U.S. President Donald Trump, hours after governors on both coasts announced regional plans for reopening their states, asserted “total authority” over decisions about when and how to emerge after coronavirus shutdowns.
“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said at a press briefing Monday when asked about the governors’ plans. “And that’s the way it’s got to to be. It’s total. It’s total. And the governors know that.”
“You have a couple bands of Democratic governors, but they will agree to it,” Trump continued about the governors, who also include Republican Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. “They will agree to it. But the authority of the president of the United States, having to do with the subject we’re talking about, is total.”
Trump’s evening remarks followed a pair of tweets he sent earlier in the day saying reopening the country won’t be up to governors. Leaders of states in the Northeast and West Coast representing nearly a third of the U.S. population subsequently announced plans to do just that on their own timelines.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Oregon Governor Kate Brown laid out their plans to gradually begin easing restrictions. The West Coast plan dropped shortly after the governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts said they would launch a coordinated effort to reopen.
The plans by the governors set up a clash between some of the nation’s most populous states and Trump. The president has grown increasingly concerned with the economic impact the coronavirus and its incumbent shutdowns are having on the country.
“They can’t do anything without approval of the president of the United States,” Trump said at the briefing.
The president early Monday said in the pair of tweets that it is not “the Governors decision to open up the states” but “the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.” But within hours he had been contradicted by pushes on both coasts to run those decisions through alliances of governors.
Those developments highlighted the tension between Trump’s oft-stated belief in his own supremacy and a consistent reality of the pandemic: It has often been governors, mayors and local health officers, more than the White House, driving critical public health decisions.
While the West Coast blueprint is light on details and emphasizes an incremental approach tied to data and health authorities, it reflects the fact the progress those states have made since early outbreaks made them epicenters during the first days of community spread.
In part thanks to early and aggressive moves to curtail social gatherings, like California’s once-unprecedented statewide stay-at-home order, the rate of new cases is easing and efforts to shield health systems from fatal overloads appear to be working. West Coast governors have been discussing a joint thaw for about a week, and Inslee on Monday hailed the states involved as being “ahead of the curve.”
“I’m just very proud of the state of California for leading,” Newsom said on Monday. “The state was the first with the stay-at-home order, this was the state that was first to request that all seniors 65 and over stay at home, we were very aggressive on mass gatherings.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that East Coast states will pool resources to begin crafting a plan to pull the economy out of its pandemic-induced slumber. Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo told reporters that collaboration was “appropriate” given that “governors are the ones who have been showing great leadership in keeping our citizens safe.”
Trump both telegraphed solidarity with governors and criticized them on Monday at a press briefing, saying state leaders had procured too few ventilators and asked the federal government to supply too many. But he maintained that states have largely been pleased with his administration’s efforts.
“I’m getting along very well with the governors,” Trump said.
Early decisions by governors and local officials to clamp down on social gatherings, and their determination to keep those restrictions in place, have contrasted with Trump’s initial reluctance and his subsequent calls to quickly restart idle portions of the economy as the unemployment rate tops 13 percent, the worst rate since the Depression. Cuomo argued that Trump created a model of state autonomy after he “left it to the states to close down.”
“What does that mean, the federal government is in charge of opening? Are you going to say when each state can open or should open?” Cuomo said on Monday, adding the federal government could introduce “a model where they set a federal program that the states can follow and should follow, but then you have to be specific.”
Trump said that “it’s a decision for the president of the United States,” but that “we’re going to work with the states.”
Newsom sidestepped a question about a potential clash with Trump, opting for a more diplomatic course by praising collaboration with the federal government.
But Newsom, a Democrat who during the coronavirus crisis has struck a conciliatory tone with Trump, suggested governors and Trump are all accountable to balancing the same set of imperatives.
“It’s a vexing prospect for every governor across this country, including the president himself, to figure out a way of doing this where we don’t invite a second wave,” Newsom said.
Marie J. French and Anna Gronewold contributed to this report from Albany, N.Y.