Pop quiz: how many sections does Article I of the Constitution have? If you choose to look it up on the official website of Congress, congress.gov, because you don’t want to trust not some sketchy Substack for sedition hobbyists, you’d say it has eight. Except it has ten. Congress has just deleted Section 9 (and 10) from the website where it maintains the “Constitution Annotated” as a public service. But it’s gone now. Because the sketchy sedition hobbyists are the ones running Congress now.
We may need Nicholas Cage to steal the paper copy of the Constitution before it gets the Wite-Out treatment too.
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Section 9 includes eight different clauses, but likely the most relevant to the Republican leadership is the right of habeas corpus. “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,” reads the Constitution. At least the copy maintained by the non-profit National Constitution Center reads that way, because the congressional version skips it entirely. The Trump administration struggles mightily with habeas corpus, the provision descended from English legal tradition that gives people the government locks up — or exports to El Salvadoran torture camps — the right to force the government to explain why. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem famously floundered when asked to define the right, but next time she won’t have to worry because Congress shot it down like a rambunctious puppy.
And it’s just gone… the copy jumps directly from the end of Section 8 to Article II. [UPDATE: I was working quickly and didn’t even focus on the semicolon there. The deletions actually start before the end of Section 8.]
The website is an annotated copy so there are separate URLs for landing pages digging into the meaning of each section. If you try to manually override the URL to see what it says about the missing Section 9, you get this:
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The good news for Justice Sam Alito is that Section 9 is also the part of the Constitution that bars anyone holding office from accepting a title. So Sir Samuel of Blackacre can now fully enjoy his medieval European knighthood while continuing to collect under-the-table luxury benefits!
The quiet deletion of constitutional protections from the government’s official website marks a bold step into Orwellian fanfic. It’s a move Trump telegraphed last year, when he released his personal Trump Bible, promising his fans a King James Bible and copies of America’s foundational documents… minus the parts he doesn’t like. The Fourteenth Amendment? That thing with Equal Protection and birthright citizenship and banning insurrectionists from office? NO THANK YOU! When his own “Little Red Book” — hawked to supporters for $60 a pop — edited out the parts of the Constitution that didn’t fit his vibe, many rolled their eyes. But it was already an assault on the rule of law, with MAGA officials attempting to force his FrankenBible into schools as an educational text. American civics with the Reconstruction stuff neatly removed.
In retrospect, the exclusion of the Twenty-Second Amendment might have been a red flag too.
But erasing laws in a privately published book is one thing. Congress removing inconvenient laws is another. Of course, removing it from the website doesn’t actually change the law. The Supreme Court — presumably — would still refer to their previously published pocket Constitutions. It’s not really about changing the law though, it’s about laying groundwork. Someone is going to go on cable news and declare “I don’t know what these hippies are talking about, habeas is not in the Constitution, look here!” and they will go completely unchallenged. Make America Not Understand Rights Again is a goal.
As I write this, I keep refreshing the congress.gov site hoping that it will reappear. Hoping that this is some sort of glitch or accident caused by a DOGE intern spilling on the keyboard. It’s not coming back, though.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is such a powerful gaslighting trope because Trump’s clumsy, ramshackle oafishness is a feature and not a bug. Authoritarianism via amateurism. A Nixonian power grab raises hackles, but bumble along embracing the stupidest fascism cosplay and one of two things happens: (1) you get away with it because the Supreme Court gave up on the rule of law or (2) you get called out and play it off as a joke that critics are “crazy” for taking so seriously. If enough people call out Congress for this, it’s going to be “a harmless oversight” and purely coincidental that their version of the Constitution excludes the part that makes dictatorships slightly harder.
Oh, and you should watch out for bills of attainder and ex post facto laws too. Because that’s also in Section 9.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.