US: Cuomo says Trump is no king, cannot force reopening

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - As U.S. President Donald Trump insists he alone has the power to mandate when states reopen from the novel coronavirus outbreak, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stressed Tuesday the president's power is not absolute.

"I don't know what the president is talking about, frankly. We have a Constitution. The Constitution is based on balance of powers. It's the states that created the federal government," Cuomo said during an interview with the Today morning show. "We don't have a king. We have a president."

"We ran away from having a king, and George Washington was president, not King Washington, so the president doesn't have total authority," Cuomo said.

While Trump issued federal guidelines meant to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus, state governors like Cuomo have been responsible for issuing measures that have shuttered businesses and mandated residents not congregate in groups of various sizes within their states.

But Trump has repeatedly sought to portray himself as the sole authority on when the country can reopen, falsely claiming Monday during his daily news conference that "when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total."

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution defines the principal of federalism in the U.S. It states explicitly that "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."

That article thus gives states what is known as "police powers," which includes issuing and enforcing public health laws.

"States have power by the Tenth Amendment, and the president is just wrong on that point," said Cuomo.

Shortly after the interview aired Trump took to Twitter to lash out at the New York governor, saying Cuomo has "been 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!"

Cuomo warned, however, that should Trump attempt to issue a directive to reopen his state before it is safe to do so he would fight back, sparking a likely constitutional crisis.

"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. 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," he said during an interview with MSNBC.

"It would be terrible for this country. It would be terrible for this president. So I just hope he gets control of what he was saying last night and he doesn't go down that road," he added.