The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

— 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I listened this morning to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declare that he has no intention to of getting into a political battle with Donald John Trump over how to quell the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Good call, governor. I applaud the Democrat’s intent to take the high road, to concentrate on the health of his constituents, who have suffered mightily under the assault by the COVID-19 virus.

However, I have trouble squaring Gov. Cuomo’s high-minded rhetoric with what he said earlier, which is that if Trump tries to exert presidential authority over the nation’s governors that we might have a “constitutional crisis on our hands.”

Cuomo, who admits to jousting with Trump when he’s felt it necessary — along with endorsing him when he earns that, too — is trying to speak nobly. I fear that Trump’s impulses will drive him to don the brass knuckles and fight the president for all he’s worth.

Trump continues his assault on the nation’s governors — the Democratic governors, I should add — over what he alleges is their delays and foot-dragging in the wake of the health crisis. He failed to respond proactively at the front end of the crisis, saying that governors held the authority to act. Now that we might be approaching the back end of the crisis, he wants to exert authority he doesn’t possess to put the nation back to work.

Cuomo is concerned that Trump is more concerned about his re-election prospects than he is in the health and well-being of New Yorkers and other Americans.

Given that Trump has no real constitutional power or authority to act, we are presented with a puzzling question: What precisely can Trump do to ignite the constitutional crisis that governors such as Andrew Cuomo say would result? Cuomo said governors could resist a federal edict to reopen the government and then we would have a constitutional likes of which “we haven’t seen in decades.”

OK. I applaud Gov. Cuomo’s stated intent to refuse to “engage” Trump in an open dispute. However, the absence of impulse control within Donald Trump — along with his ignorance — might force the nation’s governors to fight back … with all due vigor.