray Bruns]

34. They're not. It was all bullshit.

[Pas-de-Calais]

4. Bovine Excrement!

[quaint]

5. Just horrifying

[BumRushDaShow]

6. That was their trial balloon

to rewrite history and the laws of this country.

[highplainsdem]

8. Yep. They wanted to see how quickly people would spot it, and how much they'd object.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Am waiting for their attempt

to shut this building down here in Philly -



They just got a giant donation a couple months ago - National Constitution Center receives its largest donation ever

Plus a loaned original Constitution copy for display through next year's 250th celebration -



They even won a Guinness Book of World Records Title for a Drag Queen Story Time, that event held to kick off Pride Month this past June!

[Hekate]

21. Bingo

[Baitball Blogger]

29. Who was "they?"

If it was a coding error, then there was a programmer. We need to find out who it was. I wonder if DOGE employees are doing side jobs?

[BumRushDaShow]

30. These federal websites are generally done by contractors

who are given task orders written up by the COTRs overseeing the contract, and executed by Contract Officers, with descriptions of any changes/updates that need to be done. The contractors generally use some kind of CMS to do this so it's plug and play.

The COTR is *supposed to* review/approve the changes of the revised page(s) (usually looking at it on a "development/test" instance) BEFORE it is transferred to the "live/production" instance for publication.

So claiming some kind of "coding error" is a bullshit excuse.

[Qutzupalotl]

7. Yeah, those pesky [p] tags.

Always disappearing on inconvenient sections.

[highplainsdem]

9. No one I saw commenting on this, on Bluesky, believes it was a coding error.

[elleng]

26. Doesn't seem LIKELY it's a 'coding error.'

[Diraven]

10. I suspect

Some overzealous manager told them to get rid of everything "woke" on the Library of Congress site and they interpreted that as remove parts of the Constitution Trump doesn't like. So they started to do that but people noticed.

[Ford_Prefect]

11. Not a coding error. It's a feature from DOGE allowing remote editing of the Constitution.

Not Sarcasm.

[elleng]

27. UNLIKELY ANYTHING 'allowing remote editing of the Constitution,' imo.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

12. Yes and no

A coding error accidentally removing sections, sure. Coding errors can do wierd stuff. Those specific ones, considering the timing, eh, thats less believable.

[pnwmom]

18. Would it make sense for a coding error to happen to a fixed document on a site that hasn't been updated? nt

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

19. Sure

Just because the overall look of the website hasn't changed doesn't mean the background code hasn't. Front end code and back end code dont always get along.

[pnwmom]

23. But why would they need to change any of the code for a document that hasn't changed?

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

31. Because computer code is constantly being updated

As long as its an actively maintained website. Security patches, server updates, OS updates, etc. Leaving code static on a public facing website is a great way for it to get hacked. Just because the actual text itself, the way it looks, and the overall design hasn't changed doesn't mean the mechanics of whats behind it doesn't as well.

Think of it like a car. You have a 20yo F150. That F150, from all outside lockers, looks just like it did when it rolled off the assembly line. Except its 20 years old, has a new transmission, rebuilt transfer case, seat covers over the ripped up seats, ans every bolt on component of the engine changed. From walking by the truck would you know that? No. Just because you dont see anything outwardly different doesn't mean the stuff under the hood had to be fixed.

[spudspud]

14. An obvious lie.

If seemingly random sections were missing, then it would be plausible. Unlikely, but plausible. Considering what this admin is doing to gut the constitution figuratively and literally, this is an infantile excuse for getting caught pulling some CCP/Russian prop bullshit.

[ToxMarz]

15. Trump prolly banned the Dewey Decimal system

And appointed himself Librarian of Congress while no one was looking.

[Hornedfrog2000]

16. Im sure itll be back in a couple of weeks.

Uh huh

[republianmushroom]

17. BS ! Most computers only do what they are programmed to do.

Don't know about AI computers.

[Metaphorical]

20. Bullsh*t!!!

I work heavily with content management systems, at the standards level. There is no way in hell that this was an "accidental" ommission, particularly since this code almost certainly predated Trump coming into office. It would be trivial, however, to comment out those particular sections if you were specifically wanting to convince your idiot supporters that concepts such as Habeas Corpus wasn't mentioned in Trump's "version" of the Constitution.

[Skittles]

22. sure, bro

[SunSeeker]

24. That makes absolutely no sense. Nonetheless, I'm glad they fixed it. nt

[AZ8theist]

25. No worries. The current NAZI regime is deleting the entire Constitution as we speak.

[Old Crank]

28. Read the ststed cause to my programmer wife

she laughed and said oh, ya.....

[TomWilm]

32. This Constitution glitch is hysterically blown out of proportions

Yes, this IS a stupid "coding error". End of story!

Though absolutely worthy of ridiculing the Trump administration for, it is simply pathetic seriously calling this minor error an attempt to change the Constitution. The sloppy coding base is much older than the Trump administrations, and is the real culprit.

According to Google, there have only been a few discussions of the actual coding, none of them really going into the substance. And then there is ONE page actually making sense of this:

Root Cause Analysis: Code Deployment and CMS Misconfiguration
... Preliminary findings suggest a faulty merge in the GitLab-based CI/CD workflow. ...
- A schema change in the PostgreSQL database omitted columns corresponding to certain article sections.
- The GraphQL API layer failed to validate null responses, causing front-end React components to skip rendering the missing keys.
- Lack of automated integration tests for content completeness allowed the error to reach production. ...

Software engineer Dr. Emily Zhang (MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative) observed: “This is a classic case of code-centric deployment without sufficient content validation. Critical legal texts demand stricter schema and regression testing.”

[repeated from here]

[LymphocyteLover]

40. What a load of gobbledy-gook-- just technical nonsense. I can't tell if you are serious or not.

Problem is the explanation given doesn't explain why those specific sections were affected

[TomWilm]

41. Not my gobbledy-gook, but it gave some kind of explenation ...

... I can give you some more, since the Library now has explained that new links was made in a wrong way to the XML in the database - some added code without a proper end tag. Which is a type of error that has often occurred for any smallish webmaster like myself, even when I was highly paid as a System Developer with a very public facing webpage. Shit happens!

On July 22 the Constitution was simply totally missing, and it seems like the techies were fighting to get it back in shape. This is not just a simple webpage, since the basic text is served and reused in many forms with annotations, mirroring how judges are changing the interpretation over time.

And yes, they should have better trained brains looking and proofing this - but also under the last president these pages were temporarily coded badly and even went offline from time to time.

Right now the Trmp administration is trying hard to feed us all any kind of distractions, to keep energy away from the Epstein accusations. This wild discussion about a coding error is an example that people do not need his made up distractions - they will willingly waste time on other meaningless stuff of their own silly making...


BTW, under Biden the text of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment on that website was corrected from "The Congress shall have THE power to enforce" to "The Congress shall have power to enforce".

I have not researched much on when the THE came in, but it looks like TRMP DID IT and Biden got it corrected - you are welcome to start a new conspiracy theory on that!

Biden also changed "The Preamble ANNOTED" to "The Preamble EXPLAINED". None of Biden's adjustments has been changed this year under Trmp.

[LymphocyteLover]

42. OK, thanks. Just a very weird and disturbing coincidence.

[Oopsie Daisy]

33. Horse hockey!

[Torchlight]

35. Sorry, teacher! The computer ate my homework.

Translation: Screw the truth as long as we have a meritless excuse ready to pull out of our pockets that our idiot base will subscribe to.

[lark]

36. Funny, it just so happens to be some of the sections of the Constitution that this administration is violating.

Why was it just those?? Nope, this was some magat changing it to their desired version and what they will implement and what they won't. It was 100% no accident and anyone that believes that is a total fool!

[TomWilm]

38. Then what about all the even more hated amendments?

This simply makes no sense, even by Trump standards.

First one he would pick would not be in the main Constitution, but those pesky amendments, as in
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States",
"Presidential Term Limits" and
"Unreasonable searches and seizures"
and many others...

[lark]

39. He hasn't acknowledged breaking those yet so no revisions until he's ready?

[TomWilm]

43. IF the alleged changes in the Constitution was planned ...

... then why was the text:
"To raise and support Armies..."
kept in place, including this disclaimer:
"... no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years ..."

The next line (and a lot more) was cut out:
"To provide and maintain a Navy..."

Does Trmp only want an Army and not a Navy?
Even though he love the song "In The Navy" by Village People so much???

Stop this witch hunt .

[Paladin]

37. Even in these days and times...

...I expect better-quality lying from the Library of Congress.