Who really fired the shot that started the American Revolution?
In 1887, Josiah Bushnell Grinnell spoke to a packed house at the Congregational Church in New Haven, Vermont. The U.S. congressman from Iowa and radical abolitionist in the lead-up to the Civil War had returned to his tiny hometown to be the keynote speaker at a Historical Day commemoration.
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Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
ICE Barbie Offers Her Own Made-Up Definition of Habeas Corpus
Kristi Noem gave an egregiously wrong definition of the legal principle habeas corpus while testifying to senators Tuesday. 'Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,' President Donald Trump's homeland security secretary said. She was quickly cut off by the stunned senator who had asked her to define the term, Maggie Hassan. 'That's incorrect,' the New Hampshire Democrat said. Hassan explained that the well-known legal concept refers to a detained person's right to know why they are being held so they can challenge their imprisonment in court. The Trump administration is considering revoking habeas corpus, which is enshrined by the Constitution, allowing it to hold detainees without any recourse to challenge their detention. 'If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason,' Hassan told Noem. 'Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.' After schooling Noem, Hassan asked her if she supported habeas corpus. 'I support habeas corpus,' answered Noem, who was testifying to Congress about the Department of Homeland Security's budget. 'I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.' Article I of the Constitution says that habeas corpus 'shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.' While the Constitution doesn't specify who holds the power to suspend habeas corpus, throughout the history of America, the power has belonged to Congress, not the president. Habeas corpus has only been suspended four times. It was suspended throughout the country during the Civil War, in eleven South Carolina counties controlled by the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction, in the Philippines during its 1905 insurrection, and in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941. The Trump administration has faced legal pushback on its attempts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants and non-citizen activists without due process. Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top aides who is behind his mass deportation strategy, said earlier this month that habeas corpus was a 'privilege' that the administration is looking at suspending. Noem's agency has played a key role in carrying out the mass deportation plan. She has earned the nickname ICE Barbie for often donning garish outfits to cosplay as a boots-on-the-ground law enforcement officer.
Associated Press
14 hours ago
- Associated Press
Myanmar arrests 16 suspects, including 6-year-old girl, over alleged links to assassination
BANGKOK (AP) — Security forces in military-ruled Myanmar have arrested a six-year-old girl along with 15 other people suspected of involvement in the assassination of a retired high-ranking army officer, state-run media reported on Friday. Former Brig. Gen. Cho Tun Aung, 68, was shot outside his home in Mayangon township, in Yangon, the country's biggest city, on May 22. A militant group calling itself the Golden Valley Warriors claimed responsibility for the attack. The killing of Cho Tun Aung, who was a former ambassador to Cambodia, was the latest attack against figures linked to the ruling military since Myanmar was plunged into civil war after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The 16 suspects -- 13 males and three females -- were arrested in four different regions between May 23-29, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said. The newspaper said Cho Tun Aung was shot dead while walking with his grandchild. Those arrested include Lin Latt Shwe, the six-year-old daughter of the alleged assassin, Myo Ko Ko, who was reported to have at least three other aliases. The newspaper report said the child and her parents were arrested in the central city of Bagan. Others detained include the owner of a private hospital which is alleged to have provided treatment to the gunman, who according to the newspaper report said he suffered a gunshot wound during the attack. The Golden Valley Warriors said in a statement posted on Facebook soon after the killing that Cho Tun Aung had been teaching internal security and counterterrorism at Myanmar's National Defense College and that as such he was complicit in what the group said was atrocities committed during the civil war. The targets of assassinations are often high-ranking active or retired military officers, but senior civil servants and local officials have also been attacked, in addition to business associates of the ruling generals and those believed to be informers or collaborators with the army. The ruling military has been accused of human rights violation on a far greater scale, including the bombings of villages causing multiple civilian deaths.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - Why are ICE agents running amok? Because they can.
As the Trump administration pushes for more mass deportations, law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security are suddenly everywhere. In San Diego, Homeland Security officers conducted a SWAT-style raid on a restaurant, handcuffing 19 employees over an hour and slamming the manager against a wall in the process. Eventually, they arrested four people. The raid was so heavy-handed that the officers had to deploy flashbang grenades to escape from the angry crowd that gathered in response. Even members of Congress aren't safe. Last week, Homeland Security officers forced their way into Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D) New York office without a warrant. When one of the staffers protested, she was handcuffed and detained. The cases you hear about are only the tip of the iceberg. Federal officers are fanning out across the country, conducting raids, traffic stops, even scooping people up at courthouses when they appear for immigration hearings and carting them away in leg irons and shackles — harsh treatment that you seldom see even when felons are arrested. This heavy-handedness and cruelty isn't a glitch — it's intentional, as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, attempt to frighten immigrants into leaving the country. Even legal residents and American citizens are getting caught up in the crackdown. And the worst part is, while things like barging into a congressman's office and detaining his staffers aren't legal, there is nothing anyone can do about it. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents force their way into your house without a warrant, slap you around and detain your family at gunpoint while conducting an illegal search, you have no way of getting your constitutional claims into federal court. As a practical matter, these agents are above the law and cannot be held accountable for violating your constitutional rights. Why this is true is yet another example of our system of checks and balances failing to appreciate the risk of a president deciding to simply the the law. After the Civil War, to ensure that states abided by the Constitution, Congress passed 42 U.S. Code 1983, giving individuals the right to sue in federal court when their constitutional rights had been violated under color of state law. At the time, it was inconceivable that there should be a similar need to sue for constitutional violations by the federal government. For one thing, law enforcement was almost exclusively under state control — the FBI was not founded until 1908. Moreover, the federal government was seen, generally, as the perennial good guy and the guarantor of constitutional rights, a position it held right through the civil rights era. As the federal government and federal law enforcement grew, this became more and more untenable. So in 1971, in a case called Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, the Supreme Court created what is known as a 'Bivens action' as an analogue of section 1983, giving individuals the right to sue in court when their Fourth Amendment rights were violated under color of federal law. Since then, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to extend the reach of Bivens, ultimately holding in 2022 that no one could ever bring a legal claim for excessive force — or any constitutional claim — against a federal officer enforcing immigration laws. This is dangerous, especially now. The rule of law is not supposed to run on the honor system. Section 1983 and Bivens actions are not just about monetary damages. They are a way for citizens to hold their government accountable. Officers' understanding that they may someday have to explain their actions is a powerful deterrent to bad behavior. Nobody likes accountability, but it makes all of us, including police officers, better people. The current system of 'what happens in ICE, stays in ICE' is the opposite of that. Unchecked by the courts, ICE's behavior will only get worse over the next three and a half years. Even the most well-meaning bureaucracies are subject to mission creep, so you can expect Noem's troops to expand their activities well beyond detaining immigrants. The Homeland Security officers who invaded Nadler's office were hunting for protesters, and Homan has already threatened state officials and even members of Congress with arrest for 'interfering' with ICE. When it comes to constitutional rights, no man is an island. The threats, performative cruelty and denials of basic due process are not attacks on immigrants. They are attacks on the rule of law itself. You should be just as upset and concerned by the Guatemalan snatched off the street and hustled onto a plane with no notice and no due process as you are by the sobbing staffer handcuffed in Nadler's office. In the eyes of our Constitution, they are all of us. Chris Truax is a charter member of the Society for the Rule of Law and an appellate attorney. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
