Because he can’t order state leaders to open the country by May 1 like he wants to, Trump is framing his efforts as guiding governors on what to do. He’ll hold a call Thursday afternoon with governors nationwide to give “guidelines” on how to reopen.

Trump’s plan to lead the way on reopening the economy is near the reverse of his approach to protecting Americans and health-care workers from the coronavirus. On that, the president has willingly taken a back seat to the states. He repeatedly deflects blame for the depleting federal stockpile of medical equipment on governors for not stockpiling their own. He declined to pressure the Republican governor of Florida to keep people at home, and he declined to put the nation under a stay-at-home order even as one of his top medical advisers publicly said it made sense. Now, he’s leaving testing — a critical component of reopening everything — up to the states.

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Trump and his defenders say it’s federalism at work. He’s letting governors decide what’s best for their states. His critics say he is showing an unwillingness to lead at a politically perilous time for him. Trump told governors last month that his administration would be the “backup” for states in crisis, The Washington Post reported. “We don’t need a backup,” responded Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). “We need a Tom Brady.”

But when it comes to an action Trump considers more beneficial politically — getting back to normal — he has been much more upfront; so much so that this week he tried to ignore what the Constitution pretty clearly states isn’t allowable for him. “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he asserted Monday.

He can’t do that, and so on Tuesday, he tried to rethread reality back into what he said. Now, he is appearing to take action on reopening the economy, but really he is just sitting in an advisory role by “authorizing” governors to make their own decisions.

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“I will then be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state at a time and in a manner as most appropriate,” he announced Tuesday.

By Wednesday, he was framing his authorizations as “guidelines” for governors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been working on a strategy to give guidance to governors and local officials about how they can try to slowly and safely ease stay-at-home orders and social distancing.

In other words, it’s Trump telling states what to do without forcing them to do it. If things go smoothly, great. He was the one “authorizing” them to take these actions. If some governors follow his guidelines and infections spike in a state that let people go back to work too soon, well, Trump can say that he handed governors the plan and that it was that leader who implemented it.

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That’s particularly politically useful to Trump in the current coronavirus landscape. The most hard-hit states right now are led by Democratic governors (in Illinois, Michigan and New York), although that could easily change.

But Trump’s plan to appear to lead governors is not without risk to him. Even though his abilities to reopen the economy are limited, he has been leading the national conversation about reopening. He has made no secret about his desire to open the economy, once predicting that it would be done by Easter. He regularly asks, “When can we reopen?”

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Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who is head of the National Governors Association, said Thursday that now “would be the worst possible time to lift restrictions.”

Neither Hogan nor any other governor has to follow Trump’s guidelines and timelines. But what happens if governors more inclined to prioritize the economy over the virus take his advice and open up their states too soon? Or in the case of states that haven’t been hit hard yet, open up just as the virus is starting to spread there?