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.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo today asked a perfectly relevant and pertinent question of Donald John Trump.

Why would the president decide to “federalize” the restarting of the nation’s economy if he was so unwilling to do so when it became imperative to impose restrictions that effectively shut the economy down?

Cuomo, a Democrat, posed the question today as Trump was musing out loud about the possibility of declaring the nation should be back in business by May 1. Cuomo noted that Trump wasn’t willing to issue a national declaration when the coronavirus pandemic was sweeping around the world; he chose to leave those matters to state and local officials.

In fact it should be noted that the president has no real authority to overrule governors’ decision on such matters. The U.S. Constitution — were Trump ever to take time to actually read the document he took an oath to defend — leaves plenty of power to states, counties and cities; those entities and the individuals who run them are empowered to issue declarations on whether they should reopen. The president in this instance is a bystander.

Yet the “wartime president” wants to issue a declaration all by himself, as if the governors who have issued stay at home orders or closed public schools and businesses are going to follow the president’s lead … no matter where it takes them.

Gov. Cuomo’s question is on target. If the president was so reluctant to take charge at the start of this crisis, what has emboldened him to exert power that he really doesn’t possess?

I think I know the answer: Because strutting and preening now  provides grist on which to campaign for re-election.