It isn’t Escape From New York after all.
President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday morning that the Tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (which just so happens to have voted against Trump in high numbers) will not be put under a quarantine, sticking with a “strong travel advisory” for a population already urged to shelter-in-place.
Just one day earlier he had used the Q word (in all caps, no less) and said, in a somewhat Ivan Drago-esque manner, that “a decision will be made, one way or another.”
Trump’s previously floated theory did not sit well with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who used words like “preposterous,” suggesting it would lead to “chaos and mayhem tantamount to a “federal declaration of war,” and that the notion was “totally bizarre, counterproductive, anti-American, anti-social.”
While it is certainly good public policy during a pandemic to urge people to minimize movement to its essentials, especially from areas where infection is most virulent, the lack of hard state borders is something baked into our Constitution and further clarified by the Supreme Court in 1849.
Nevertheless, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have signed executive orders calling for a 14-day self-quarantine from anyone flying in from “known hotspots.” For Florida, that means New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Texas adds the City of New Orleans, plus “any other state or city as may be proclaimed hereafter.” Alaska and Hawaii also has self-quarantine orders.