Representative Malinowski Leads Rebuke of President Trump’s Claim of Total Authority

(Somerville, NJ) – Today, Representative Tom Malinowski introduced a House resolution affirming that when someone is the president of the United States, their authority is not total; a reminder that in our constitutional republic, every public official’s powers are limited by law, and powers not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution are reserved to the states. Representatives Dean Phillips (MN-3) and Justin Amash (MI-3) are original co-sponsors of the legislation.

The resolution responds to President Trump’s assertion that his power is “total” and that only he — not state and local officials — has the authority to reopen the country. This assertion is false as a matter of law and fact. Yesterday, the governors of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut announced that they would move together when determining, from a public health perspective, the appropriate time to reopen their state’s economies.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, governors across the Northeast, where the virus has hit particularly hard, have taken drastic but necessary action to halt the rapid spread of a virus that does not respect state borders. Governor Phil Murphy has risen to meet this moment in New Jersey and the decisive steps his administration took early on in this pandemic are saving lives and flattening the curve.

“The President abdicated responsibility early on in this crisis when the county needed him most, and now, when state governments have stepped forward to save lives, he is falsely claiming to have total power over them” said Representative Malinowski. “It was governors who decided to lock states down to stop the pandemic, and it will be their decision when we open our states back up.”