Trump ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, top aide Stephen Miller says – US politics live
Trump administration ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, Stephen Miller says
In response to a question from a blogger for the far-right Gateway Pundit about when the Trump administration could start “suspending the writ of habeas corpus to take care of the illegal immigration problem”, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” doing so.
Federal habeas corpus is a procedure under which a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration.
Miller told the blogger, Jordan Conradson, he had made a point of calling on first: “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. So it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not”.
Miller’s use of the word “invasion” reflects the Trump administration’s argument that the US is under invasion from undocumented migrants and so the president is justified in claiming the power to deport anyone the administration brands a suspected gang member, with little to no due process under the rarely-used, wartime Alien Enemies Act.
A recently declassified intelligence assessment, however, shows that US agencies do not believe that the gang Tren de Aragua is operating on behalf of the government of Venezuela, as the administration has claimed as justification to use the Alien Enemies Act.
Just last week a federal judge in Texas ruled that the law does not authorize the administration to deport such individuals. You can read more on that here:
Key events
NIH tells scientists grants come with new strings attached: following Trump’s anti-trans, anti-diversity and anti-BDS orders
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that scientists who get federal grants from the National Institutes of Health are being notified that funding for their work could be pulled if they boycott Israel or fail to follow Donald Trump’s executive orders decreeing that diversity is a form of anti-white racism and there are only two sexes, male and female.
In one case, a researcher at a teaching hospital in the Boston area, who studies how genes are regulated in lung disease, discovered in the fine print of her grant renewal that she was expected to comply with Trump’s anti-trans order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth”.
The Chronicle has confirmed that at least two institutions have received grant notices ordering them to comply with Trump’s anti-transgender executive order.
The fine print of grant awards even bans scientists from promoting “accessibility” for people with disabilities, making DEIA a prohibited term.
According to new conditions for NIH grants released last month:
By accepting the grant award, recipients are certifying that:
(i) They do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws; and
(ii) They do not engage in and will not during the term of this award engage in, a discriminatory prohibited boycott.
Newark mayor Ras Baraka ‘arrested and detained by Ice’ at detention center protest
The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, “was arrested and detained by Ice” on Friday at an federal immigration detention center where he was protesting, a spokesperson for his campaign to be the state’s governor confirmed.
NJ Spotlight News, a New Jersey public media outlet, caught the mayor’s arrest on video.
Witnesses told The Associated Press the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Representatives Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
“The agents started intimidating and putting their hands on the congresswomen. There was yelling and pushing,” Martinez said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car”.
The mayor has been protesting the opening of Delaney Hall, an detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group, all week, saying its operators did not get proper permits.
Alina Habba, a former personal lawyer for Donald Trump who is now interim US attorney for New Jersey, wrote on social media that Baraka “has been taken into custody” after, she alleged, he “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the Ice detention center in Newark”.
Video of the mayor being led away in handcuffs was posted on social networks by a local news station.
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“We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances” Coleman wrote on social media before the mayor’s arrest. “We’ve heard stories of what it’s like in other ICE prisons. We’re exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves”.
Our colleague Richard Luscombe has more on this developing story:
Trump administration ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, Stephen Miller says
In response to a question from a blogger for the far-right Gateway Pundit about when the Trump administration could start “suspending the writ of habeas corpus to take care of the illegal immigration problem”, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” doing so.
Federal habeas corpus is a procedure under which a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration.
Miller told the blogger, Jordan Conradson, he had made a point of calling on first: “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. So it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not”.
Miller’s use of the word “invasion” reflects the Trump administration’s argument that the US is under invasion from undocumented migrants and so the president is justified in claiming the power to deport anyone the administration brands a suspected gang member, with little to no due process under the rarely-used, wartime Alien Enemies Act.
A recently declassified intelligence assessment, however, shows that US agencies do not believe that the gang Tren de Aragua is operating on behalf of the government of Venezuela, as the administration has claimed as justification to use the Alien Enemies Act.
Just last week a federal judge in Texas ruled that the law does not authorize the administration to deport such individuals. You can read more on that here:
White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of embattled Pete Hegseth’s hands
Hugo Lowell
Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides.
But the White House has made clear to Hegseth that Buria will not be elevated to become his most senior aide at the Pentagon, the people said, casting Buria as a liability on account of his limited experience as a junior military assistant and his recurring role in internal office drama.
“Ricky will not be getting the chief position,” one of the people directly familiar with deliberations said. “He doesn’t have adequate experience, lacks the political chops and is widely disliked by almost everyone in the White House who has been exposed to him.”
The White House has always selected political appointees at agencies through the presidential personnel office, but the move to block Hegseth’s choice at this juncture is unusual and reflects Donald Trump’s intent to keep Hegseth by trying to insulate him from any more missteps.
The intervention comes at a time when Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon has come under scrutiny. It also runs into the belief inside Trump’s orbit that even the president might struggle to justify Hegseth’s survival if the secretary does not have a scandal-free next few months.
Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order later today discouraging criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses, in a bid to combat the overcriminalization of federal regulations, a White House official has told Reuters.
Trump also plans to sign a proclamation to encourage migrants who are in the US illegally to voluntarily depart the country, according to a White House official.
The “Project Homecoming” initiative will encourage migrants to leave voluntarily with the assistance of the federal government and financial support, or face enforcement and penalties, according to the official.
The day so far
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A federal judge ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, whose detention in March for writing an op-ed critical of Israel’s war in Gaza in her school newspaper judge William Sessions ruled “raised significant due process concerns”. Ordering her release, Sessions said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens”.
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People in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat waiting on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, Reuters reported. After several hours, they were bused back to the detention center around noon, an attorney for one of the men said. A US official told Reuters the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations.
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Pope Leo is “not happy with what’s going on with immigration”, his brother told the NYT, adding: “How far he’ll go with it is only one’s guess, but he won’t just sit back. I don’t think he’ll be the silent one.” Here’s our write-up.
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The major “earth-shattering” announcement Donald Trump teased earlier this week in the Oval Office is a “most favored nation” plan to cut Medicare drug prices, sources told CBS News, a policy he pursued unsuccessfully in his first term. The move would require Medicare to pay drug companies the lowest price paid in similar countries for some expensive, physician-administered drugs.
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Donald Trump said he would be “OK” if Republicans in Congress raised the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, but warned of political consequences. He wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!” It comes after the president privately urged House speaker Mike Johnson to raise the tax rate, Reuters reported.
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But, in a sign of just how tricky it may be to get Republicans to vote for raising anyone’s taxes, the tax portion of the GOP mega-bill is at risk of unraveling, three people told Politico, after leaders failed to win enough support for deeper spending cuts. That means Republicans will have to leave out some of Trump’s tax priorities, according to the people.
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A majority of US adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of issues related to colleges and universities, as his Republican administration escalate threats to cut federal funding unless institutions align with his political agenda. According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 56% of Americans said they disapproved of the US president’s approach to higher education, while about four in 10 expressed approval, which is broadly consistent with his overall job approval ratings.
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Large institutional investors massively increased their holdings of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) in recent months according to SEC filings, with many enlarging their positions by hundreds of millions of dollars. The revelations raise further questions about big business’s desire to curry favor with Donald Trump and his administration via the enterprises he has maintained or commenced.
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Trump remains firm that the US is not going to unilaterally reduce tariffs on Chinese goods without concessions from China, the White House said, only hours after Trump floated the idea of reducing the current rate of 145% down to 80% as the two sides prepare for talks in Switzerland. “That was a number the president threw out there, and we’ll see what happens this weekend,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
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The US Postal Service named David Steiner as the next postmaster general after the Trump administration pressured the prior leader to resign in March. Steiner is a former Waste Management CEO and has served on the board of FedEx.
Trump signs executive order to establish national center for homeless veterans – Fox News Digital
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a national center for homeless veterans with redirected funds previously spent on services for illegal aliens, according to Fox News Digital.
The order directs the secretary of veterans affairs to establish the “National Center for Warrior Independence” on the veterans affairs campus in West Los Angeles, Fox reports.
Fox quotes the White House: “The new National Center for Warrior Independence will help [LA’s unhoused veterans’] and other veterans like them rebuild their lives.”
The center will allow veterans from around the nation to seek and receive care, benefits and services “to which they are entitled”, the White House said.
The White House told Fox the goal is to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the center by 2028.
Deported family of US citizen girl recovering from rare brain tumor is determined to return – NBC News
A girl recovering from a rare brain tumor celebrated her 11th birthday on Sunday, hundreds of miles away from everything she’s known – her friends at school, her community at church, her home, NBC News reports.
She is one of four US citizen children who were sent to Mexico from Texas three months ago when immigration authorities deported their undocumented parents.
Hoping to find a way for her to resume medical treatment in the US, this morning her family traveled to Monterrey to meet with members of the congressional Hispanic caucus to urge “legislators to advocate for their return under humanitarian parole”.
One such colleague is Senator Ed Markey, who called the order for Öztürk’s release “a victory for Rümeysa, for justice, and for our democracy”. He posted on X:
Rümeysa Öztürk has finally been ordered released. She has been unlawfully detained for more than six weeks in an ICE facility in Louisiana, more than 1,500 miles away from Somerville. This is a victory for Rümeysa, for justice, and for our democracy.
Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on X: “The Trump administration must release Rümeysa Öztürk right now.”
Warren is one of the members of Congress who has been pushing for Öztürk’s release and the restoration of her visa. In March she called Öztürk’s arrest and detention without due process “deeply disturbing” and with colleagues has been demanding answers about the case from the Trump administration since.
Tufts student faced higher risk of worsening asthma while in Ice custody, court filings show
US district judge William Sessions also found that in addition to the violation of her constitutional rights, Öztürk faced significant risk in Ice custody for an exacerbation of her diagnosed chronic asthma.
According to court filings, she suffered multiple asthma attacks in detention that she has struggled to get treated for, and has had her hijab forcibly removed.
Öztürk appeared on video at the hearing earlier and told the judge she had suffered 12 asthma attacks since her detention, saying:
Now they are between five to 45 minutes and they are more intense … longer and harder to stop.
“We are not allowed to take fresh air when we need to take it … Also there is no divider between the showers,” Öztürk said.
“Also the maximum capacity for the room is indicated … for 14 people but there are 24 people living in a small area, spanning … more than 22 hours inside of the same locked cell,” she added.
Following Öztürk’s initial testimony, her doctor, Jessica McCannon, testified about her diagnosis of Öztürk’s asthma. At one point, Öztürk had an asthma attack during McCannon’s testimony, which her lawyers had to interrupt. The judge then excused Öztürk and allowed her to temporarily step out of the room to use the bathroom.
Addressing the court, McCannon said:
She is at significantly increased risk of developing an asthma exacerbation if not released, that would potentially require emergency evaluation.
If not treated appropriately and quickly, patients can suffer morbidity and mortality related to asthma exacerbations.
Judge says student’s Ice detention ‘potentially chills the speech of the millions’
The Trump administration is attempting to deport Rümeysa Öztürk under a rarely used immigration statute giving the secretary of state the authority to remove immigrants deemed harmful to US foreign policy. Her lawyers say it is a flagrant violation of her constitutional right to free speech.
US district judge William Sessions, in ordering her release, said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. Any one of them may now avoid exercising their first amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home. For all of those reasons, the court finds that her continued detention cannot stand, that bail is necessary to make the habeas [petition] … effective.”
He added:
This is a woman who’s just totally committed to her academic career … there is absolutely no evidence that that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence. She has no criminal record … therefore, the court finds that she does not pose a danger to the community.
ACLU on Tuft student’s ordered release: ‘Her release is a victory for everyone committed to justice’
Monica Allard, staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont, said of the order for the release of Rümeysa Öztürk.
After today’s ruling, Rümeysa can return to her community at Tufts and sleep safely in her own bed. Tomorrow, she can wake up and begin the process of healing from this experience while she finishes her PhD in child development.
Spending over six weeks in detention for writing an op-ed is a constitutional horror story. Her release is a victory for everyone committed to justice, free speech, and basic human rights.
Mahsa Khanbabai of Khanbabai Immigration Law, who is representing Rümeysa Öztürk, said of the order for her release:
I am relieved and ecstatic that Rümeysa has been ordered released. Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late. She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine. When did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?
I am thankful that the courts have been ruling in favor of detained political prisoners like Rümeysa. The public plays an important role in upholding our constitutional rights. Please continue to speak up for democracy and civil rights in every space including our elected offices, our universities, and our halls of justice.
Trump won’t unilaterally lower China tariffs, White House says
Donald Trump remains firm that the United States is not going to unilaterally reduce tariffs on Chinese goods without concessions from China, Leavitt said, hours after Trump floated the idea of reducing the current rate of 145% down to 80% as the two sides prepare for talks in Switzerland.
“That was a number the president threw out there, and we’ll see what happens this weekend,” she told reporters.
At the White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt says secretary of State Marco Rubio is in constant contact with the leaders of both India and Pakistan.
With tensions continuing to escalate between the two neighboring countries, Leavitt reiterated that Donald Trump wants to see the conflict de-escalate.
Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk detained by US immigration authorities must be released, judge rules
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey who has been held for over six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention facility after she co-wrote an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
US district judge William Sessions during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont, granted bail to Öztürk, who is at the center of one of the highest-profile cases to emerge from Donald Trump’s campaign to deport pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses.
The judge ruled shortly after a federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to re-detain Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian campus activist who a different judge in Vermont ordered released last week after immigration authorities arrested him as well.
Ozturk’s arrest on 25 March by masked, plainclothes law enforcement officers on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, near her home was captured in a viral video and occurred after the state department revoked her student visa.
The sole basis authorities have provided for revoking her visa was an opinion piece she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the school’s response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.
Her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union had argued that her arrest and detention were unlawfully designed to punish her for speech protected by the constitution’s first amendment and to chill the speech of others.
Öztürk was moved to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, even though her lawyer filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts the day she was arrested and a judge there barred her from being moved out of the state without 48 hours’ notice.
By the time that order came down, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had already taken her to Vermont, where she was held briefly before being flown to Louisiana.
Rather than dismiss her case as the administration wanted, a Massachusetts judge transferred the case to Vermont, saying it could be properly heard there.
Sessions then ordered Öztürk transferred to Vermont so she could be available as he weighed ordering her release and considered the “significant constitutional concerns” she had raised.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered her transferred to Vermont by 14 May, but Sessions opted to proceed with a previously-scheduled bail hearing to go forward on Friday and allow Ozturk to appear remotely after her lawyers said she was suffering from worsening asthma attacks while in custody.
