They will still sell you a model 3 standard if you want it, but it's just a software limited version of the standard plus, where you have to pay to access the full capabilities of the car.
The linked page says "As a result, Model 3 Standard will now be a software-limited version of the Standard Plus, and we are taking it off the online ordering menu, which just means that to get it, customers will need to call us or visit any one of the several hundred Tesla stores."
"This is only available when ordering by phone" sounds like something my dinosaur bank would do, not something an up and coming tech company should be doing.
"we can't actually afford to make a 35000 car, but Elon promised it, so we are going to attempt to prove him right by just software-limiting a more expensive car and than hoping nobody buys it so we don't lose money"
How I imagine some meeting at Tesla went when they decided this was a legitimate solution.
If I were in the market for this, I'd be buying the 35k model with the expectation that the modding community will unlock those extra features in short order. In fact I'd bet that all the features on the car are a set of Boolean flags on every vehicle and as soon as you have a shell on the thing, changing the flags to enable any feature will be simple. Add a simple Cron to keep the flags set as you like even after an update, and another Cron to start a background root SSH session for continued access after updates.