Communities pick up after deadly nor’easter
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress have learned to ignore President Donald Trump’s policy whims, knowing whatever he says one day on guns, immigration or other complicated issues could very well change by the next.
But Trump’s decision to seek steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports has provoked rarely seen urgency among Republicans, now scrambling to convince him that he could spark a trade war that could stall the economy’s recent gains.
The issue pits Trump’s populist promises against the party’s free trade orthodoxy and the interests of business leaders. Unlike recent immigration and gun policy changes, Trump can alter trade policy by executive action. That intensifies the pressure to change his mind before he gives his final approval as early as this coming week.
Trump on Saturday showed no sign of backing away, threatening on Twitter to impose a tax on cars made in Europe if the European Union responds to the tariffs by taxing American goods. He also railed about “very stupid” trade deals by earlier administrations and said other countries “laugh at what fools our leaders have been. No more!” Michael Dwyer / AP
A large wave crashes into a seawall in Winthrop, Mass., where dozens were rescued from high waters overnight and warned of another round of flooding during high tides.
BOSTON — Coastal communities in the Northeast experienced damaging high tide flooding and the lingering effects of powerful, gusting winds Saturday even as residents tried to shake off a nor’easter that had already inundated roads and basements, snapped trees and knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses from Virginia to Maine.
All along Massachusetts’ heavily populated coast that includes Boston and Cape Cod, Saturday’s midday high tide saw roaring, white-capped waves crashing onto shorelines, the churning surf battering beachfront homes, dousing docks and harbors and taking huge chunks out of the eroding coastline.
“We’ve been here a long time and we’ve never seen it as bad as this,” said Alex Barmashi, as he took in the fearsome spectacle along Cape Cod Bay in Bourne, Massachusetts.
Up the coast in Scituate, Massachusetts, Becky Smith assessed the damage wrought in the coastal town near Boston, where on Friday powerful ocean waves dumped mounds of sand and rubble on roads and winds uprooted entire trees. “It looks like a war zone,” she said. “Just a lot of debris, big rocks and pieces of wood littering the streets.”
Residents elsewhere bailed out basements and surveyed the damage while waiting for power to be restored, a process that power companies warned could take days in parts.
— A conservative Republican who has supported President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of illegal votes cost Trump the popular vote in 2016 will have to prove Kansas has a problem with voter fraud if he’s to win a legal challenge to voter registration requirements he’s championed.
The case headed to trial starting Tuesday has national implications for voting rights as Republicans pursue laws they say are aimed at preventing voter fraud but that critics contend disenfranchise minorities and college students who tend to vote Democratic and who may not have such documentation readily available. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is running for governor and was part of Trump’s nowdisbanded commission on voter fraud, has long championed such laws and is defending a Kansas requirement that people present documentary proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport — when they register to vote.
“Kansas is the site of the major showdown on this issue, and Kris Kobach has been such a prominent advocate for concerns about noncitizens voting and other fraudulent behavior. He essentially led the Trump commission on vote fraud and integrity and he has been a lightning rod — which makes him a hero to people on his side of the argument in trying to tighten up voting laws, but makes him kind of a mischief-maker and a distraction for people who are on the other side,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Courts have temporarily blocked Kobach from fully enforcing the Kansas law, with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver calling it “a mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”
The trial before U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson centers on the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the Motor Voter Law, which allows people to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license. Robinson will decide whether Kobach has legal authority to demand such citizenship paperwork, and a key consideration will be whether Kansas has a significant problem with noncitizens registering to vote.
No other state is as aggressive as Kansas in imposing such proof-of-citizenship requirements. Arizona and Georgia have proof-of-citizenship laws that are not currently being enforced, according to the ACLU.