I know what I am about to ask will be tantamount to waiting for hell to freeze over, but it’s worth asking anyway.

When are you going to challenge Donald Trump’s profound ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and defend for your own executive authority as governor of one of our 50 United States?

There the president was on Monday, proclaiming that he has “absolute authority” to order states to relax their own governor’s executive orders issued in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump declared that he makes the call as president of the United States, that he can dictate when the country can get back to business as usual.

Meanwhile, some governors — almost all of them Democrats — have begun to push back on that. Chief among them is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has emerged as the real political superstar in this drama while he deals with the death and illness brought to his state by the pandemic. Cuomo reminded Trump that he is an “elected president” and is not a king.

Oh, and where is Abbott? The Republican governor is silent … so far. Good grief. He knows better than to accept Donald Trump’s ridiculous assertion of “absolute authority.” Abbott took an oath to defend the Constitution when he became governor in 2015. Indeed, he is lawyer, a former trial judge in Houston, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and a former Texas attorney general. He knows the law.

Federal law — along with the 10th Amendment to the Constitution — do not allow the president to intercede in such a ham-handed fashion.

Abbott is planning to release his own directive later this week on how he intends to proceed with possible relaxation of stay at home guidelines for Texans. Trump in effect has declared that Abbott’s pending announcement is irrelevant, that the president can exert whatever authority he deems fit to force states to follow his bidding.

He does not have that authority.

Gov. Abbott needs to make that fact abundantly clear to the ignoramus who is posing as president of the United States.