Kristi Noem thinks habeas corpus is the power to detain people arbitrarily
By 
I wish I was joking or even exaggerating:
Days after the Trump administration threatened to attempt to suspend habeas corpus in an effort to bulldoze due process protections for its mass deportation campaign, one key Cabinet member seems a bit confused about the scheme.
“What is habeas corpus?” Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a committee hearing Tuesday.
“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to—,” Noem responded, before a visibly alarmed Hassan intervened.
“Let me stop you,” the Democratic lawmaker interjected. “Excuse me, that is incorrect.”
“President Lincoln used it,” Noem insisted.
[…]
Hassan emphasized this point on Tuesday. “It has never been done without approval of Congress,” she said. “Even Abraham Lincoln got retroactive approval from Congress.”
Later in the hearing, however, Noem admitted that she was unaware of key aspects of this argument. Asked by Sen. Andy Kim if she knew where in the Constitution the suspension of habeas corpus was discussed, Noem replied: “I do not. Nope.”
My only regret from the exchange is that I wish Hassan had given her a little more rope to express her view that Lincoln was exercising his right of habeas corpus rather than ignoring a writ of habeas corpus after Ex Parte Merryman.
HASSAN: What is habeas corpus? NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country HASSAN: That's incorrect
[image or embed]— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 20, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Ideally, Trump would like every member of his cabinet to be as dumb, ignorant, and authoritarian as he is, and you have to say on that score you can’t dispute that he’s been mostly successful.