WordPress 7.1 Release Candidate Phase

WordPress 7.1 has entered the Release Candidate phase. Key policies are now in effect: all commits to trunk require double sign-off by two core committers until the 7.1 branch is created (delayed to early next week due to ongoing GitHub Actions improvements). RC1 marks the hard string freeze — no new strings are permitted, and translations won't be available until the branch is created. Only regression bug fixes and test suite expansions may be placed on the 7.1 milestone. Once the branch is created, trunk will open for WordPress 7.2-alpha development.