In the News

WASHINGTON >> Members of Congress are expressing renewed support for the nation’s weather forecasting system after deadly flooding in Texas and elsewhere put the focus on cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Trump administration proposed cutting NOAA’s fiscal 2026 budget to $4.5 billion — a 27%, nearly $1.7 billion reduction from the estimated fiscal 2025 spending. But Senate appropriators from both parties highlighted the importance of NOAA, and...

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, upped his criticism of the Trump administration Wednesday, grilling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine about the deployment of National Guard and U.S. Marine personnel to quell protests in Los Angeles during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing. He called on Republicans to kill the president’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” in a speech from the Senate floor.  At the subcommittee hearing,...

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, says he’s in for a fight against cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. Hawaii is in the midst of several lawsuits against the Trump administration. “I’m more on the side of fighting them because there are very few opportunities for compromise,” Schatz told Hawaii News Now. “It’s a very, very scary time,” he added. Schatz met with various Hawaii groups Tuesday on impacts from the Trump administration and he spoke with leaders...

US Sen. Brian Schatz and a coalition of 29 senators are calling on the US Department of Health and Human Services to immediately reinstate federal Title X family planning funding that was recently withheld from 23 states, including Hawai‘i. In a letter led by Schatz and Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai‘i), the lawmakers warned that the funding lapse endangers health care access for nearly one million low-income and uninsured people. “We urge you to...

Nothing about Donald Trump’s hasty and illegal attempted dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—and with it, the decapitation of American power—is remotely efficient. Just this week, USAID’s now-former Inspector General found that there is currently half a billion dollars’ worth of American-grown food stranded at ports and warehouses across the country, on the verge of spoiling. That’s corn and rice and lentils and soybeans, grown in Iowa and Kansas and...

HONOLULU (KHON2) — A new effort led by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz looks to crack down on foreign and intentionally mislabeled ahi. On Wednesday, Feb. 5, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced the Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act. The bipartisan bill would direct NOAA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “develop a standard way to identify the country of origin of red snapper and certain species of tuna imported into the United States.” “Seafood that’s caught...

One thing was immediately clear in the aftermath of the devastating fires that burned Lahaina to the ground in August 2023: building back this beautiful, historic, multicultural town would be a long and difficult journey. The damage was that vast; the destruction so total. Almost a year-and-a-half later, life in Lahaina is still nowhere near back to normal. And above all, they want — and deserve — stability and security. Last month, Congress took a big step toward delivering that by approving...

Rebuilding or perhaps recreating Maui’s Lahaina community needs two things, according to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, Hawaii’s senior U.S. senator. In a sit-down interview last week in Honolulu, Schatz explained that Hawaii will first need a massive construction plan, but to accomplish that the state must also change how it thinks about the new construction. Simply put, a new state mindset is needed, says the 52-year-old Democrat, who has risen through Hawaii’s political ranks from political...

In 2024, US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) helped secure more than $6 billion in federal funding for Hawai‘i as he led efforts to deliver resources to support Maui’s recovery from last year’s fires and advance a range of other priorities for the state. Earlier this month, Schatz announced an estimated $1.6 billion in new funding for Maui’s continued recovery, aimed at building permanent housing for survivors, in addition to almost $500 million to support economic development, small business...

WASHINGTON (Island News) -- U.S. Senator Brian Schatz announced a long-term disaster recovery funding that will provide Maui with a $1.6 million new community development grant. The new Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding is part of more than $12 billion focused on disaster-impacted communities across the nation. The $1.6 billion for Maui will cover economic development, small business loans, and water infrastructure in addition to other things. This funding is...

Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party on all kinds of issues — trade, foreign policy, immigration. He has challenged, even upended, the old consensus by giving people a very different story about what was wrong in America, about why they were struggling. To be clear, I think most of Trump’s policies and many of his stories are quite different, bad and often false. But to give some credit to the Republicans, they are having these big internal policy debates, and the people coming up...

Hawaii will receive $20 million in federal funds that will go to 17 Native Hawaiian organizations in efforts to restore native ecosystems and plants, and to “enhance food security while incorporating Indigenous knowledge and practices.” The money from the Department of the Interior’s Kapapahuliau Climate Resilience Program was funded through a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act authored by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who chairs the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. “Through the...

US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Development, today announced Hawai‘i has been awarded more than $6.6 million in new federal grant funding to help build more housing. The funding comes from a new grant program based on Schatz’s bipartisan ‘Yes In My Backyard’ legislation and was first funded in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill. The new Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) program rewards state and...

The Hawai?i Department of Transportation and the City and County of Honolulu will receive a total of more than $42.5 million in new federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation to support improvements to roads, sidewalks and infrastructure in Hilo on the Big Island and Honolulu on O‘ahu. “This new federal funding will help make streets in Hilo and Honolulu safer for everyone – drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians,” said US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), chair of the Senate...

Long-deferred maintenance projects are finally underway at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park after an infusion of millions of dollars in federal funds. Through the Great American Outdoors Act, HVNP will receive more than $45 million in federal allocations for various improvement projects between the 2023 and 2025 fiscal years. Of those funds, a 2024 appropriation of $33.6 million would be used to rehabilitate the park’s aging water catchment system, which is the park’s primary source of potable...

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, alongside Hawaii’s congressional delegation, plans today to introduce new legislation seeking higher Medicare reimbursements for the state’s health care providers. The Protecting Access To Care in Hawaii Act — or PATCH Act — seeks a 24% increase, which would bring it in line with what Alaska gets, according to Schatz. He said it is key to helping the state retain and recruit doctors for a growing number of seniors. The timing is more urgent than ever, he added, as Hawaii...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KHON2) — There’s a new bill in Congress looking to keep kids off of social media. It comes as new data from the US Surgeon General shows that 40% of children ages 8-12 use social media, with adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media facing double the risk of anxiety and depression. Hawaii’s Sen. Brian Schatz is a co-author of the bill and joined Wake Up 2Day on Thursday to share what he’s trying to accomplish with the legislation. “We do two simple things...

US Sen, Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) called on Congress to pass long-term disaster relief funding for impacted communities across the country, including on Maui and Vermont. Speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Schatz underscored the need to pass funding for the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program in order to provide survivors with flexible assistance to rebuild their homes, small businesses, and communities over the long-term.  “Disaster survivors are running...

Hawaii’s senior U.S. senator spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday to ask Congress for additional disaster relief funding for Maui and other disaster-impacted communities nationwide. “Eight months on from the devastating fires on Maui, the needs remain enormous,” he said. “Thousands of people are still living out of hotels and vacation rentals, unable to rebuild their lives. Roads and water systems have yet to be repaired. Small businesses and their employees continue to struggle without...

US Sen. Brian Schatz delivered remarks on the Senate floor today, calling on lawmakers in Congress to pass additional disaster relief funding for Maui and other disaster-impacted communities across the country. He underscored the urgent need for additional funding saying it has been more than five months since the president submitted a Domestic Supplemental Appropriations request to Congress. Among other things, it called for funding recovery efforts in communities across the country struck by...