May 21, 2025

Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Once again, the ignorance of Trump personnel is appalling.

Trump's Homeland Security secretary says habeas corpus lets him 'remove people from this country'.

Senator Maggie Hassan asked Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, “What is Habeas Corpus?”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the constitutional provision that allows people to legally challenge their detention by the government is actually a tool the Trump administration can use in its broader crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border. She called habeas corpus “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights.”

Noem, testifying before a congressional committee Tuesday, gave that response when asked by Sen. Maggie Hassan to define the legal concept.

“That's incorrect,” the New Hampshire Democrat swiftly interrupted Noem, defining the “legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people." Hassan, a former attorney who practiced in Boston, went on to call habeas corpus “the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”

The back and forth follows comments by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who said earlier this month that President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand his administration's legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, Miller said the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus.

What is habeas corpus?

The Latin term means, literally, “you have the body.” Federal courts use a writ of habeas corpus to bring a prisoner before a neutral judge to determine if imprisonment is legal.

Habeas corpus was included in the Constitution as an import from English common law. Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which was meant to ensure that the king released prisoners when the law did not justify confining them.
(Associated Press).

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Answering the conspiracy theory Trump himself promulgated.

Biden Did Not Get Prostate Cancer Diagnosis Before Last Week, Spokesman Says.

During Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency, his annual health record never included one particular test: a prostate-specific antigen test.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s office pushed back on speculation that there had been a coverup around the illness.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had never received a diagnosis of prostate cancer before last week, his spokesman said on Tuesday, pushing back against speculation that there had been some sort of coverup around the illness.

The spokesman, Chris Meagher, also said Mr. Biden’s last-known prostate-specific antigen test, the most common way to screen for prostate cancer, was in 2014. Mr. Biden would have been 71 or 72 years old at the time.

The new details help provide some clarity about Mr. Biden’s health records, but they still do not directly give an answer on why Mr. Biden was not regularly screened for prostate cancer throughout his presidency.

Mr. Meagher did not respond to that question, and Kevin O’Connor, Mr. Biden’s doctor in the White House, did not respond to inquiries. But allies of Mr. Biden, 82, and medical experts point to guidelines that advise against P.S.A. screening for men over the age of 70. The guidelines vary slightly across different medical organizations, but doctors generally agree that men of an advanced age should not automatically be screened for prostate cancer.

But Mr. Biden was not just the average American man, and his diagnosis of stage 4 prostate cancer has raised the question: Should the oldest president in American history have gone beyond those guidelines? Mr. Biden, until July, was also running for a second term in office, and had he won, he would have been 86 at the end of his second term.

Some men over 70 do choose to have the test despite the guidelines. President Trump, 78, has been regularly screened for prostate cancer, according to his medical records from the last decade. Mr. Trump’s medical report from his physical last month showed his P.S.A. level was normal.

And prostate cancer experts caution that some men suddenly find out they have advanced prostate cancer even after being screened regularly year after year and told they have a clean bill of health.

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist who served as an adviser on the coronavirus pandemic for the Biden administration, said presidents should be held to a higher standard than the average American. He emphasized that should especially be the case for presidents when they are above the age of 70, and he suggested changing the way the president’s health is assessed.

“We have to have confidence that their health condition is not intervening,” Dr. Emanuel said. “We need a committee of doctors who are not chosen in a political manner who are making an independent evaluation of the president and making it public.”

In announcing his diagnosis on Sunday, Mr. Biden’s office said his cancer has a Gleason score of 9, which means it is among the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Mr. Biden’s office also said the cancer has spread to his bones, which means it is incurable though it can be managed.

On Monday, Mr. Trump seem to suggest Mr. Biden’s cancer diagnosis was hidden from the public and questioned why it took so long for doctors to discover it.

“It can take years to get to this level of danger,” he said. “So it’s a — look, it’s a very, very sad situation, and I feel very badly about it, and I think people should try and find out what happened.”

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent, volunteer panel of national experts, issued guidance in 2018 that recommended against P.S.A. screening for men over 70 years old. In explaining their recommendation, the task force said many men develop prostate cancer with no symptoms and often die with the disease without knowing it.

The American Urological Association advises medical professionals to consider a range of factors before screening for prostate cancer in men above 70.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he wasn’t being screened because honestly the data don’t really support screening in someone that age,” Dr. David Penson, the chair of urologic oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the secretary of the American Urological Association, said about Mr. Biden.

“Some people they worry and they have regrets and they’ll ask their doctor to do it and a lot of doctors will do it just because it makes the patients feel better,” he added. “But sometimes you find something that you didn’t need to find because they weren’t going to die of it anyway.”

Ultimately, experts say decisions about screening should be made after discussions between doctors and their patients.

“Guidelines on P.S.A. screening for prostate cancer have been evolving, and they do vary somewhat,” said Dr. Jason Efstathiou, a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and prostate radiation oncologist at Mass General Brigham. “There is broader agreement on the importance of shared decision making between the patient and their doctor.”

It is unclear how much, if any, discussion Mr. Biden had with his doctors when his P.S.A. screening stopped in 2014. (New York Times)

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one more thing. Or two.

Our poor country. The poor people of St. Louis.

Don’t you wish we had a compassionate President again!

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