Stephen Miller says Trump administration is 'actively looking at' suspending habeas corpus

[highplainsdem]

Source: PBS/AP

Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said the administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.

“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” he told reporters. “So it’s an option that we’re actively looking at.”

Miller added that “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-stephen-miller-says-trump-administration-is-actively-looking-at-suspending-habeas-corpus

---

His remarks on habeas corpus start about a half minute in.

[Lovie777]

1. Impeach.............

[bucolic_frolic]

2. This nonsense will continue until it turns against Republican constituencies. /nt

[hlthe2b]

3. So anyone want to argue with me (again) that Miller is not more President than Trump on these issues?

At least Co-President, given his evil motivations and obvious influence.

Not even a damned lawyer, but makes up shit as though he had WRITTEN the constitution. So much bullshit in so little time.




I may be a pacifist (yes, I actually AM), but if anything happens to "remove" Trump, natural or not, may it happen with Miller simultaneously.

[LiberalArkie]

10. I wonder who at Heritage Foundation is Millers ear worm? Was it his parents that instilled such hate?

[hlthe2b]

19. I'm going to do a separate thread on Miller, who I think many underestimate how dangerous he is...

This 2018 article from his retired neuropsychologist uncle on his mother's side is very revealing. Miller is the Jewish descendant of those escaping the anti-Jewish pogroms of what is now Belarus. He comes from wealth and atypical conservatism in a far more liberal section of southern California. His nastiness was already in full display in high school and he was mentored by none other than the recently deceased (crickets) David Horowitz at Duke University.

Here's a couple of comments/questions posed to him from his PBS Frontline interview:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/david-glosser/

… So he goes to Duke University. His connection to David Horowitz becomes an important thing for him. He calls him sort of a mentor. And he goes to Duke, and he sort of establishes a group which is based on Horowitz’s request to conservatives around the country, students, to form these groups, taught to rebel against the liberal establishment in the universities and to push issues such as their rights to debate the issues that they feel strongly about. Do you know much about or anything about his history? What did you hear about his endeavors at Duke, which include his going after liberal professors, his blaming 9/11 on unenforced immigration, his saying that the worshipping of multicultur[al]ism was the downfall of the United States?

(Worth reading that entire interview)

Also:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351/

And: (yeah, it is the Daily Mail, but... )
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14070173/stephen-miller-uncle-trump-dark-impulse-immigration.html


He's one POS...

[orangecrush]

4. Here we go.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. What invaders, NAZI boy?

Filled with refugees escaping the NAZIs, the USA turned away the MS St. Louis in 1939. While some later found refuge in England and Europe, many aboard would die in the Holocaust. The US Coast Guard even patrolled the waters as the ship passed our shores to prevent anyone from jumping overboard and swimming to safety.

[orangecrush]

6. Not "looking at"

If he says this, they are going to ignore Habeus Corpus and ignore any court orders that tell them they can't just like they have with everything else.

[CloudWatcher]

8. jail

Until the courts start tossing them in jail they're going to continue to just take rulings under consideration. With about as much weight as your or my letters to the editor expressing our disapproval.

[Kid Berwyn]

15. Happy NAZI is vile.

May the so-called brains of the outfit get all he so richly deserves, serving a miserable and medically lengthened if necessary life sentence behind bars. Unlike his idealized Reich, We the People do not summarily execute traitors. We follow due process as made clear in the Constitution.

Who knew? If we can watch him on a Supermax webcam 24/7, it might be worth re-opening Alcatraz after all.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. Stephen Miller must suffer from what ails Trump.

Last edited Fri May 9, 2025, 05:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Somewhere in his youth he must have come to the delusion that he is superior because he thinks the world revolves around him when it’s just him spinning around the MAGA flagpole shoved up his Donald.

[WheelWalker]

31. Rec'd for clarity of visualization

[CloudWatcher]

7. Yes, the invaders have taken the White House, the House and Senate

We're not at war. There's no invasion. I wonder if legal filings that include this bs could get their lawyers censured and disbarred.

[LymphocyteLover]

37. Miller should point to where on the doll the invaders hurt him

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. If habeas corpus is suspended, can true patriots take Miller into custody as an invading Russian agent?

He's clearly linked to an aggressive foreign power, with designs on capturing the country.

[mzmolly]

12. "The power to suspend habeas corpus rests with Congress,

either through their own affirmative actions or though an express delegation to the Executive. The Executive does not have the independent authority to suspend the writ."

Source > https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus

[mahatmakanejeeves]

13. Stephen, you ignorant slut:

… the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion …

The word you are deliberately avoiding using is “right.”

Certain conditions must be in place before this right can be suspended. “I don’t like those people” is not sufficient.

[groundloop]

14. So this is how liberty dies. With thundrous applause.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

17. Maddow Blog-White House's Stephen Miller: 'We are actively looking at' suspending habeas corpus

Miller claimed the U.S. can suspend the right to challenge the legality of a person’s detention “in time of invasion.”

NEW: White House’s Stephen Miller: ‘We are actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) 2025-05-09T20:40:35.207Z

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-houses-stephen-miller-are-actively-looking-suspending-habeas-cor-rcna205945

In recent months, the radicalism of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda has come into focus, leaving many to wonder just how much further the Republican White House is prepared to go. It was against this backdrop that CNBC reported:

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, the right to challenge the legality of a person’s detention by the government. Miller’s comment came in response to a White House reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ of habeas corpus to deal with the problem of illegal immigration into the United States.

“The Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion,” the presidential adviser said. “So, that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/post/3lor5uhp4vk2j

Link to tweet

.....When I spoke about this to my colleague Lisa Rubin, an MSNBC legal correspondent and a former litigator, she described Miller’s idea as “truly crazy,” adding, “Miller isn’t proposing suspending a statutory right; rather, what he’s talking about is triggering a specific constitutional provision, namely the Suspension Clause of Article I of the Constitution. That clause provides ‘The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.’”

Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, similarly explained that the Constitution’s Suspension Clause “doesn’t allow the President to unilaterally suspend habeas, especially when Congress is in session; applies only to cases of invasion or rebellion (this is quite clearly neither); and even then applies only ‘when the public safety may require it.’ (It doesn’t.)”

This is precisely why it was relevant throughout the 2024 campaign that Donald Trump and his allies would reference the word “invasion” as part of their anti-immigration pitch.

Time will tell whether the president is seriously prepared to pursue such an extreme approach, but that this conversation is even underway is a startling reminder of just how far the United States has gone down a radical path.

[Playingmantis]

18. What the fuck more does he have to do for everyone to recognize Trump

hates American values and wants to destroy them! When will America rise up in disgust?? Does he have to start arresting his opponents and anyone that criticizes him?

[live love laugh]

28. The bigger question is what can we who do recognize this do about it?

I’m fairly certain the majority know by now.

[2naSalit]

20. I wish...

I could say what I'm thinking.

[OldBaldy1701E]

36. Hah. I don't even have a tongue anymore these days! (n/t)

[riversedge]

21. "The US ..has only suspended habeas corps 4x in the past........

We could have easily guessed that Stephen Miller is at the root of this issue. damn



https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wh-trump-suspending-habeas-corpus/story?id=121653587


............The Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus in extraordinary circumstances such as an invasion or rebellion when it would be necessary to protect public safety.


According to the National Constitution Center, the United States has suspended habeas corpus four times in the past -- during the Civil War, during Reconstruction in South Carolina, in the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection, and in Hawaii in 1941 after Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan during World War II.

[live love laugh]

30. Does this portend an "event"?

[PortTack]

22. Does anybody but think miller is one of the stupidest f..king idiots? Seriously

Let’s go out and announce what lawless thing in the form of an EO we’re gonna do next.

JHC!!

[riversedge]

23. "and that a president cannot suspend habeas corpus without authorization from Congress."

...........Miller said that the administration's decision would come down to whether the "courts do the right thing or not."


But legal experts say the issue is not as cut and dried as Miller suggests, and that a president cannot suspend habeas corpus without authorization from Congress.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wh-trump-suspending-habeas-corpus/story?id=121653587

President Abraham Lincoln famously suspended the writ of habeas corpus at the outbreak of the Civil War.

But then-Chief Justice Roger Taney deemed the move unlawful, noting the operative clause is found in Article I of the Constitution, which itemizes Congress' powers, not the president's.

[True Dough]

27. Not since Lincoln, huh?

Trump should be attending more plays at Ford's Theater.

[AKwannabe]

35. Rec 1000x

[Bayard]

32. Ah, but there's the rub

I can see this Congress giving him that authorization.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

24. Prof. Vladeck has some good analysis on the reason for this stunt/threat

Miller and trump are trying to intimidate the courts into ruling their way to avoid having habeas corpus suspended. trump and Miller have been taking actions that seem designed to piss off the cours.

Link to tweet

https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/148-suspending-habeas-corpus

Fifth, and finally, Miller gives away the game when he says “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” It’s not just the mafia-esque threat implicit in this statement (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”); it’s that he’s telling on himself: He’s suggesting that the administration would (unlawfully) suspend habeas corpus if (but apparently only if) it disagrees with how courts rule in these cases. In other words, it’s not the judicial review itself that’s imperiling national security; it’s the possibility that the government might lose. That’s not, and has never been, a viable argument for suspending habeas corpus. Were it otherwise, there’d be no point to having the writ in the first place—let alone to enshrining it in the Constitution.

If the goal is just to try to bully and intimidate federal judges into acquiescing in more unlawful activity by the Trump administration, that’s shameful enough. But suggesting that the President can unilaterally cut courts out of the loop solely because they’re disagreeing with him is suggesting that judicial review—indeed, that the Constitution itself—is just a convenience. Something tells me that even federal judges and justices who might otherwise be sympathetic to the government’s arguments on the merits in some of these cases will be troubled by the implication that their authority depends entirely upon the President’s beneficence.

***

It’s certainly possible that this doesn’t go anywhere. Indeed, I hope that turns out to be true. But Miller’s comments strike me as a rather serious ratcheting up of the anti-court rhetoric coming out of this administration—and an ill-conceived one at that.

[JohnSJ]

25. In case no one noticed they are already doing that, despite court rulings.

[choie]

26. There's a direct line

from the GW bush administration, their response to 9/11 their war crimes in Iraq and Guantanamo to this fascist regime. We didn't stop bush nor hold him accountable. How are we going to stop trump and his henchman miller?

[LymphocyteLover]

38. we will stop them with our democratic efforts-- we are the sovereigns

We may not get accountability but we will get our country back

[choie]

40. That's what they said after the Civil War

And there was no accountability. And here we are.

[live love laugh]

29. Almost there ....

[Karasu]

33. People need to attack the false pretenses under which they're doing this shit. "National emergency"..."a time of

invasion." The fascists should have to fucking PROVE this shit...and they know they fucking can't.

[AKwannabe]

34. Fuck. Him.

Middle finger emoji!!

[LymphocyteLover]

39. This is complete fascist bullshit