The rhetoric drew particular ire because it sounded like a direct repudiation of long-standing conservative legal principles.
President Donald Trump’s bold claims that he has the ultimate power to order states to rev up their economies seemed certain — and perhaps designed — to provoke his critics on the left.
What was more surprising was the even stronger backlash Trump’s swagger immediately drew from the right, including from voices normally loath to cross the president.
Although many conservatives have been pushing for a quick reopening of commercial activity and some have downplayed the risk of the virus, Trump’s assertion that the federal government enjoys “total” power to override state decisions went over with a resounding thud.
To many, Trump’s pronouncements sounded like a direct repudiation of a long-standing conservative legal principle — that the federal government’s powers are limited to constitutionally approved subjects, like regulating interstate commerce and providing for the national defense. Many conservative legal crusades, including some enthusiastically embraced by Trump, are even based on those notions.
First, there were the Republican politicians who rebuffed Trump’s claims.
“How & when to modify physical distancing orders should & will be made by Governors,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote Tuesday morning in a tweet that didn’t mention Trump directly but unmistakably rejected his stance. “Federal guidelines … will be very influential. But the Constitution & common sense dictates these decisions be made at the state level.“
A key Trump loyalist in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), threw Trump’s words back at him.
“The federal government does not have absolute power,” she wrote on Twitter, before quoting verbatim the 10th Amendment’s promise that powers not apportioned in the Constitution “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
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Despite the fusillade of criticism, Trump stayed true to form Tuesday and doubled down on his contention that he could control the states. He railed against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to defy a White House-led reopening drive and instead form a regional alliance of northeastern governors intent on coordinating a staged return to work.
“I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!” Trump declared.
Cuomo, a Democrat, shot back, saying that he didn’t want to fight with the president over the matter but would take him to court if there was a disagreement over when to rescind social-distancing guidelines.
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The urgency of conservatives’ retort to Trump is a signal of how central the notion of federalism and limited central government is to their legal outlook. For example, the the challenge to Obamacare’s individual mandate is based largely on the argument that the Constitution contains no language authorizing the federal government to require individuals to buy health insurance.
Claiming a general federal power to regulate local businesses, as Trump did this week, could undermine future arguments against federal efforts on the scale of the Affordable Care Act.
Still, the president has never evinced much enthusiasm for abstract ideas like federalism, even as he has vigorously placed adherents of that philosophy on the federal bench and Supreme Court. In speeches promoting his judicial nominees, Trump often praises them as brilliant, tough and the product of the finest schools, but rarely indicates any knowledge of their legal outlook.
Unsurprisingly, there is also an ebb and flow about federalism concerns in Washington that tends vary based on whichever party is in power. Some have skewered that approach as a federalism of convenience.
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- Discussion
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President Trump’s claims that he has the ultimate power to order states to rev up their economies seemed certain—and perhaps designed — to provoke his critics on the left.
What was more surprising was the even-stronger backlash Trump drew from the righthttps://t.co/vu1xF6xMMz
— POLITICO (@politico) April 15, 2020
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