“It takes two to tango,” I said. It takes two to get into a fight; it takes two people to get into litigation. I wasn’t interested in fighting with the president, and I couldn’t be more clear in that. I wasn’t going to allow anything bad to happen to the people I represent. The president was wrong on the law. Point made. I’m sure the White House lawyers were scrambling and knew that on the law I was right and that I would win in a litigation. I was also sure the White House political advisers were counseling that they wanted to make COVID a “blue state” problem and establish that Democratic governors mishandled it. They wanted the red-versus-blue fight. I also assumed the White House would need to reconcile their lawyers’ advice versus the political advice. They wanted to fight with Democratic governors, but this fight they would lose. What would they decide?
Within about twenty-four hours, the president changed his tune and said he would allow the governors to authorize their own reopening plans. While his “authorizing each individual governor, of each individual state,” was still a glaring mischaracterization of his constitutional authority, we had arrived at the debate’s obvious and legal conclusion. Just like that, Donald Trump had completed another full presidential pirouette.
APRIL 15 | 11,571 NEW CASES | 18,335 HOSPITALIZED | 752 DEATHS
“Don’t tell me that we can’t do it, because I know that we can.”
BY NOW I WAS CONVINCED that masks were more effective than the experts initially said. It took me some time to realize that many of the “experts” didn’t know what they were talking about. But every time I watched an “expert” on TV pontificating, I wanted to yell, “Why didn’t you know the virus left China and went to Europe last year!” What a glaring mistake. A part of me thought they were all full of beans. The U.S. surgeon general, Jerome Adams, had tweeted on February 29: “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Because of that, I was concerned it could cause public backlash when I mandated that all New Yorkers wear masks. I was the first governor in the nation to do it, and I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of compliance. This was a significant action, and I risked losing public support. I was aware that if I ever issued an executive order that was dismissed, we would run the risk of losing control of the situation. However, once again, I felt that the people were with me.
Reopening the economy in and of itself would be complicated and contingent on public compliance. If you reopen too quickly, you can increase the viral transmission, which makes more people too sick to work and actually sets back economic progress. If you reopen too slowly, you will have an anxious public violating government orders, increasing the viral spread and slowing the economy as well. Once you lose public support for government action, it’s all over. Once the public knows it can violate the mask order and the government can’t do anything about it, it becomes socially acceptable and all is lost.
When I said we were past the plateau, people understandably heard that as good news. It was. But people were also looking for any excuse to resume life as normal. I wanted people to know that we were making progress but that they couldn’t let down their guard. I had been saying, “We are not out of the woods.”
But people hear what they want to hear, and I was worried that if compliance dropped, the virus spread would increase. Flattening the curve didn’t mean the virus went away; it just meant the rate of transmission had been reduced by the change in behavior. It would be a serious mistake if people prematurely relaxed.
Trump was working hard to politicize the situation, framing it in terms of a fight between Republicans wanting to get back to work and Democrats who were against business and didn’t appreciate economics. Trump’s conspiracy theory in this case was that the Democrats wanted to hurt the economy, to in turn hurt his reelection chances.
At the same time, my state economy was hemorrhaging billions of dollars. Small businesses were going bankrupt by the day. Workers were eager to get back to work. Mental health issues, domestic violence, and substance abuse were all on the increase during this stressful time while people were stuck at home. Michaela had been studying the social and educational dynamics for children and we had been discussing the consequences of children being at home and out of school for extended periods, which was complicated by the trauma and fear of COVID. There is no doubt that further child development issues will be created by this situation. Despite all this, Trump wanted to inject politics into the narrative. It was reprehensible, but it was also reality.
Trump supporters were starting a “Liberate New York” movement with Facebook and Twitter accounts that promoted rallies against my executive orders. Trump denied the political connection, but the organizers of Liberate New York were the same people who ran the Trump campaign in New York. Subtlety was not his trademark. The protests were at the capitol and in front of the governor’s mansion, so I had to hear their chants all day.
I had been doing everything I could to keep a functional relationship with Trump to maximize federal efforts for our state. People close to the president and White
