U.S. Steel Corp. will restart construction on an idled manufacturing facility in Alabama, and it gave some of the credit to President Donald Trump’s trade policies in an announcement Monday.

Trump’s “strong trade actions” are partly responsible for the resumption of work on an advanced plant near Birmingham, the Pittsburgh-based company said in a statement. The administration’s tariffs have raised prices on imported steel and aluminum.

The manufacturer also cited improving market conditions, union support and government incentives for the decision.

Work will resume immediately, the company said, and the facility will have an annual capacity of 1.6 million tons (1.5 million metric tons).

U.S. Steel said it also will update other equipment and plans to spend about $215 million, adding about 150 full-time workers. The furnace is expected to begin producing steel in late 2020.

The 16,000-member United Steelworkers praised the decision to resume work, which followed an agreement with the union reached last fall.

“This decision paves the way for a solid future in continuing to make steel in Alabama and the Birmingham region,” Leo W. Gerard, the president of the international union, said in a statement.

U.S. Steel shut down its decades-old blast furnace at Fairfield Works in 2015, idling about 1,100 employees, and said it would replace the operation with an electric furnace.

The company then blamed conditions in the steel, oil and gas industries as it suspended work in December 2015 on an electric arc furnace at its mill in Fairfield, located just west of Birmingham. The project stalled until the announcement Monday.

Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum on June 1, 2018. The move was to protect U.S. national security interests, he said, but other countries said the taxes break global trade rules, and some have imposed tariffs of their own.

 
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The suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre pleaded not guilty to dozens of charges Monday as his new lawyer, a prominent death penalty litigator who represented one of the Boston Marathon bombers, signaled he might be open to a plea deal.

Robert Bowers, a truck driver who authorities say gunned down 11 people at Tree of Life Synagogue, appeared in federal court with attorney Judy Clarke, who expressed hope the case will be resolved without a trial.

Clarke is known for negotiating plea deals that helped some of the nation’s most infamous killers avoid death row, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six people and injured 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. A jury sentenced marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whom Clarke represented, to death.

Prosecutors in Pittsburgh have yet to announce whether they will pursue the death penalty against Bowers. Asked if the government would consider a plea deal that spares Bowers a potential death sentence, U.S. Attorney Scott W. Brady said in a statement Monday: “The defendant is charged with crimes that carry the maximum possible penalty of death. We are committed to seeking justice for the victims and their families in this case.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti said in court that a trial could last about three weeks, not including any potential penalty phase.

Bowers, who was shackled, said little, giving yes or no answers.

A grand jury on Jan. 29 added 19 counts to the 44 Bowers was already facing. The additional charges include hate crimes violations, obstruction of religious belief and the use of a firearm during crimes of violence.

Bowers, 46, of Baldwin, Pennsylvania, is accused of targeting worshippers from three Jewish congregations when he attacked Saturday, October 27, during Sabbath services.

Seven people were wounded, including five police officers.

Donna Coufal, a member of the Dor Hadash congregation that occupies space at Tree of Life, said she attended Monday’s arraignment “to bear witness. It’s been a painful time, but we remain strong as a community.”

Investigators say Bowers posted criticism of a Jewish charity on social media before the attack, claiming the immigrant aid society “likes to bring invaders that kill our people.” Authorities said he raged against Jews as he gunned down his victims, and told investigators “all these Jews need to die.”

Bowers has been jailed in the Butler County Prison, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of the shooting scene.
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President Donald Trump’s planned trip Monday to the border city of El Paso, Texas comes days before U.S. government funding is due to lapse once again and as suspense builds over Trump’s vague but persistent threat to declare a national emergency if Congress declines to pay for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The president really does believe that there is a national security crisis and a humanitarian crisis at the border, and he will do something about it,” White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press program. “He’s going to do whatever he legally can to secure that border.”

“I do expect the president to take some kind of executive action, a national emergency is certainly part of that … if we [lawmakers] don’t reach a [border security] compromise,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows said on CBS’ Face the Nation program. “This president is going to build a wall one way or another.”

Democrats insist there is still time for a politically divided Congress to forge and pass a spending bill that strengthens America’s southern border.

“Nobody wants a shutdown, nobody wants the president to use some kind of emergency powers,” Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said on Fox News Sunday. “We just need to do our job, and we can do it.”

‘I’ll get it built’

Trump was resolute at last week’s State of the Union address to Congress.

“Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down,” the president said. “I’ll get it built.”

So far, no deal has been reached by a bipartisan bicameral conference committee tasked with finding a compromise on border security before U.S. government funding expires on Friday. But Trump holds a wildcard – his authority as commander-in-chief to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.

“I don’t think anybody questions his legal authority to declare a national emergency,” Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said late last week.

“That would be a gross abuse of power, in my view,” Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen told VOA. “It’s pretty clear you can’t declare an emergency just because you can’t get your way 100 percent in the Congress. So let’s try and work this out through the normal process.”

In the abstract, the president’s authority to declare a national emergency is not in question.

“It turns out that the federal statute books are actually littered with hundreds of places where a president can declare national emergencies in various contexts,” George Washington University law professor Paul Schiff Berman said, who added that some statutes do allow a president “to move around money within the federal budget to address the emergency.”

The catch

But there is a catch: the very concept of an emergency as a sudden and dire situation.

“All of these statutes were written it appears with the idea that every once in a long while, there would be a true crisis—could be a natural disaster, could be a foreign invasion, something like that—where the need to act quickly was so important that the president would need these national emergency powers because there just wouldn’t be enough time for Congress to convene,” Berman said. “None of those [envisioned situations] would apply in a case like building a wall which is going to take many, many years, if it ever happens at all.”

A national emergency declaration from Trump would almost certainly trigger swift lawsuits as well as congressional action to overturn it.

“There is, within the law, the ability of Congress to stop a national emergency,” political analyst John Hudak of the Washington-based Brookings Institution said. “It requires both houses of Congress to vote to say that the national emergency is over. Now Democrats can certainly do that alone in the House. They cannot, however, do it alone in the Senate; it would require several Republican votes.”

‘Serious constitutional question’

Already, some Republicans have expressed unease about Trump suggesting he might act on his own.

“The whole idea that presidents — whether it’s President Trump, [hypothetically] President [Elizabeth] Warren or [hypothetically] President [Bernie] Sanders – can declare an emergency and somehow usurp the separation of powers and get into the business of appropriating money for specific projects without Congress being involved, is a serious constitutional question,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn told reporters last week.

By contrast, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott warmed to the prospect.

“[House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi said there is not going to be funding for a wall. I think the president ought to use his emergency power to try to secure the border and, if he’s going to do that, I think he ought to look at trying to get a permanent fix to DACA [protections for undocumented immigrants brought to America as children] and TPS [protected status for refugees and others fleeing hardship].”

Democrats, meanwhile, are united in opposition.

“Declaring a national emergency, particularly when there is no national emergency, would be a significant mistake. It is clear that a growing number of Republicans share that view, and I hope the president doesn’t go that route,” Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told VOA.

Trump appeared undeterred, tweeting on Saturday, “The Wall will get built one way or the other!”

Urgency questioned

The president has argued that America’s safety is imperiled as a result of illegal narcotics and migrants entering the United States. Some observers note that America’s border security deficiencies are hardly new or sudden.

“I think a lot of Americans look at this skeptically and say, ‘What has changed between the beginning of the president’s term and now that makes this such a dire emergency?’” Hudak said.

Some see grave potential risks if Trump goes forward with an emergency declaration.

“[I]f it is misused, it essentially becomes like a president declaring martial law and taking over the powers of Congress. It’s the sort of thing that we would look at another country doing and say that’s a big problem,” Berman said.

Nevertheless, the president faces intense pressure to deliver on his border wall promise, according to Brookings Institution political analyst William Galston, who says, politically, Trump is “in a box.”

“The president has used the issue of the wall to cement the bond between himself and his core supporters and he would probably incur significant political damage if he were seen by them to be standing down, surrendering, or accepting a compromise that they don’t think he should,” Galston said.

 
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