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| “You’re actually sitting too close,” the president told the journalists. “We should probably get rid of about another 75, 80% of you. I have just two or three that I like in this room.” |
Can Trump
be trusted not to abuse his coronavirus emergency powers?
Even the
president’s critics have urged him to use the full power of the federal
government to tackle the pandemic but experts warn of potential dangers
Tom
McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
Email
Tue 24 Mar
2020 06.00 GMTLast modified on Tue 24 Mar 2020 06.03 GMT
Standing in
the Brady briefing room at the White House last week Donald Trump said that
despite new restrictions on the number of journalists allowed in the room,
there were still too many reporters around.
“You’re
actually sitting too close,” the president told the journalists. “We should
probably get rid of about another 75, 80% of you. I have just two or three that
I like in this room.”
If it was a
joke, the timing was terrible.
As the
coronavirus crisis has grown, so too has the power of the president’s whim to
shape American life, whether that means choosing which states get emergency
medical equipment first, deciding where to deploy troops to build temporary
hospitals – or controlling what the public knows about what the government is
doing.
In recent weeks,
Trump has invoked emergency powers enabling him to waive certain healthcare
regulations and direct enormous streams of cash to areas of need. He has also
announced that the federal government would use its authority to direct private
companies to boost the production of surgical masks, gloves and other
equipment, although the status of those efforts was unclear.
For now the
risk – the seeming surety – of a national disaster has fostered a willingness
in even Trump’s harshest critics for him to aggressively seize the reins of his
office and marshal the power of the federal government toward a muscular and
decisive response that could save thousands of lives.
But with
this widespread desire for action has come related concerns about where,
exactly, that power will stop growing, when the emergency crests, and how that
power will shrink when the crisis subsides.
Civil
society advocates warn the fog of crisis could give Trump cover to grab
adjacent powers, not related to the current emergency, that might be difficult
to claw back – especially if Congress and the courts failed to check Trump
after the fact.
“Ordinarily,
that’s not something you’d be worried about, because it would seem kind of
unthinkable for a president to exploit a pandemic to arrogate a bunch of power
that he doesn’t need,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and
national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
“But we
have seen that this president is willing to abuse emergency powers, and to use
them for political gains. And so we have to worry.”
By invoking
the National Emergencies Act on 13 March, Trump gained access to emergency
powers in more than 100 other statutes, Goitein said, “and if you look at those
authorities, very few of them relate to health crises”. With incremental
action, Trump could expand government control of the internet, freeze private
assets or change the size and composition of the armed forces.
Other steps
Trump has taken in the coronavirus response, such as restricting international
borders and imposing mandatory quarantines for certain travelers, do not rely
on emergency authorities but could create a legacy of expanded executive power
that advocates fear could outlast the virus.
One step
Trump did not take after his administration declared a public health emergency
on 31 January was to reallocate funds to speed approval for drugs and ramp up
the production of coronavirus tests kits. Trump’s failure to deploy that power,
the University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck said, may have ironically
created a scenario in which he ends up using much broader powers.
“The
president’s dilatory use of the powers he has, I think, is going to end up
requiring him to use a lot more of that power, in ways that are a lot more
controversial and a lot more coercive and a lot more inconsistent,” Vladeck
told Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution in a Lawfare podcast about
emergency powers and coronavirus.
Concerns
that the administration would look for ways to use the crisis to move the lines
of the law were sharpened by reports last week that the justice department had
asked Congress to pass legislation allowing federal judges to detain people
indefinitely without trial during emergencies.
But
analysts differ in their imaginations of how a dangerous expansion of power by
Trump might unfold, with the economy in a tailspin and a presidential election
on the horizon.
Under
extraordinary powers accessible to Trump after his national emergency
declaration, he could declare the coronavirus to be a “foreign threat” and
impose financial sanctions on anyone he said was contributing to the threat,
such as a media company or a political opponent.
He could
announce an interstate travel ban, enforceable by the military, citing a need
to stop the spread of the virus. Along similar lines, he could take steps that
could make it harder for some people to vote in the presidential election in
November – or make it more difficult for legal challenges to such steps to be
heard in court.
“It’s not
hard to imagine the federal courts in general, and this supreme court in
particular, being remarkably deferential to the federal government in a public
health crisis like this one,” Vladeck told Wittes.
Or, in what
analysts describe as a worst-case scenario, the justice department could move
for a federal judge to declare a breakdown of local law enforcement – at which
point Trump could theoretically deploy the military in the streets, in a manner
breaking with past deployments of active-duty troops for disaster response.
As an
ominous reference point, civil liberties advocates point to anti-democratic
moves taken by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to close most
courts, adjourn parliament and exploit secret cellphone data.
“We have to
be on the lookout for any use of these powers that goes beyond what public
health experts are recommending as necessary, and that intrude on civil
liberties,” Goitein said.
In offhand
comments, Trump has occasionally expressed a reticence about the power of his
office, which he elsewhere has described as unlimited.
“A lot of
executive power, if we don’t have to use it that would be a good thing, not a
bad thing,” he said at the White House last week. As late as Wednesday, Trump
was resisting calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to get private
businesses involved in mask and ventilator production, saying, “We hope we’re
not going to need it.”
The
Berkeley law professor John Yoo, who crafted legal cover for torture programs
in the George W Bush years, took a sanguine view of Trump’s power and its
containment.
“There’s
not a whole lot more I think that the president can do, unless we saw something
much more serious occur such as the breakdown of law and order,” said Yoo in a
call-in forum hosted on Friday by the Federalist Society. “Even then the
president would need to rely on the request of state governors for assistance
before he could intervene.”
But Trump’s
track record offers no reason to believe that he will eagerly accede to the
contraction of powers that expanded in a time of emergency response, said
Goitein, of the Brennan Center.
“If you
divorce his emergency orders from the context of every other thing he’s ever
said or done, you might be able to believe that,” she said. “But if you put it
in the context of a president who has said that article II gives him the power
to do anything he wants, and a president who has ordered officials not to
comply with congressional subpoenas, and a president who has said that Congress
does not have the authority to impeach him – then I think you absolutely have
to be worried.”
'Where's
Fauci?' America panics as doctor absent again from White House briefing
Infectious
disease expert, who has politely sparred with Trump, has become a calming
presence in a time of deep uncertainty
Lauren
Gambino in Washington
@laurenegambino
Tue 24 Mar
2020 03.21 GMTLast modified on Tue 24 Mar 2020 04.42 GMT
Moments
after Donald Trump approached the lectern to open the daily task force briefing
on the coronavirus pandemic, mild panic broke among viewers online.
Where was
Dr Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old infectious disease expert who has become a
regular fixture and a calming presence alongside the president?
Fernand R.
Amandi
✔
@AmandiOnAir
Will the
press in the @WhiteHouse briefing room commit malpractice for the second day in
a row by not asking the only question that matters:
WHERE IS
DR. FAUCI ??? 🤔🤔#WhereIsDrFauci? #WhereIsFauci?
View image
on Twitter
2,418
11:41 PM -
Mar 23, 2020 · Miami, FL
Twitter Ads
info and privacy
.
Robert
Gibbs
✔
@Robt_Gibbs
Paging Dr.
Fauci...Paging Dr. Anthony Fauci. Please call your office immediately.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fauci-predicts-americans-will-likely-need-stay-home-least-several-n1164701
…
Fauci
predicts Americans will likely need to stay home for at least several more
weeks
“I cannot
see that all of a sudden, next week or two weeks from now it's going to be
over. I don't think there's a chance of that," he said.
nbcnews.com
2,204
12:10 AM -
Mar 24, 2020
The alarm
reflected just how much the nation has come to rely on the wisdom of the
straight-talking doctor from New York as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, with
the worst yet to come. For many anxious Americans tuning in from the
confinement of their homes, Fauci is a a voice of reason in a time of deep
uncertainty.
And his
absence at yet another briefing raised was cause for concern. Had he been
sidelined for contradicting the president? Was he in good health?
Mika
Brzezinski
✔
@morningmika
Where is Fauci?
Disturbing. “At a certain point, we have to get open. .. we will be doing
something very very quickly.. We can do two things at once.” ...Then the President talks about how the flu
and auto accidents can also be deadly.. WOW. That lack of Fauci shows.
5,867
11:55 PM -
Mar 23, 2020
Joe Walsh
✔
@WalshFreedom
It’s clear
that the coward in the White House can no longer handle having Dr Fauci in the
room. That’s very bad news for the American people.
2,179
11:48 PM -
Mar 23, 2020
Molly
Jong-Fast🏡
✔
@MollyJongFast
The only
person I want to hear from is dr. Anthony Fauci.
19.8K
11:33 PM - Mar
23, 2020
Asked about
his absence by a Guardian reporter, Trump said: “I was just with him”,
explaining that Fauci was “at a task force meeting”. A White House official
confirmed Fauci’s attendance at earlier meetings that day and insisted his
absence was in keeping with a commitment to rotate speakers “depending on the
news of the day”.
Fauci
himself attempted to allay concerns about his current status – professionally
and physiologically. Reached at his home on Sunday, the longtime director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Science magazine
that he was “exhausted” but otherwise “good”.
“I mean,
I’m not, to my knowledge, coronavirus-infected,” he said, adding with a laugh:
“To my knowledge, I haven’t been fired.”
But Fauci
went further. He conceded that some of what Trump has said does not “comport”
with the facts. Fauci, who has served six US presidents, said he is working
with the members of the task force to ensure Trump shares accurate information
from the podium about the coronavirus, but admitted that it can be a difficult
task.
“But I
can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down,” Fauci said. “OK, he
said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.”
From behind
the podium, Trump has repeatedly made inaccurate or misleading claims about the
coronavirus outbreak from the availability of testing to the development of a
vaccine. And on more than one occasion, it has fallen to Fauci to politely but
firmly correct the president – sometimes in real time.
At recent
briefings, Trump, acting on instinct, has promoted a widely-available malaria
drug as a possible antidote to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Asked by a reporter if it was true that the drug could prevent the disease,
Fauci was blunt.
“The answer
is no,” he replied, explaining in his distinctive Brooklyn accent that the
science was simply not there yet. “The information that you’re referring to
specifically is anecdotal.”
Later in
the briefing, Fauci placed a hand over his face as if to stifle a laugh when
Trump interjected and referred to the state department as the “deep state
department”. The doctor’s face-palm immediately became an internet meme, even
as some noted that he touched his face in violation of public health
guidelines.
““I don’t want to embarrass him,” Fauci said
of his diplomatic approach, in a weekend interview with New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd. “I don’t want to act like a tough guy, like I stood up
to the president. I just want to get the facts out.”
Trump, ever
reluctant to share the spotlight, has taken note of Fauci’s heightened national
profile – the interviews, the TV appearances and the online following. Inviting
him to speak at a press conference last week, Trump remarked: “I think
everybody out here knows you pretty well.”
He added:
“Tony has been doing a tremendous job working long, long hours. And you’ve seen
a lot happen, but this has been – it’s been a great experience, and working
with you has been terrific.” That was 13 March.
Ten days
later, Trump’s opinion of the doctor appears not to have been dimmed by their
disagreements.
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