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New Hampshire
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is in Maine. NH lawmakers want to change that.
An aerial view of Seavey Island in the Piscataqua River, home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, seen from the east in 2001. Kittery is to the right and Portsmouth is in the upper left. The Piscataqua River Bridge carrying I-95 is in the upper right. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald file
A New Hampshire legislator has fired the latest round in an on-again, off-again border dispute between Maine and New Hampshire over the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Republican Rep. Joseph Barton, a freshman lawmaker, is the prime sponsor of a resolution that urges Congress to find that the Piscataqua River and Portsmouth Harbor are within New Hampshire and asks President Donald Trump to designate the duty stations of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard personnel as part of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Congress would have to redraw the boundaries, but Trump can reassign the duty stations, Barton said.
The tax status of shipyard employees is a big reason for the resolution, he said. New Hampshire does not have a state income tax, and residents of the Granite State who work at the shipyard pay Maine taxes. Shifting the borders to bring the shipyard into New Hampshire would shield New Hampshire residents from Maine income taxes.
“We won’t get more tax revenue,” Barton, who worked as an engineer at the shipyard, said in an interview Thursday. “The citizens will get more tax relief.”
Some Maine income tax revenue would disappear if the more than 3,100 New Hampshire residents who work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard no longer have state taxes withheld. It wasn’t immediately clear how much revenue Maine would lose. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Administrative and Financial Services said taxpayer confidentiality bars disclosure of information.
Kittery Town Manager Kendra Amaral said New Hampshire would inherit traffic problems if it takes possession of the Naval Station, which has two land-based access points, both of which run through Kittery.
If New Hampshire wants the shipyard it will need to build bridges from Portsmouth to the Naval Station island, “so they can assume all of the traffic congestion and infrastructure impacts Kittery, Maine, shoulders as the host of the (shipyard),” Amaral said.
The issue of who has jurisdiction is not new. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on a border dispute in Maine’s favor in 2001, dismissing New Hampshire’s claim to the shipyard. The court denied a New Hampshire request to reconsider, ruling that the boundary between the states is the middle of the Piscataqua River.
More than half of the shipyard’s nearly 8,000 employees are Mainers, according to the Seacoast Shipyard Association, an advocacy organization. And 56% of the Portsmouth shipyard’s $716.2 million payroll is for Mainers and 36% is paid to New Hampshire residents. The remainder of the shipyard workers live in Massachusetts and other states.
Its total economic impact in 2023, including purchased goods and services, maintenance and military construction, was more than $1.5 billion.
Barton’s resolution says jurisdiction and control over the Piscataqua River “is and always has been entirely” within New Hampshire’s Rockingham County and “complete dominion and ownership of the tidal waters and submerged lands” of the river, including Portsmouth Harbor, are part of the state.
“This is the boundary. This is where it is,” he said.
The resolution has been the subject of a public hearing and must be voted on by the House and Senate and signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Her office did not respond to an email Thursday asking if she supports the measure.
New Hampshire
Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters
As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.
“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.
“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”
Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.
“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.
He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”
Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.
For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”
Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.
CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”
Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.
29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.
“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.
While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.
“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,
“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.
“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.
Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.
“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.
Local News
Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.
A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.
Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.
The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.
The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.
He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.
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