The Governors’ ‘Mutiny’

President Trump clearly overstated the case when he asserted that the president s authority in the current crisis is total. The fact is that the Constitution doesn t grant total authority to any branch of the government. It looks, though, at least to us, as if Mr. Trump was set off by news that some states were entering into regional compacts to plan the reopening of their economies.

If that is what set Mr. Trump off, it s easy to see why. Mr. Trump and all other officers and legislators and judges of the federal and state governments are bound by oath to the Constitution. Yet that same parchment absolutely forbids the states, without the consent of Congress, from entering into any Agreement or Compact with another State.

That is American bedrock. It s right up there with the prohibition on states granting titles of nobility, say, or keeping ships of war in time of peace. One doesn t have to be a Civil War buff to see that states forming compacts or agreements with other states smacks of a challenge to federal authority, no matter how un-total a president s authority might be.

Yet a bloom of stories in the press suggests states have begun doing just what the Constitution says they can t. Governors Form Compacts to Coordinate Reopening Society is the headline in the New York Times. Governor Cuomo is boasting of the compact being formed between New York and its near neighbors like New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

via www.nysun.com