Retreats from absolute authority claim

[struggle4progress]

By CNN
Published April 15, 2020 12:31 am

... Trump edged away from his position on Monday that a president could order states to do what he wanted. In face-saving language that lacked constitutional grounding, he said he was “authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state” ...

... Trump has spent several days preparing the ground for his attack on the WHO ...

... the WHO was far more proactive in warning about the virus than Trump, who was still denying its potency into March after predicting a “miracle” would make it go away ...

Trump’s erratic display in the White House Rose Garden was also another sign that he predominantly sees the crisis through a prism of his own political image and fortunes ...

https://abc17news.com/news/politics/national-politics/2020/04/15/trump-retreats-from-absolute-authority-in-whiplash-move/

[struggle4progress]

1. Moves to walk back total authority claim

By Press Association 2020

... Hours after suggesting that the bipartisan concerns of governors about his assertion of power would amount to an insurrection, Mr Trump abruptly reversed course on Tuesday, saying he would leave it to governors to determine the right time and manner to revive activity in their states ...

... , Mr Trump ended his daily briefing without turning the mic over to federal health experts, who have cautioned against moving too quickly to restart economic activity ...

Mr Trump outlined a vision in which workers would be tested, perhaps on a weekly basis, and governors would test travellers arriving at their states’ borders.

But the US is nowhere near having that kind of infrastructure, with testing still largely reserved for those with serious symptoms and results taking days to learn ...

https://www.ardrossanherald.com/news/national-news/18380134.president-trump-moves-walk-back-total-authority-claim/

[Laelth]

25. Somebody educated him on the Constitution. Good. n/t

-Laelth

[Cha]

2. The Who

Link to tweet

[struggle4progress]

18. Denies saying another thing he said

By Daniel Dale, Tara Subramaniam and Nathan McDermott, CNN
Updated 12:15 AM ET, Wed April 15, 2020

Speaking Tuesday in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Donald Trump denied making a comment he did make. He criticized the World Health Organization for the same thing he has done before. He wrongly suggested he was the only national leader to impose travel restrictions on China. He claimed he was "authorizing" governors to lift coronavirus restrictions even though this power always belonged to governors. He falsely claimed, again, that "nobody ever thought" there would be a crisis like this. And he repeated some of his favorite false claims about his tariffs on China ...

After he criticized the World Health Organization for praising China's supposed transparency over the coronavirus, Trump was pressed about his own previous praise of China's supposed transparency. "I don't talk about China's transparency," Trump responded. "You know, if I'm so good to China, how come I was the only person, the only leader of a country, that closed our borders tightly against China?" ...

At Tuesday's briefing, Trump blamed any shortages in medical equipment or resources on past administrations and reiterated his belief that no one could have been prepared for the current situation because these circumstances were unforeseen. "In all fairness to previous administrations, nobody ever thought anything like this was going to happen," the President said ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/politics/fact-check-trump-april-14/index.html

[Cha]

19. Stupid clusterfuck trump fustercluck.. thanks for all

this information, struggle4progress!

[struggle4progress]

3. Assertion of total authority sparks challenge from governors

Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey, Brady Dennis 2 hrs ago

... The president’s claim, first conveyed in a tweet Monday morning and underscored at a White House news conference and subsequent social media posts, caught his aides off guard and prompted them to study whether Trump would have such authority in a time of emergency like the ongoing pandemic.

Republicans were largely tepid in their criticism of Trump’s expansive views on his power ...

“The statement that he has total authority over the states and the nation cannot go uncorrected,” Cuomo said. “There are many things that you can debate in the Constitution because they’re ambiguous. This is not ambiguous” ...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was .. unequivocal, tweeting: “When it comes to reopening, SCIENCE — not politics — must be California’s guide.” Newsom outlined six factors he will consider in doing so, including protecting communities from the spread of the virus and ensuring that hospitals could handle any surge in cases ...

“I am almost positive James Madison fell off a cloud somewhere today when Trump said that,” said .. a Republican donor ...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-inaccurate-assertion-of-total-authority-sparks-challenge-from-governors/ar-BB12DsRs

[struggle4progress]

4. Walks back total authority claim

By Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Updated - Apr. 14, 2020 at 11:00 p.m.
Posted - Apr. 14, 2020 at 10:58 a.m.

... Hours after suggesting that the bipartisan concerns of governors about his assertion of power would amount to an insurrection, Trump abruptly reversed course Tuesday, saying he would leave it to governors to determine the right time and manner to revive activity in their states. He said he would be speaking with governors, probably on Thursday, to discuss his plans.

“The governors are responsible,” Trump said. “They have to take charge.”

Still, he insisted, “The governors will be very, very respectful of the presidency.”

Democratic and Republican governors had sounded the alarm after Trump asserted Monday that he and he alone would determine when and how to reopen the economy, despite clear constitutional limitations on federal powers ...

https://www.ksl.com/article/46741529/we-dont-have-a-king-trumps-total-authority-view-collides-with-state-powers

[struggle4progress]

5. Cuomo invokes Hamilton

Published: April 14, 2020 at 9:39 p.m. ET
By Quentin Fottrell

... the Democratic governor shortly after quoted the following fighting words by one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton:

“The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments,” Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton, said in a speech on the U.S. constitution.

“That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation,” Hamilton, said in the speech on the constitution to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788 ...

... Hamilton .. was a also passionate and vocal supporter of a powerful central government ...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cuomo-invokes-alexander-hamilton-in-war-of-words-with-trump-over-who-has-ultimate-authority-on-when-to-restart-economy-2020-04-14

[struggle4progress]

6. Caves in

By Jill Filipovic
Updated 10:01 PM ET, Tue April 14, 2020

... "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that's the way it's got to be. ... It's total. The governors know that" ...

But by Tuesday, after a day of pushback from governors, he was alternately trying to walk back his previous comments and spin them ...

... the President is, as his detractors have long argued, a wannabe totalitarian ...

... the President is ignorant and unintelligent. And .. any claims Republicans once had to a reasoned ideology or conservative philosophy have proven fabricated; it was just about consolidating power ...

... he either does not comprehend the severity of the lethal threat we are facing, or doesn't care ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/opinions/trump-claims-total-power-and-then-caves-in-filipovic/index.html

[struggle4progress]

7. Backsoff, says he'll consult states

By Jordan Fabian and Justin Sink
April 14, 2020, 7:03 PM EDT
Updated on April 14, 2020, 8:15 PM EDT

... “They know when it’s time to open, and we don’t want to put pressure on anybody,” Trump said Tuesday at a White House press briefing. “I’m not going to put any pressure on any governor to open.”

Trump’s comments came a day after he said he had “the ultimate authority” to order states to comply with a federal plan to reopen the economy. His remarks sparked broad criticism from legal scholars and governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo, who warned of “a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades” if the president sought to lift social-distancing requirements over states’ objections ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-14/trump-now-says-he-ll-consult-governors-about-reopening

[struggle4progress]

8. Walks back claim

By Masood Farivar
Updated April 14, 2020 09:13 PM

... “There isn’t a single person in America who has studied this issue who agrees with him,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior legal fellow at the R Street Institute, a conservative and libertarian think tank in Washington.

John Yoo, a conservative legal scholar who often defends Trump on Fox News, rejected the president’s absolutist claim of presidential authority.

"The Constitution’s grant of limited, enumerated powers to the national government does not include the right to regulate either public health or all business in the land," Yoo, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in the conservative National Review ...

Jonathan Turley .. noted that Trump “spent weeks correctly stating that basic principle of federalism” ...

“Now, he appears to have done a 180 on the issue and claiming that while governors can put these orders in place, he has absolute authority to lift them," Turley wrote ...

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/trump-walks-back-claim-absolute-authority-over-states

[struggle4progress]

9. Backs away from claim

... The reversal came hours after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said he’d refuse any order by Trump to reopen the economy before it was safe to do so, argued that the executive branch had no authority to do so anyway and implied the Republican was trying to act like a king.

“We don’t have a king in this country,” the governor said. “We didn’t want a king. So we have a Constitution and elect a president” ...

... Republican governors in New Hampshire and Maryland did so as well. Additionally, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, has joined the East Coast coalition that now includes New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware. California, Oregon and Washington announced a similar coalition ...

https://www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/cuomo-trump-reopening-economy-1.43866688

[struggle4progress]

10. Legal scholars and governor say Trump has no authority

By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
HARTFORD COURANT
APR 14, 2020 | 7:13 PM

... “When he said I have total power, that’s plainly beyond the bounds of any reasonable statement about the president’s power,” Richard Kay, a professor at the UConn School of Law, said Tuesday. “Most regulatory power that includes things like health and welfare, most of that is with the states. The federal constitution assumes the states are going to do most of the governing” ...

Quinnipiac Law School professor William Dunlap said Trump’s statements were ironic because they go against the trend of the Republican Party for decades ...

https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/hc-pol-gov-lamont-against-trump-states-rights-20200414-blxnim7oqfejjipahkigmu4fyy-story.html

[struggle4progress]

11. GOP lawmakers: he does not have total authority

Bob Fredericks
April 14, 2020 | 5:19pm

... “The constitution doesn’t allow the federal gov’t to become the ultimate regulator of our lives because they wave a doctor’s note. Powers not delegated are RESERVED to states & the PEOPLE. If we dispense with constitutional restraints, we will have more to worry about than a virus,” tweeted Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian.

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the third ranking Republican in the House, also weighed in, quoting the 10th Amendment to the Constitution in a tweet.

“The federal government does not have absolute power. ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ United States Constitution, Amendment X,” she wrote ...

Trump pushed back .. comparing himself to the brutal Captain Bligh from .. "The Mutiny on the Bounty" ...

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/gop-lawmakers-tell-trump-he-does-not-have-total-authority/

[struggle4progress]

12. Little support for claim

YESTERDAY

...
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/72f65efd-8927-450a-bcde-da13927f206d

On Monday, Mike Pence, the vice-president, pointed to the national emergency declaration that Mr Trump signed in March as giving the president broad authority.

“Make no mistake about it, in the long history of this country, the authority of the president of United States during national emergencies is unquestionably plenary,” he said.

Presidents have controversially claimed draconian powers in wartime through their position as commander-in-chief ...

However, the coronavirus pandemic is not a war, and the National Emergencies Act under which Mr Trump declared an emergency does not grant unrestrained powers, said Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the Brennan Center’s national security programme ...

https://www.ft.com/content/72f65efd-8927-450a-bcde-da13927f206d

[struggle4progress]

13. Does he have the authority?

By Amy Sherman, PolitiFact.com
Posted Apr 14, 2020 at 3:50 PM

... Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican and chair of the National Governors Association, said on CNN: “Governors made decisions to take various actions in their states based on what they thought was right for their states, based on the facts on the ground, talking with doctors and scientists. And I think individual governors who made those decisions will have the ultimate decision about what to do with their states.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said on CNN that “all these orders are executive state orders, so therefore it would be up to the state and governor to undo all of that.”

We contacted the White House to ask for evidence behind Trump’s claim and did not get a reply ...

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200414/fact-check-does-trump-have-authority-to-lsquoopen-up-statesrsquo

[struggle4progress]

14. A close look

... GOITEIN: It's a really interesting question. I mean, we have heard a lot of comparisons coming from the White House between the fight against COVID-19 and war. The president has said that he's now a wartime president. But public health crises and war are not the same thing. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war and the president, as commander in chief, has the power to conduct military operations and to defend against attack. The Constitution doesn't give either the president or Congress authority over public health. That is one of the powers that's reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment. Now, Congress does have some ability to legislate on public health as a result of its - of other powers it has over taxing and spending and interstate commerce. So it does share some of these powers with the states, but that's Congress. The president has no authority over public health beyond what Congress delegates to him. He is not commander in chief of the fight against COVID-19.

SHAPIRO: That's really interesting. Just in our last minute, I wonder whether you find it odd to see, for the most part, liberals making a states' rights argument here, which has traditionally been the more conservative position.

GOITEIN: It is really interesting. And I should mention that even though the states are doing the responsible thing here in a situation where the president is not, and so that's something to be grateful for, there are some advantages to a coordinated response to a pandemic like this one. And ideally, the federal government, not just the CDC and the secretary of Health and Human Services, but the president would be providing the necessary leadership and could assist with interstate coordination. But what we've seen is that in the absence of this leadership, the states are doing this on their own. They're entering into these agreements with one another, and that's the next best thing ...

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/14/834460063/a-close-look-at-president-trumps-assertion-of-absolute-authority-over-states

[struggle4progress]

15. Four Pinocchios

Salvador Rizzo
April 14, 2020 at 3:31 p.m. EDT

... Many states have adopted stay-at-home orders to mitigate the spread of the virus, but the economic costs have been steep and millions of people have lost their jobs amid the lockdown. Trump says he has the “ultimate authority” to decide when states reopen for business. But a variety of governors and legal experts say he’s wrong ...

The moment the president declares a national emergency, as Trump did for covid-19 on March 13, many limits on presidential power can be set aside. But not all limits. There doesn’t appear to be any constitutional provision, federal statute or court ruling that allows Trump to override the emergency actions taken by the states. Like the federal government, states also have strong emergency powers in their body of laws, especially to protect public health and safety. The stay-at-home orders in place operate under those laws ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/14/four-pinocchios-trumps-claim-that-he-has-total-authority-over-states/

[struggle4progress]

16. Says his authority is total but blames everyone else

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 14, 2020

... Monday’s propaganda session disguised as a “coronavirus briefing” was wilder than usual, with Trump going well beyond his already megalomaniacal daily rants, subjecting the viewers at home and the beleaguered White House reporters to a mendacious propaganda video that attempted to spin his wild failures into some story of great success. And throughout this meltdown, Trump was asserting his godlike powers in the same tone used to lecture trophy wives about how they need to show a little more gratitude to the man whose ill-gotten gains keep them flush with golden toilets ...

.. for months, administration officials tried desperately to get Trump to take coronavirus seriously, but he continued to insist he could bullshit his way through ...

... That particular lie — that he holds full power over everyone and everything — cuts directly against another one that Trump has been hiding behind throughout this coronavirus crisis and the economic fallout: That all this is someone else’s fault.

From the moment Trump realized he couldn’t just bullshit people into believing the coronavirus was a hoax, he has focused his energies almost entirely on trying to find someone else to pin the blame on ...

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said .. exactly one month before his claims to have “total” authority ...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-says-his-authority-is-total-but-he-blames-everyone-else-for-his-failures/

[struggle4progress]

17. His authority isn't total. His unfitness is

Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
April 14, 2020 at 11:30 a.m. EDT

... Liz Cheney .. and .. Andrew M. Cuomo were on the same page ...

Perhaps somewhat lost in the firestorm was the tenor of the president, the anger and the furor with which he delivered his insistence that he has kinglike authority. Less focus fell upon his encounter with CBS’s Paula Reid, who pressed him to explain what he did during the month of February. He snarled, “A lot. A lot.” However, he had no alibi to explain his disappearance from the front lines, now documented by multiple news outlets ...

That contradiction — the assertion of absolute power and the utter feebleness of his response to the pandemic — was remarkable. The president has asserted that the federal government is merely a “backup” to the states when it comes to critical functions like securing lifesaving ventilators and gloves. He has denied responsibility for ramping up testing, which if scaled up nationally could allow Americans to return to work safely. He is an authoritarian, but an underachiever — one who never manages to actually wield power, but only threatens to do so ...

... mostly it is revealing — of the Trump enablers who will never admit the president is unhinged and unfit; of the ludicrous news judgment to cover these presidential temper tantrums live; of the notion of “balance” (Well some say the sky is blue; the president says it is pink with purple polka dots and unicorns); and of a political party that would rather stick by a president whose recklessness led to hundreds if not thousands of unnecessary deaths than develop the fortitude to cast him aside.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/trumps-derangement-is-total/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. Echoing Adam Schiff's line. Thank you for posting quite a series of excerpts and links. . . . nt

[struggle4progress]

20. US death toll passes 23,000

By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder, Staff Writer
April 14, 2020, at 10:20 a.m.

AS THE WORLD APPROACHES 2 million cases of the coronavirus, the U.S. makes up about 30% of reported infections ...

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-04-14/us-coronavirus-death-toll-passes-23-000-as-trump-claims-authority-over-reopening-states

US population (c. 330 million) is about 4% of world population (7.8 billion)

[Squinch]

22. This is a great thread, and thank you for putting it together.

But isn't it sad that, at this moment in time, people have to spend time and effort slapping this moron down?

[KY_EnviroGuy]

24. Some journalists say Trump makes these contradictory statements on purpose....

so that no matter what he says later, he can always point back to some earlier statement.

Keeping everyone's head spinning is one of his primary fascist methods of sowing confusion and doubt.

Thanks for the great thread, S4P. Bookmarked!..........