Public Notice: Miller threatens to suspend habeas unless Trump can defy judges

[Dennis Donovan]

Public Notice - Miller threatens to suspend habeas unless Trump can defy judges

Either way, the rule of law loses.

Lisa Needham
May 13, 2025

So here it is. The habeas explainer you shouldn’t need. Not because you should be well-versed in all things habeas, but because we shouldn’t even need to talk about whether Donald Trump can suspend the rule of law so his administration can more effectively terrorize immigrants. But that’s where we’re at.

On Friday, the staggeringly ghoulish White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told a press gaggle that the administration was looking at suspending habeas corpus.

“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 at a time of invasion,” he said. “So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at.” (Watch below.)

Miller is at least correct that the writ of habeas corpus appears in the Constitution, but he’s wrong about most everything else.

Habeas corpus is Latin for “you have the body.” A detainee or prisoner can challenge their detention by petitioning for a writ of habeas. That requires the government to produce the person before the court so the judge can determine if their imprisonment is unlawful.

/snip