Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo (D-RI) has expanded her state’s self-quarantine policy after Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) complained that New York was being unfairly singled out, and threatened to sue the nation’s smallest state in response.
In a press conference on Sunday, Raimondo told reporters that the self-quarantine mandate — which previously required travelers fleeing New York to self-quarantine for 14 days, and leveraged the police and National Guard to track down travelers and ask them to follow the policy — would now extend to travelers visiting from every state for non-work related reasons, reports Politico.
“As the data has changed, the situation has changed,” said Raimondo. “To keep all Rhode Islanders safe, I signed an executive order imposing a quarantine on all visitors from any state, by any mode of transportation, who are coming in Rhode Island for non-work purposes and plan to stay.”
The Rhode Island Democrat also revealed that she spoke to Cuomo after enacting the policy, but maintained that Cuomo’s threat to sue the state didn’t factor into her decision to change the policy, reports the news agency.
“He’s welcome to sue if he likes. I think he would have a very hard time because I’m on firm legal ground,” said Raimondo. “I will say I think it’s odd that Governor Cuomo is focused on this sort of politics at a time that we’re fighting disasters.”
The Associated Press reports that the new policy will establish highway checkpoints where government officials will ask travelers planning to stay in the state for non-work reasons to self-quarantine for 14 days and provide contact information.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Cuomo threatened to sue Rhode Island on Saturday evening, arguing that “no state should be using police to limit interstate travel.”
“There’s a point of absurdity, and I think what Rhode Island did is at that point of absurdity,” said Cuomo, reports The New York Post. “We have to keep the ideas and the policies we implement positive rather than reactionary and emotional.”
Governor Cuomo also told CNN on Saturday evening that President Trump was engaging in war-like rhetoric for telling reporters that he was considering an unspecified federal quarantine of New York.
“I don’t believe it is legal. I think it would be economic chaos. I don’t think the American people would stand for it,” Governor Cuomo told CNN on Saturday evening. “This would be a declaration of war on states, a federal declaration of war, and wouldn’t just be New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, next week it would be Louisiana with New Orleans, and week after that Detroit, Michigan, and it would run across the nation.”
President Trump decided against the plan, and instead announced that the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention would issue a rare domestic travel advisory to urge “residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately.”
However, the advisory is not federally mandated and the Trump administration has given discretion to the governor’s of affected states to implement the policy.