[darkamaul]

I think the reason here is to prevent deletion that cause upstream disruptions.

See the reasoning in the PEP 763 (not adopted )

https://peps.python.org/pep-0763/

[eviks]

Strange they haven't identified negative security implications: if the owner notices the hack he can delete the malicious release before the central authority, so this would limit the blast radius (think there was a recent such issue with npm where there was a delay between discovery (by the author) and removal)

Otherwise yes, leftpad/coverup risk is a thing