Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Mon Jun 15, 2026, 11:44 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: NYT

Inside the White House, Mr. Miller, the influential deputy chief of staff, saw an opening for an idea he had raised previously: What if Mr. Trump simply claimed the power to suspend habeas corpus?

Then the locked-up immigrants would be blocked from receiving hearings or even from seeking court orders to prevent their removal from the country. This was an opportunity for Mr. Trump not only to speed up deportations, but also to assert vastly expanded power over a legal system that was getting in his way.

Suspending habeas corpus was one of two radical ideas Mr. Miller had been pushing that alarmed Mr. Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American streets as protests grew against deportation sweeps.

-snip-

In the case of the Insurrection Act, Vice President JD Vance pushed to invoke it just days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minnesota critical care nurse who was protesting the administration’s immigration policies.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html

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Please see reply 1 for a gift link from LetMyPeopleVote. (And again, thanks, LMPV!)

Journalists have a duty to tell the public that the president and his aides are seriously considering suspending habeas corpus *when it is happening* rather than saving it for a book rollout over a year later

— David Ryan Miller (@davidryanmiller.com) 2026-06-15T10:36:54.713Z

Only in this stupid fascist administration does a short memo that reads like a high schooler straightforwardly summarizing the history of habeas corpus suspensions somehow become a confidential document reported out as a brave and complex act of internal resistance

static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...

— Mike Sacks (@mikesacks.bsky.social) 2026-06-15T11:05:04.916Z

JD Vance can NEVER become president under any circumstance. When Trump is so far gone that he must be impeached and removed, Vance must be removed, too. Here's the evidence

— Will Bunch (@willbunch.bsky.social) 2026-06-15T12:46:31.220Z

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. I deleted my prior thread but here is a link to a Gift Article from the NYT

Your post has a link that is restricted and people need to read the entire article
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qVA.udsu.XAy4X9FMTHHA&smid=url-share

[highplainsdem]

3. Thanks!

[highplainsdem]

6. I edited the OP to direct people, at the top of the Comments section, to your gift link in reply 1.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. This article needs to be read in its entirety

The writ of habeas corpus is still in danger

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right (Gift Article)

Secret memos show that the White House debated last year, to a greater degree than previously known, whether to limit habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qVA.udsu.XAy4X9FMTHHA&smid=url-share

Last spring, Will Scharf, an arch-conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary, wrote a secret memo to the chief of staff that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful adviser driving President Trump’s deportation campaign.

Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo was careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law. The subject line read: “THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS.”.....

Inside the White House, Mr. Miller, the influential deputy chief of staff, saw an opening for an idea he had raised previously: What if Mr. Trump simply claimed the power to suspend habeas corpus?

Then the locked-up immigrants would be blocked from receiving hearings or even from seeking court orders to prevent their removal from the country. This was an opportunity for Mr. Trump not only to speed up deportations, but also to assert vastly expanded power over a legal system that was getting in his way......

Habeas corpus had been formally suspended only four times, most recently after Pearl Harbor. In every case, the country was at war or facing armed rebellion. Only Lincoln, at the start of the Civil War, had ever claimed the power without congressional authorization, and only during a long congressional recess......

Under immense public pressure, the administration would subsequently take a different course of action. The most vocal immigration hard-liner, Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection commander-at-large, was removed from his post, and the administration held back on ICE pushes in cities in the weeks after Mr. Pretti’s death.

Yet just as the idea of suspending habeas corpus was set aside but never fully abandoned by some inside the White House, the Insurrection Act, at least in the eyes of its proponents, would remain a loaded weapon in a West Wing eager to test the limits of presidential power.

There is a long and detailed article on the discussions in the trump White House on suspending the writ of habeas corpus or invoking the Insurrection Act. After reading this article, I am scared. Firing Bovino was the right move but I fear that if trump loses the midterms, we may see the writ of habeas corpus suspended.

[dalton99a]

5. Trump has never cared about the Constitution or any law

[dalton99a]

4. Kick

[snot]

8. Unfortunately, this would not be the first suspension of habeas corpus

that we've experienced; see, e.g., https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/181/restore-habeas-corpus-rights-for-enemy-combatants/article/1640/ or https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/four-cases-when-the-writ-of-habeas-corpus-was-suspended (not sure how to account for the discrepancies).

Personally, I'm very much against such suspensions.