JSFiddle - React, Tailwind, and code Playground

HTML

<div id="someDiv">
    <p>This is some other HTML I don't care about</p>
    <a href="http://site.example">This is an anchor I want to disable</a>
</div>
<button id="myButton">Change my link to a span</button>

JavaScript

function aToSpan() {
    var link = $('a');
    //Note adding the link to a separate element removes it from the live DOM
    var linkHTML = $(document.createElement('p')).append(link).html();
    var spanHTML = linkHTML.replace('<a', '<span').replace('a>', 'span>');
    $('#someDiv').append(spanHTML);
}

$(function() {
    $('#myButton').click(aToSpan);
});