Zero Ships. No Courts. One Suit.

May 10, 2025

Stephen Fucking Miller and the Wrinkled Suit of Fascism

Stephen Miller, the dead-eyed homunculus of white nationalist policy wants to suspend habeas corpus. Not metaphorically or in theory. He wants to erase it from the legal landscape like it's a speed bump on his road to mass detention. This is the same ghoulish little fascist who engineered family separations and gleefully carved loopholes into refugee protections. Now he’s running his smug mealy mouth again, treating one of the oldest pillars of due process as a disposable inconvenience.

Miller, who owns one cheap suit and has worn it to every public appearance since 2016, isn’t making a legal argument. He never does. He’s baiting the country into accepting authoritarian rule, one emergency decree at a time. He claims the southern border counts as an “invasion” under the Constitution’s Suspension Clause. That clause has been invoked only four times in American history. And those during overt atmospheres of open rebellion or full-scale war. Miller’s big emergency is a dip in Fox News ratings. It should be obvious that any suspension of habeas corpus should not be used to detain asylum seekers. And it can never be suspended by executive fiat. But Miller doesn’t care about precedent or legality. He cares about seeing what he can get away with before anyone tries to stop him.

Habeas corpus is the right to demand a court hearing if the state detains you. It is the underpinning of every legal resistance we have left. It is the foundational hand hold that all current points of resistance are grasping to. Without it, there is no challenge of appeal and no due process. You just end up in a jail cell while a bureaucrat with unchecked power lounges on the golf course. It’s the line that separates a flawed democracy from open authoritarianism. You don’t suspend that because your immigration policy is unpopular. And you damn sure don’t let a worm like Stephen Miller who was grown in lab, in a vat of cold mayonnaise, erase it with a smirk and a single rumpled suit.

Steve Vladeck, a constitutional scholar, puts it plainly: the executive branch cannot suspend habeas corpus on its own. Congress has to authorize it. Period. So this is not a legal strategy. It’s a press stunt. It’s fear-porn for authoritarians and it’s been working. We’ve let them inch toward this for over 100 days, letting them frame minor actions as justified under emergency powers. Now they’re testing the major stuff. And they’re watching to see if anyone gives a shit.

148. Suspending Habeas Corpus

And while Miller grinds his teeth about imaginary invasions, the administration is out here bragging. Trump officials are claiming a 95% drop in illegal border crossings. They’re talking about the safest streets, lowest crime, most secure homeland in modern memory. So again, what is the emergency? If we’re truly the safest we’ve ever been, with the lowest crime and strongest border enforcement in decades, why are we being told the only solution is to impose the most draconian measures in American history? How do you square record safety with emergency powers designed for wartime tyranny? You don’t. Unless the emergency isn’t real. You don’t, unless it’s manufactured, to justify a power grab they’ve been planning all along.

This is the script. They want the power of a dictator but the optics of a savior. It’s a performance directly reminiscent of all despot dictators. Think Putin with his shirtless photo ops and manipulated election numbers, or Kim Jong-un proclaiming economic miracles while his people starve. Every despot worth their boots crafts a fantasy of strength and benevolence, wrapping brutal repression in the language of national pride. That’s what this is. It’s not governance, it’s propaganda aimed at softening the public for something much worse. They’ll smile and tell you the crisis is over, and then use that same imaginary crisis to justify permanent emergency powers. It’s gaslight authoritarianism. You’re not supposed to make sense of it. You’re supposed to submit to it.

Enter "Project Homecoming." A program offering undocumented migrants a thousand bucks and a free plane ticket to deport themselves. Of course, that’s a euphemism. The reality is coerced departure under threat of detention or worse. Trump has openly bragged that those who refuse will face "severe penalties" and "sudden deportation." The program was launched via executive order, allegedly. Though, conveniently, the administration hasn’t made the full text publicly available. Because this isn’t about transparency or cost-saving. It’s about conditioning people to accept soft expulsions as policy, and then harder ones as justice.

"Sudden deportation" isn’t a legal term. It’s a threat, a slogan for a system that will not even pretend that it honors due process. It implies no hearing, no warning, no time to contact a lawyer or say goodbye to your kids. It’s exactly the model of illegal rendition we’re seeing now. Quiet, sudden disappearances under color of law, stripped of transparency or recourse, and challenged only after the damage is done. It’s the blunt force version of removal. Snap decisions by empowered enforcers with no oversight, no accountability, and no patience for constitutional limitations. Once they normalize this, there will be no floor to what comes next.

Miller and his ilk are laying the rhetorical groundwork to strip due process from anyone who isn’t white, wealthy, MAGA or waving the right flag. The more they convince the public that deportation is voluntary, the less they have to honor the law. This is the same blueprint as family separations: fabricate a legal gray area, flood it with bureaucratic cruelty, and dare the courts to clean up the mess afterwards.

At every step, Miller is there. Like a ghost of America’s worst instincts in human form. Hollow-eyed, morally bankrupt, and somehow still whispering in the president’s ear. He’s not floating anything. He’s signaling exactly where they’re headed.

If they actually attempt to suspend habeas corpus through executive decree, it will be an act of war against the Constitution. Every legal case, every immigration hold, every federal detention will become a constitutional crisis overnight. Judges will be forced to choose between obeying their oath or submitting to an unlawful command. ICE and CBP will be handed the power to continue disappearing people without recourse. And those disappearances will escalate and expand in scope and targets because at that point there will absolutely no fear of challenge of any kind. If that line breaks, if habeas falls, it won’t just be immigrants who lose access to the courts. It’ll be anyone who ends up on the wrong side of the next emergency order. That’s what’s at stake: whether we still live under law, or under decree.

Under normal circumstances, the resistance would come from the courts, the Department of Justice, watchdog agencies, and the press. But those forces have been abolished, sidelined, or compromised. The judiciary is effectively neutered. The DOJ leadership is in lockstep. Loyal, obedient, and fully onboard. Independent oversight has been gutted or defanged. And the press, what’s left of it, is locked out, shouted down, or deliberately fed misinformation. So the question becomes: if the usual checks no longer have teeth, then who exactly is going to stop them? Because if it isn’t us, it’s no one. And "us" doesn’t mean wishful thinking or tweets. It means a coalition of legal defenders filing immediate injunctions in every jurisdiction they can. It means state attorneys general willing to drag this to the Supreme Court in open confrontation. It means mass mobilization, coordinated resistance, and strategic noncooperation from the public. Civil disobedience, sanctuary systems, worker refusal or anything that throws friction into the machine. If none of that materializes fast, then we’re not in the prelude anymore. We’re in the aftermath.

The Arrest of a Mayor, and the Message It Sends

On May 9, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside the Delaney Hall ICE facility for doing what elected officials are supposed to do: defend their community. He wasn’t looting or rioting or trespassing in disguise. Despite all the headlines leading with the word ‘protest’, that is a framing made in bad faith or ignorance.

He was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with members of Congress Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver who were attempting to conduct an official oversight visit to the site. Federal agents arrested him anyway. That’s the headline.

Delaney Hall, now operating under a $1 billion, 15-year contract with private prison contractor GEO Group, was quietly reopened on May 1. Baraka and other local officials opposed it from the start. Not because of some stunt or political theater but because the facility lacks proper permits, violates safety codes, and represents everything wrong with the secretive, privatized detention model ICE has been expanding under Trump. GEO Group, coincidentally is historically one of the worst offenders of the private prisons, which is saying a lot.

When the congressional delegation showed up to inspect it, they were stonewalled. Homeland Security officials accused them of "storming the gate." That is a lie. Congressional members have a legal right to inspect these facilities at any time, without notice. That right was ignored. They were blocked at the gate, treated roughly, and framed as intruders. Baraka, while not technically covered by the same federal statute, was there as the mayor of the city hosting the site. His presence was lawful, obvious, and rooted in duty. The decision to arrest him wasn't about legality. It was about optics. It was about sending a message.

It’s the same message they sent when Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested for shielding an immigrant from ICE recently. The same message wrapped in the same tired propaganda line: "no one is above the law." But they don’t mean it. They mean: no one who disagrees with the Trump Regime gets to act or practice free speech without harsh punishment. And their infantile, idiot base laps it up with glee. They cheer for the show of power, not realizing it’s their rights on the chopping block too.

Baraka was released hours later, but that is no reason to celebrate. The larger point here is that the message landed. If they can arrest a sitting mayor and bar Congress from oversight, then we are already more than halfway down the slide. Detention without oversight is imprisonment with branding. Treating elected officials as agitators isn’t a glitch. It’s a feature. And it’s happening out in the open.

I only wonder how long it will be before we find out that ICE agents have already been supplemented with mercenaries from Contellis, Blackwater or Triple Canopy?

No Ships, No Deal, No Future

As of this week, not a single cargo ship has departed from China’s major ports bound for the U.S. Zero. The Shanghai and Ningbo ports, once churning with transpacific traffic, are now silent. For the first time since the pandemic, the largest engine in global commerce is idle when it comes to U.S. exports. The implications are catastrophic.

consider that with the fact that Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng abruptly left ongoing trade negotiations with the U.S. in Geneva, offering no explanation. No statement. No formal end to the talks. One minute he was in the room, the next minute he was gone. There is currently no official reporting of this that I have found, but anyone with half a pulse could guess why, even without being fluent in diplomatic trade protocol.

Picture it: Scott Bessent, barely restraining a smirk, tosses a condescending, half-prepared slide deck across the table and says something like, "You want access to the U.S. market? Then play ball and stop the fentanyl." Calmly, Vice Premier He responds: "We are here in good faith. But we do not respond to threats."

Bessent, sensing he’s losing the room, blurts out, "We hold all the cards. You need us more than we need you."

And without another word, He Lifeng stands, collects his papers, and walks out. That’s your Art of the Deal. Insult your largest supplier on a global stage, then act confused when the shelves go bare. Unverified

I've warned for weeks that this administration was openly courting a supply collapse. You cannot slap 145% tariffs on essential goods, wage diplomatic theater at the negotiating table, and expect the world to keep playing along. But they don’t actually want negotiation. They want dominance. And now, the fallout is becoming visible: stalled shipments, rising prices, and corporate inventories evaporating overnight.

There is no contingency plan. There is no domestic infrastructure ready to scale up and fill the vacuum. They’ve sabotaged our access to goods while doing nothing to rebuild internal capacity. And when the shortage fully lands, they will not take responsibility. They will blame sabotage, foreign aggression, or "unforeseen factors.". Who am I kidding, they will just blame Biden. But none of this is unforeseen. It’s the direct, observable consequence of governing through tantrum.

This is what it looks like when propaganda meets logistics. You can lie to people about safety, crime, and borders all day long. But when the trucks stop running and the ports stop humming, even the most loyal supporters start asking where the fuck their insulin and amazon dopamine hits have gone.

Final Thoughts

There is no bottom.

These people are not haphazardly stumbling into authoritarianism. They are meticulously staging it. Every arrest, every walkout, every suspension floated on a Sunday morning show is a test to see how much more they can get away with. And so far, the answer is: all of it.

There’s no reforming a system that shrugs at constitutional collapse. No memo or lawsuit will stop what’s coming if the institutions meant to guard the line have already handed in their badges and started rehearsing press conferences. The courts aren’t coming. The agencies have been hollowed. The press is muzzled. The public has been sedated with dopamine loops and border scare porn.

Honestly, I despise ‘calls to action’ But realistically, what’s left? It is time to force confrontation. Disrupt every channel they rely on for control. logistical, rhetorical, bureaucratic. Challenge every inch of it while we still can.

Because this isn’t the beginning. It’s the beginning of the end. How far are you willing to let them take it? They are setting up an inescapable labyrinth of fear and retaliation. By the time the masses wake up in numbers large enough to matter, they will have already developed the infrastructure to shut us down with impunity.