PONCE, Puerto Rico: The fourth major Atlantic hurricane of the year, Maria, strengthened into a rare Category 5 storm, as it churned through the eastern Caribbean, bearing down on the tiny island nation of Dominica while on a likely collision course with the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Maria was upgraded to the pinnacle of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale as its maximum sustained winds reached 160 miles per hour (215 km per hour), with higher gusts, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported.
The center of the storm, described by the NHC as “potentially catastrophic,” was located about 15 miles (72 km) east-southeast of Dominica as of 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT), on a track that would put it over Puerto Rico by Wednesday, according to the agency’s latest bulletins.
Dominica, a heavily forested former British colony home to 72,000 people, lies in the eastern Caribbean about halfway between the French islands of Guadeloupe, to the north, and Martinique, to the south.
Maria would be the most powerful hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in 85 years, since a Category 4 storm swept the US island territory in 1932, Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. The last major hurricane to strike Puerto Rico directly was Georges, which made landfall there as a Category 3 storm, he said.
The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, urged island residents in a social media advisory to brace for the storm’s arrival, saying, “It is time to seek refuge with a family member, friend or head to a state shelter.”
Puerto Rico narrowly avoided a direct hit two weeks ago from Hurricane Irma, which reached a rare Category 5 status and ranked as the most powerful Atlantic storm on record before devastating several smaller islands, including the US Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. John.
Residents of some islands fled in advance of the storm.
US Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth Mapp said Maria was due to pass within 10 miles of the island of St. Croix, which escaped the brunt of Irma’s Category 5-force fury on Sept. 6 and is home to about 55,000 year-round residents, roughly half of the entire territory’s population.
The territory’s two other main islands, St. Thomas and St. John, which lie to the north of St. Croix, sustained widespread heavy damage from Irma.
Beth Tamplin Jones, 45, rode out Hurricane Irma earlier this month in the pantry of a friend’s house on St. John.
“It was so intense,” said Jones, who evacuated to Puerto Rico last week and then caught a flight to Atlanta, where she planned to remain until Maria passed.
“We’re in hurricane alley, so we’ve had other storms, but nothing like this,” Jones said, referring to Irma, which killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean and the US mainland. “I don’t think anybody’s ever been hit by a storm like that. To see another one coming is just so discouraging.”
Mapp warned residents not to underestimate the threat from Maria, saying, “Just remember this is a live animal.” He suggested that for residents who choose their homes over an emergency shelter during the storm, they might consider climbing into a bathtub and pulling a mattress over them to stay safe.
Maria was expected to whip up storm surges — seawater driven ashore by wind — of up to 9 feet (2.7 m) above normal tide levels, the NHC said. Parts of Puerto Rico could see up to 25 inches (64 cm) of rain, it said.
Puerto Rico, meanwhile, opened shelters and began to dismantle construction cranes that could be vulnerable to Maria’s high winds.
Forecasters also were tracking Category 1 Hurricane Jose, packing 75-mph (120-kph) winds and located about 250 miles (405 km) east of North Carolina, and stirring dangerous surf and rip currents to much of the US Eastern seaboard.
Maria marks the 13th named Atlantic storm of the year, the seventh hurricane so far this season and the fourth major hurricane — defined as Category 3 or higher — following Harvey, Irma and Jose, the NHC said. Those numbers are all slightly above average for a typical season, which is only about half over for 2017.
Maria intensifies to rare Category 5 hurricane in Caribbean
Maria intensifies to rare Category 5 hurricane in Caribbean
War powers resolution fails in Senate as 2 Republicans bow to Trump pressure
WASHINGTON: Senate Republicans voted to dismiss a war powers resolution Wednesday that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks on Venezuela after two GOP senators reversed course on supporting the legislation.
Trump put intense pressure on five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week and ultimately prevailed in heading off passage of the legislation. Two of the Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana — flipped under the pressure.
Vice President JD Vance had to break the 50-50 deadlock in the Senate on a Republican motion to dismiss the bill.
The outcome of the high-profile vote demonstrated how Trump still has command over much of the Republican conference, yet the razor-thin vote tally also showed the growing concern on Capitol Hill over the president’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions.
Democrats forced the debate after US troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month
“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at a speech in Michigan Tuesday. He also hurled insults at several of the Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “stone cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.” Those three Republicans stuck to their support for the legislation.
Trump’s latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president’s fury underscored how the war powers vote had taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.
The legislation, even if it had cleared the Senate, had virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad. Republican angst over his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats of using military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally — is still running high in Congress.
Two Republicans reconsider
Hawley, who helped advance the war powers resolution last week, said Trump’s message during a phone call was that the legislation “really ties my hands.” The senator said he had a follow-up phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday and was told “point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.”
The senator added that he also received assurances that the Trump administration will follow constitutional requirements if it becomes necessary to deploy troops again to the South American country.
“We’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a ceremony for the signing of an unrelated bill Wednesday.
As senators went to the floor for the vote Wednesday evening, Young also told reporters he was no longer in support. He said that he had extensive conversations with Rubio and received assurances that the secretary of state will appear at a public hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Young also shared a letter from Rubio that stated the president will “seek congressional authorization in advance (circumstances permitting)” if he engaged in “major military operations” in Venezuela.
The senators also said his efforts were also instrumental in pushing the administration to release Wednesday a 22-page Justice Department memo laying out the legal justification for the snatch-and-grab operation against Maduro.
That memo, which was heavily redacted, indicates that the administration, for now, has no plans to ramp up military operations in Venezuela.
“We were assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantial and sustained operation that would amount to a constitutional war,” according to the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Gaiser.
Trump’s shifting rationale for military intervention
Trump has used a series of legal arguments for his campaign against Maduro.
As he built up a naval force in the Caribbean and destroyed vessels that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration tapped wartime powers under the global war on terror by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
The administration has claimed the capture of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial for charges in the US that were filed in 2020.
Paul criticized the administration for first describing its military build-up in Caribbean as a counternarcotics operation but now floating Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a reason for maintaining pressure.
“The bait and switch has already happened,” he said.
Trump’s foreign policy worries Congress
Lawmakers, including a significant number of Republicans, have been alarmed by Trump’s recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the US will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to take possession of Greenland and told Iranians protesting their government that ” help is on its way.”
Senior Republicans have tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that holds Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vance and Rubio Wednesday saying a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains.
“What happened tonight is a roadmap to another endless war,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference following the vote.
More than half of US adults believe President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in using the US military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
House Democrats have also filed a similar war powers resolution and can force a vote on it as soon as next week.
How Republican leaders dismissed the bill
Last week’s procedural vote on the war powers resolution was supposed to set up hours of debate and a vote on final passage. But Republican leaders began searching for a way to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump as well as move on quickly to other business.
Once Hawley and Young changed their support for the bill, Republicans were able to successfully challenge whether it was appropriate when the Trump administration has said US troops are not currently deployed in Venezuela.
“We’re not currently conducting military operations there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a floor speech. “But Democrats are taking up this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has brought a series of war powers resolutions this year, accused Republicans of burying a debate about the merits of an ongoing campaign of attacks and threats against Venezuela.
“If this cause and if this legal basis were so righteous, the administration and its supporters would not be afraid to have this debate before the public and the United States Senate,” he said in a floor speech.
