With the push of a button and at the direction of President Donald Trump, an alert will be sent to all cellphones across America at 2:18 p.m. ET on Wednesday.  According to NBC News, the alert will simply read: "THIS IS A TEST." The message is scheduled to be the first trial of the "Presidential Alert" system, a new way to notify Americans across the country of national emergencies.

FEMA initially announced that the system would be tested on September 20, but later pushed it back to October 3, citing the "ongoing response efforts to Hurricane Florence." Reports of the new alert received a flurry of online backlash as many upset leftists Americans jumped to the conclusion that the messaging system would be used inappropriately by the president as his own Twitter-like feed. But Trump appears to be bound by a 2015 law preventing that from happening. Congress enacted the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act to limit the scope of what can be considered a valid emergency alert.