The New York Governor refuses to put his citizens at risk.

During a press conference on Monday, United States President Donald Trump claimed he has “total authority” over state governors, and that if he tells them to reopen their states from pandemic lockdown, they will comply. In response to this, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that were Trump to order him to reopen New York before the pandemic clears up, he would refuse and legally challenge the order.

“If he ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn’t do it. And we would have a constitutional challenge between the state and the federal government and that would go into the courts,” Cuomo told CNN.

Trump fired back on his Twitter, writing “Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”

When asked by CNN how New York’s reopening would actually work, Cuomo explained that the process would run in strictly regimented phases, beginning with an expansion on essential services. “Because it is not that the economy was closed down. You can get on a bus, you can get on a train, you can buy food. But expand that list of essential services. And that phase, that evolution of the economic reactivation, is what we’re talking about,” he said.

Cuomo is not alone in his desire to approach reopening carefully. Several state governors, mostly in the coastal states, have formed pacts to carefully and slowly coordinate their own reopening efforts, independent of President’s orders. Cuomo stressed that the key to reopening will be a smartly devised plan based on relevant economic and health data.