Adding href to a sidebar section breaks Markdown formatting

I have:

• searched the issue tracker for similar issues
• installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
• formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide

Bug description

For the sidebar of a website, a section without an href acts as a collapsible menu which supports Markdown formatting like bold:

      - section: "**More info**"
        contents:
          - href: about.qmd

You can also add an href, and then clicking on that section brings you to that page:

      - section: "**More info**"
        href: more-info.qmd
        contents:
          - href: about.qmd

However, adding an href breaks the Markdown formatting of the section. The example above would render as "**More info**", instead of "More info". For example:

HTML formatting still works however:

      - section: "<b>More info</b>"
        href: more-info.qmd
        contents:
          - href: about.qmd

Unlike the Markdown example, the example above renders correctly as "More info".

A fix is proposed in #14521.

Steps to reproduce

Put all of the files in a folder and then do quarto render:

_quarto.yaml

project:
  type: website

website:
  title: "My Quarto Website"
  sidebar:
    contents:
      - href: index.qmd
        text: Home
      - section: "**More info**"
        href: more-info.qmd # comment to hide bug
        contents:
          - href: about.qmd

format:
  html:
    toc: true

index.qmd

---
title: "Sidebar demo"
---

## Welcome

Demo of issue with sidebar render

### Sections

- Visit our [About](about.qmd) page 
- Get in [Contact](contact.qmd)

more-info.qmd

---
title: "More info"
---

## More info

This section contains additional information about us.

- [About](about.qmd)

about.qmd

---
title: "About"
---

## About Us

Lorem ipsum

Actual behavior

Markdown formatting is rendered as plain text in sidebar sections when an href is used.

Expected behavior

Markdown formatting is preserved in sidebar sections when an href is used.

Your environment

• IDE: any (VS Code / Sublime / Positron)
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.9.37
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /home/cliffk/.cache/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.8.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.87.0: OK
      Deno version 2.4.5: OK
      Typst version 0.14.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.9.37
      Path: /opt/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)
      Chrome Headless Shell: (not installed)
      VeraPDF: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /usr/bin
      Version: 2023

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: /usr/bin/google-chrome
      Source: PATH

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.6.0
      Path: /usr/lib/R
      LibPaths:
        - /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
        - /usr/lib/R/site-library
        - /usr/lib/R/library
      knitr: 1.48
      rmarkdown: (None)

      The rmarkdown package is not available in this R installation.
      Install with install.packages("rmarkdown")

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.13.9 (Conda)
      Path: /software/conda/bin/python
      Jupyter: 5.8.1
      Kernels: python3

[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[✓] Checking Julia installation...

Reproduce the issue from the supplied _quarto.yaml and .qmd files by running quarto render. Then trace the website sidebar rendering path for sections that include both href and contents; done means Markdown such as More info remains formatted instead of appearing as literal asterisks.