The Thin Red Line is a blistering warning about the Trump regime’s increasing flirtation with suspending habeas corpus, a constitutional guarantee that protects individuals from being disappeared by the state without due process. Through a fictionalized-yet-plausible narrative of a black-bag operation in the middle of the night, Prophet drives home the terrifying reality of what it means when the government can detain anyone, citizen or not, without arrest records, legal representation, or a court hearing.
This isn’t theoretical. Trump’s policy goon Stephen Miller publicly suggested that suspending habeas corpus is being “looked at” under the pretense of national sovereignty. The legal groundwork, as Prophet notes, has only ever been deployed in the direst of national emergencies, and even then was quickly reined in. What’s being floated now would be vastly more sweeping and permanent.
The essay is an alarm bell. The removal of habeas corpus is the erasure of civil rights infrastructure. Without it, none of the freedoms Americans take for granted; speech, assembly, press, due process, or bodily liberty, can be guaranteed.
Scary! And serious! Words cannot convey my anger at the disgusting regime tearing our country apart. So much of our "free" lives are at risk, and we may not understand that until the consequences hit us if something doesn't stop all the chaos and destruction of our Constitution.
The Thin Red Line is a blistering warning about the Trump regime’s increasing flirtation with suspending habeas corpus, a constitutional guarantee that protects individuals from being disappeared by the state without due process. Through a fictionalized-yet-plausible narrative of a black-bag operation in the middle of the night, Prophet drives home the terrifying reality of what it means when the government can detain anyone, citizen or not, without arrest records, legal representation, or a court hearing.
This isn’t theoretical. Trump’s policy goon Stephen Miller publicly suggested that suspending habeas corpus is being “looked at” under the pretense of national sovereignty. The legal groundwork, as Prophet notes, has only ever been deployed in the direst of national emergencies, and even then was quickly reined in. What’s being floated now would be vastly more sweeping and permanent.
The essay is an alarm bell. The removal of habeas corpus is the erasure of civil rights infrastructure. Without it, none of the freedoms Americans take for granted; speech, assembly, press, due process, or bodily liberty, can be guaranteed.
Thank you! Very clear and powerful!
Scary! And serious! Words cannot convey my anger at the disgusting regime tearing our country apart. So much of our "free" lives are at risk, and we may not understand that until the consequences hit us if something doesn't stop all the chaos and destruction of our Constitution.
If you don't have to produce the body, what's difference between disappearing into "Legal Limbo" and "death flights" of Argentina, Chile or others?
"Death flights" of Chile and Argentina would not be far off if Habeus Corpus is not held intact by our courts, which themselves must stand.
Yep.