You used the word legitimacy. Phil, maybe you could weigh in on who has the top prerogative between the feds and the states?
Phillip Carter: I'll give you the the classic legal answer—it depends. As Rebecca pointed out, the Constitution reserves most of the power in this space for states, and what the federal government can do is limited to interstate commerce or international things like what goods, supplies, and people we admit from overseas.
The challenge here is that a great deal of response infrastructure, intelligence, and public health surveillance resides at the federal level, like the CDC, but actual decisions about whether to open or close reside at the state level.
What we need to see is cooperation between these levels of government, where the intelligence may exist at the national level but it's going to be a state-by-state decision as to when and how to open up schools, businesses, and other parts of society.
