Specifically, no, I'm not giving him credit for violating federal law and I don't dispute that the order lacked statutory authority. However, since a president

Specifically, no, I'm not giving him credit for violating federal law and I don't dispute that the order lacked statutory authority. However, since a president is the only official tasked with protecting the country, he has certain emergency powers (e.g., the same powers Trump used to take money from the Pentagon against Congress' wishes to fund his wall construction) to ensure national defense, at a minimum. COVID is such a threat. (Was the border?) While the Supreme Court (which isn't tasked with this same security role) decided against him on this order, as the executive it was reasonable for him to attempt to use this tool to gain control of COVID spread. Given the divided, political state of our country and seeing that the COVID outbreak has taken an even worse upswing now, I personally feel like he did the right thing here. You'll note that I was not opining on the legal nature of the move. Other presidents have made orders without knowing their legality when the circumstances call for it. Lincoln and habeas corpus comes to mind. What federal law did he ignore?