Rewrite/Republish feature creating duplicate posts

Our team has been using the Rewrite/Republish feature for awhile now with no issues, until recently.

We believe the issue started when we stopped using the default wp-cron.php file. We stopped using this because our normal scheduled posts were not getting published. So we set up a cron job on our server directly to run the wp cron events.

Initially the cron job was timing out, so our host suggested we add the parameter to skip plugins. Here is the cron job command we are currently using:

wp cron event run –due-now –skip-plugins –skip-themes

This has been working and our schedule posts are now getting published properly.

However, about the same time we made that change, the Rewrite/Republish feature started to create duplicate posts rather than merge and replace the original.

After some testing, I’ve found that if we click Rewrite/Republish, make changes and publish again right away, it works great. The posts merge and the original URL is retained.

But, when we click Rewrite/Republish, make changes and schedule the post to be published in a couple days, the revised post is published as scheduled, but a new post is created with a new URL and the old version remains on the website as well.

Are there a known bugs with the scheduled Rewrite/Republish posts duplicating rather than updating the original?

Does not using the default wp-cron.php file cause issues?

Would the fact that we’re using the –skip-plugins parameter possibly cause it to create new rather than update?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. We’re stuck manually publishing articles and/or going back and deleting posts and adding redirects.