President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he’s fine with governors making their own decisions on how and when to reopen their states — a retreat from the day before when the president insisted such choices were up to only him because his “authority is total.”
Trump’s comments in the White House Rose Garden came as states across the northeast and pacific coast launched separate regional pacts to plan for how they plan to open up and get the economy going again.
The president said his administration will be providing states with guidelines in the coming days and he plans to soon speak with all 50 governors via conference call.
“I will be authorizing each individual governor, of each individual state, to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state in a time and a manner as most appropriate,” Trump said. “The day will be very close. Cause certain states are in much different condition and in a much different place than other states. It’s going to be very very close.”
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“The federal government will be watching them very closely and will be there to help in many different ways,” he said, adding, “The governors are going to be opening up their states. They’re going to declare when. They’re going to know when. Some can open very very shortly.”
Trump caused a stir Monday when he tweeted that it was his decision on whether or not to open individual states, something he expanded upon at Monday’s press briefing. It was an assertion that was quickly pushed back on by constitutional scholars, Democrats, and some leading Republicans.
At that briefing, he said the president “calls the shots,” governors “can’t do anything without the approval of the United States,” and that his “authority is total.”
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The authority to require businesses to close in a public health crisis is what is a known as a “police power,” and it is reserved by the Constitution to the states, not to the federal government. Because the states instituted the shutdowns, they will have to be the ones to lift them.
Still, the president can use the bully pulpit to push governors toward reopening their states.
But Tuesday he said he would not be doing that.
“I’m not going to put pressure on any governor to open,” Trump said. “I’m not going to say to Gov. Cuomo you have to open within seven days.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Trump would create a “constitutional crisis” if he tries to override any of the governors.
“If he says to me, ‘I declare it open,’ and that is a public health risk or it’s reckless with the welfare of the people of my state, I will oppose it,” he said. “And then we will have a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades, where states tell the federal government, ‘We’re not going to follow your order.’ It would be terrible for this country. It would be terrible for this president.”
“We don’t have a king — we have a president, and that was a big decision,” Cuomo added.
Trump responded on Twitter, saying that New York’s governor was “calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”
On Monday, Cuomo and governors from six other northeastern states — Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, John Carney of Delaware and Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island — announced they will jointly form a panel to, as Cuomo said, “help devise a plan to slowly reopen parts of each state.” On the West Coast, Washington, Oregon and California announced a similar pact to plan for their states’ reopenings.
At his Tuesday press briefing, Cuomo said he wasn’t looking to have a fight with Trump.
“President did his briefing last night, and the president was clearly unhappy,” Cuomo said. “The president did a number of tweets this morning that he’s clearly unhappy. Did a tweet about mutiny on the bounty and governors are mutineers. I didn’t follow the exact meaning of the tweet, but the basic essence of the tweet was the he was not happy with governors and this was a mutiny. The president is clearly spoiling for a fight on this issue.”
