Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump’s Coronavirus ‘Orders’ Are Just Suggestions

Why isn’t the president using the full power of his office to fight Covid-19?

April 30, 2020 at 6:45 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

His executive orders are a little fuzzy.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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President Donald Trump’s decision not to renew the federal stay-at-home advisory is the perfect symbol of his approach to the Covid-19 pandemic: Once again, Trump is operating by signal and sign and suggestion, not concrete directives or orders.

It’s not so much that the president is not leading at all. It’s that his leadership operates as a kind of shadow play, not as a practical reality.