President Donald Trump engaged in “serious” discussions about suspending a key right enshrined in Article I of the Constitution in the early months of his second term, The New York Times revealed in a report published Monday, and to such an extent as to compel top White House officials to issue a “blinking red warning light.”

That constitutional right was habeas corpus, the legal mechanism ratified by the United States in 1788 by which individuals can challenge arbitrary detentions. The idea to suspend that right – at least, for undocumented migrants – came from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, as was detailed in the forthcoming book viewed by the Times.

“When it came to suspending habeas corpus, one of the most powerful constitutional protections of individual rights, Mr. Miller was in effect encouraging something Mr. Trump had long dreamed of: bypassing judges in deportation cases,” the Times’ report reads.

“The president was interested. He asked advisers about Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas rights during the Civil War. Mr. Miller directed the Justice Department to study the issue.”

As the discussions turned “serious,” the Times reported, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf penned a memo for White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with the subject line: “The Writ of Habeas Corpus.”

“Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped ‘confidential,’ the memo was careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law,” The Times wrote, describing the “secret” memo.

“A senior administration official, speaking on background because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said for this article that ‘senior staff’ had requested the memos, and that they were seen by relatively few people,” The Times’ report reads.

“But the documents reflected alarm among a small group of senior aides. They felt that Mr. Miller’s eagerness to test the limits of executive power – and to accuse other branches of encroaching on it, echoing a president who bristled at any constraint – risked steering the administration, and the country, in a dangerous direction.”

A federal judge already has enough evidence to order a criminal contempt trial of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — and needs no further investigation to do it.

That's the conclusion of Marty Lederman, a Georgetown Law professor and former senior Justice Department official, writing Monday for Just Security.

Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has all he needs to act — if a federal appeals court lets him.

"The evidence the judge has already elicited is more than sufficient…" Lederman wrote.

The case goes back to March 2025. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order — a court order blocking further action while a case is heard — prohibiting the deportation of Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison. Two deportation flights took off anyway, mid-hearing.

Senior Department of Justice officials, including Blanche and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, had separately advised then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem she could proceed — telling her the written court order didn't mean what the judge's oral ruling had said minutes earlier. The Civil Division lawyers actually arguing the case were kept in the dark.

Boasberg launched a contempt investigation. A divided appeals court panel shut it down in April, issuing a writ of mandamus — a legal order forcing a lower court to act — that halted the probe. That ruling is now before the full appeals court on a petition for rehearing.

Lederman argued the panel got it wrong, and that Blanche and Bove's legal advice to Noem amounted to an "egregious" violation of the rule of law.

"The evidence demonstrating those facts would also be sufficient to support a notice of criminal contempt to Blanche and Bove," he wrote — a formal charge that would initiate a trial.

The stakes extend beyond the courtroom. President Donald Trump nominated Blanche to permanently lead the Justice Department, setting up what is expected to be a heated confirmation battle. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it is "hard to say" whether Blanche can win confirmation.

The Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation hearing.

Five Democratic U.S. Representatives from Michigan sent a letter on Thursday to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin to oppose the development of a planned ICE detention facility in Romulus.

Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham led the letter and was joined by Reps. Debbie Dingell of Ann Arbor, Hillary Scholten of Grand Rapids, Kristen McDonald Rivet of Bay City, and Shri Thanedar of Detroit — almost the entire Democratic delegation to the U.S. House from Michigan, except for Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has also been actively fighting against the detention center’s opening. The detention center is in Thanedar’s district.

The letter lays out a number of arguments that have been well-worn against the detention center — including local opposition and zoning concerns and environmental regulations for the area’s floodplain and wetlands.

“In response to initial press inquiries, an ICE spokesperson stated that new detention ‘sites will undergo community impact studies and rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase’,” the representatives wrote. “No local officials were consulted about any such study or due diligence, raising questions about whether the analysis was completed before the purchase of the facility and, if it did occur, the accuracy of the work.”

“Given these dynamics, it is clear DHS must not move forward with the planned Romulus detention facility,” the letter continues, noting that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and the City of Romulus have already sued in federal court to stop or slow the detention center’s development.

Stevens and Scholten have also been vocally opposed to the major ICE detention facility in Michigan that is currently operating, the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, a facility privately owned by GEO Group and contracted as an ICE detention center, especially in the wake of the December 2025 death of Nenko Gantchev at the Baldwin facility.

A hunger strike at that facility and concerns about the conditions for detainees were further cited as reasons not to open a second major detention facility, this time owned by ICE, in Michigan.

Both U.S. Senators from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin and Gary Peters, sent a similar letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February with a series of questions on planned capacity, staffing levels, and environmental or economic impact analysis.

Thursday’s letter noted that Slotkin and Peters received no response to that letter and re-emphasized their questions, but also added new questions about the scope and timeline for reviewing DHS contracts and the property acquisition process for the purchase of the Romulus property.

The letter also comes as a group of local advocates and organizers has been heavily criticizing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her relative silence on the development of the detention center, with Nessel and federal elected officials taking a much more vocal and active stance against it.