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You're underestimating how much more leeway the executive branch gets when given emergency power. In recent history alone state of emergencies have been used to

You're underestimating how much more leeway the executive branch gets when given emergency power. In recent history alone state of emergencies have been used to: bypass Congressional war declaration powers in the form of at least one "war", ban entire countries from entering the United States with the recent travel ban, and bypass Congressional power of the purse with the border wall. Not to mention emergency powers were used to suspend habeus corpus for almost two years until Congress could meet during the Civil War and pass a bill making it official, in direct defiance of a circuit court ruling written by a Supreme court judge. The act of declaring a national emergency is enough to give the President substantial powers that can be used immediately in the form of executive orders. Judges would be very hesitant to approve any injunctions in a real crisis.

roenxi 7y ago
Which of those things do you think would help in this particular instance? Respond to a lack of tests by suspending habeus corpus? And Trump did exercise his powers to issue a travel ban; that was a good move that bought the US a week or so. Not enough to make up for the lack of tests. A comparable action to those you've listed would be to suspend the FDA and/or the CDC for a few months. That is the sort of decisive, broad-brush move that the executive can pull quickly. It probably would have made the situation even worse. Technically speaking, if you wrote a timeline down and then passed it back to someone important back in January or early February someone could have easily done something. But there is a real fog of war where up until around the 6th of February the message would have been "everything is OK" and then the scale of the disaster would only have become apparent on about the 10th. Then about two weeks later testing starts to ramp up. A debacle, but a predictable one given that everything was being run in serial. If the response was going to succeed, it should have been 5 different Biomed companies hear about COVID and start making tests independently, then the CDC ratifies one on the 6th Feb. It turns out to fail, so they move to the next supplier and the rollout proceeds on the 10th. The companies have their own logistics teams that have started making preparations for testing supplies and distribution before hand. Maybe a company president knows Trump as a golfing buddy and rings him up asking for a fast track approval. Maybe a New York Mayor screams loudly enough that a test gets approved even earlier. Greasy, ugly, political and much more effective than what actually happened. The moment the decision was taken that the CDC was going to develop the first response test kit was the moment that the system failed. Everything that happened after that is mostly uncontrolled good or bad luck.

roenxi 7y ago

Which of those things do you think would help in this particular instance? Respond to a lack of tests by suspending habeus corpus? And Trump did exercise his powers to issue a travel ban; that was a good move that bought the US a week or so. Not enough to make up for the lack of tests. A comparable action to those you've listed would be to suspend the FDA and/or the CDC for a few months. That is the sort of decisive, broad-brush move that the executive can pull quickly. It probably would have made the situation even worse. Technically speaking, if you wrote a timeline down and then passed it back to someone important back in January or early February someone could have easily done something. But there is a real fog of war where up until around the 6th of February the message would have been "everything is OK" and then the scale of the disaster would only have become apparent on about the 10th. Then about two weeks later testing starts to ramp up. A debacle, but a predictable one given that everything was being run in serial. If the response was going to succeed, it should have been 5 different Biomed companies hear about COVID and start making tests independently, then the CDC ratifies one on the 6th Feb. It turns out to fail, so they move to the next supplier and the rollout proceeds on the 10th. The companies have their own logistics teams that have started making preparations for testing supplies and distribution before hand. Maybe a company president knows Trump as a golfing buddy and rings him up asking for a fast track approval. Maybe a New York Mayor screams loudly enough that a test gets approved even earlier. Greasy, ugly, political and much more effective than what actually happened. The moment the decision was taken that the CDC was going to develop the first response test kit was the moment that the system failed. Everything that happened after that is mostly uncontrolled good or bad luck.