Two things to hold simultaneously from this piece.
First: the internal pushback was real. Scharf wrote the memos. The White House counsel raised concerns. James Blair asked three clarifying questions in the Insurrection Act meeting that nobody could answer. Susie Wiles told colleagues that sending federal agents to Minneapolis to arrest people getting benefits wrongly was "so far off that mission." The Insurrection Act meeting broke up without a decision.
Second: none of that stopped what actually happened. Federal agents shot and killed Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, on January 7. They shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, on January 24. Both were U.S. citizens protesting deportation policies. Miller called Pretti an "assassin." Vance walked into the senior staff meeting days after Pretti's death and pushed to invoke the Insurrection Act to "crush the unrest."
The restraint wasn't principled opposition to the project. It was tactical concern about self-inflicted legal damage. Scharf's worry was that weak arguments would produce sweeping court rulings constraining everything that followed.
The people arguing against suspension of habeas corpus were mostly arguing against bad legal strategy. The people who died in Minnesota were not a variable in that calculation.
Excerpt from REGIME CHANGE, by
@jonathanvswan and me: Inside the internal alarm at Trump and his powerful adviser, Stephen Miller, looking to upend basic due process rights just months into the administration. Gift link:
nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/po…