This is the Tom Hartman Program.

Tom Hartman here with you, live from Portland.

On the line with us is the DC correspondent for the

nation Ken Klippenstein and the nation dot com of course the website is

Twitter handle at k-lip-P-E-N-S-E-I-N-K-M-K-I-K-M-I-P-N-K-M-I-P-E-N-K-I-K-N-K-I, am I pronouncing your name right?

You sure are.

Okay, great.

You wrote a brilliant piece for the nation, title an internal pandemic document shows the coronavirus gives

Trump extraordinary powers. Explain. So what many people might not realize

about pandemics is that under the conditions of one the executive branch and the

president actually games as I mentioned in the article extraordinary powers to

respond to that crisis and while I'm not you know opposed in

principle to which is arguably a good thing yeah I don't think it's

necessarily a bad thing I think most experts will tell you that emergency

powers are you know necessary to meet emergencies with.

But the question becomes how those powers are applied and sort of how they are pursued.

And when you look at the agencies that get a lot of the powers, one of them customs in border protection, which includes most

recognizable among its components, the Border Patrol. They are among the agencies that will

receive the most power and when you look at the current president and how hard lines his immigration policies have

been you can see one can imagine these powers being used to pursue you know the

administration's political goals as opposed to just meeting the crisis of the epidemic

and that really I think was the crux of the concern for me and in the story.

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