David Frum

After all, if it's really possible that there are about to be acts of terrorism by Iran inside the United States,

How can Congress continue to blockade funds for the Department of Homeland Security until it gets reforms in the way that the Department of Homeland Security operates, including an end to the lying that it's been such a disgrace of the Department of Homeland Security?

You're going to see a real press by the Trump administration to say, release the funds and let the Department of Homeland Security resume its operations exactly the way it wants to, including falsely calling people terrorists if they operate a camera near an immigration agent.

you're going to see attacks on the freedom of the press.

This administration has already made it clear that it regards it as illegal, criminal, for reporters simply to ask questions of Pentagon employees about what they're doing with the American people's money, about what they're doing with the American people's security, about what they're doing with the lives of soldiers entrusted to their care.

That has been the view of this administration.

No, you are not allowed to ask any of these questions.

We're going to yank your press credentials if you have any unauthorized conversations with anybody in the building.

You're not allowed to do that.

Only the designated leaders of the building get to speak at all.

And if they're not speaking and if they're saying things that look like they might not be true, you can't second guess or question them.

We have had many instances over the first year of the Trump administration of false invocations of emergency powers.

The whole tariff nonsense, the tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court, those tariffs rested on false claims by the President of the United States about economic emergencies.

Well, now there's a real war, and there's a real risk of terrorist activity inside the United States.

That's a much more plausible emergency than anything Trump invoked about tariffs.

And what court will say, you know what, we don't think you're telling the truth about this either.

Courts will be very reluctant to do that.

So there'll be new assertions of emergency power in all kinds of contexts.

We know that people around the president, people who have the president's ear, have been urging him to use emergency powers against the elections of 2026.

the possibility of that temptation being accepted are much higher today than they were 10 days ago or a week ago.