The president said he’d leave the future of habeas corpus up to Kristi Noem, who recently made clear that she didn’t know what habeas corpus was.
Pressed on possibly suspending habeas corpus, Trump said he’d leave it up to Kristi Noem.
Among the problems: Noem has already made clear that she has no idea what habeas corpus is. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-10-09T15:55:01.211Z
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-line-possibly-suspending-habeas-corpus-goes-bad-worse-rcna236649
The first sign of trouble emerged in early May. After the Trump administration suffered a series of legal setbacks in federal courts, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters that he and his colleagues were “actively looking” at possibly suspending the writ of habeas corpus......
In the four months that followed Miller’s comments, neither Donald Trump nor anyone on his team followed through on this, though it did come up again during a weird White House event about antifa. HuffPost reported:
Donald Trump was asked at Wednesday’s White House roundtable that included far-right content creators ... if he’d ‘given any more thought to possibly suspending habeas corpus to not only deal with these insurrectionists across the nation but also to continue rapidly deporting illegal aliens.’ ‘Yeah, uh, suspending who?’ the president replied.
After the questioner repeated the question, the president said:
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d rather leave that to [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi [Noem].”.....
During a congressional hearing in May, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Noem: “
What is habeas corpus?”
The South Dakota Republican replied
, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” at which point the senator interrupted to note:
“Excuse me, that’s incorrect.”.....
“
Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people,” the New Hampshire Democrat explained. “[bI]f not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. ... Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”......
In case this weren’t quite enough, when
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey asked the Cabinet secretary which part of the Constitution includes habeas corpus, Noem was again stumped.
Nevertheless, when the president was asked about whether this bedrock legal principle would remain intact in the United States, Trump appeared lost and deferred to a Cabinet secretary who also seems to have a questionable grasp on the underlying subject.
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