In the News

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to underscore the scale of the devastation in Lahaina and appeal to his colleagues for more federal aid. “The people of Maui are mourning unimaginable losses, but they’re also facing uncertain futures,” Schatz said, noting that many have lost their jobs in addition to loved ones and their homes. Some 1,900 residences were destroyed in the flames and 5,000 people displaced. The death toll from the fire stands at...

HONOLULU (KITV4) – On the floor of the US Senate Tuesday, Hawaii U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz discussed the need for more federal support after the Maui fire disaster. Schatz delivered a speech discussing the recent tragic events that occurred on Maui and the many lives that were negatively impacted because of it. He spoke about the various efforts of organizations, government officials, first responders, and everyday people who gave a helping hand at a time where the devastation was all around...

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Sen. Brian Schatz is keeping attention on Maui from Washington. He gave a speech on the floor emphasizing the need to keep federal money and resources flowing to the island. “The people of Maui are mourning unimaginable losses, but they’re also confronting an uncertain future. How long will it take to find a permanent home? When will they find a stable job again? Where were the kids go to school this fall. But if there is any reason for hope and all of this devastation, it’s...

Members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation have introduced bipartisan legislation that would require the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set up a new registry to track and collect health data from people who were exposed to tap water laced with jet fuel from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility in 2021. The Red Hill Health Impact Act also would require the federal agency to work with health experts to conduct a 20-year study to assess any long-term health effects on...

I was bored and browsing Twitter and came upon a stream from U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, apparently equally bored on a flight home to Hawaii from Washington. “On airplane ask me anything!” he tweeted. Bold, I thought. If I were to post such an invitation, I’d get a lot of, “Who the f$&k are you?” But for a U.S. senator, there are multitudes living online for such moments, and he got steady questions both serious and light. >> “What book(s) are you...

Hawaii will receive $149.5 million in new federal funding to expand high-speed internet access across the state, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced Monday. The new funding from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, also known as BEAD, will be used to help build and improve broadband infrastructure, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said. “This new funding will help us expand broadband infrastructure across the state, and help make sure more people...

Thomas Raffipiy planned to retire with his wife in Yap after serving more than 30 years in the U.S. Army. But accessing his medication at his island home is nonexistent. The Yapese veteran has been living on Hawai'i Island to receive medical services through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Raffipiy said he'll be on medication for the rest of his life. "If I go home, it's a suicide. It shouldn't have to be that way," Raffipiy said. "The VA was created to help veterans live a normal life or as...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen Brian Schatz has become a vocal advocate for expanding research into therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs such as ketamine, MDMA, LSD and psilocybin to treat depression, anxiety, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder. “For me, this isn’t about whether psychedelics should be legalized for recreational purposes,” Schatz said. “This is about continuing the research that showed promise in the 1970s for people with severe, persistent mental...

Ovenny Jermeto was on a combat tour 7,000 miles away from his island home in the Pacific when a bomb blew up his vehicle in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan. He survived and completed his deployment, but later lost feeling in his right foot and struggled with anxiety and depression. He returned to the United States to finish his enlistment, eventually getting discharged on medical grounds. Then, he had to make a difficult decision: remain in the United States for free health care or...

The first time Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) tried to abolish the debt limit, he pleaded with lawmakers to “stop these attempts to govern through threats” that put the economy at risk. That was in 2017, the same year that a Republican revolt brought the United States within weeks of a catastrophic default. But Congress did nothing to change the underlying law that September, nor when he and other Democrats tried again in 2019, and 2021, and just...

Brian Schatz, a Democrat, represents Hawaii in the U.S. Senate; Tom Cotton, a Republican, represents Arkansas; Chris Murphy, a Democrat, represents Connecticut; Katie Boyd Britt, a Republican, represents Alabama. Do you know which social media apps your children are on? Do you understand how those apps might harm them? Few parents, no matter how diligent or tech savvy, can confidently answer “yes” to those questions. This should concern everyone. Kids on social media are vulnerable...

The mental-health crisis facing America's teenagers is motivating an unusual group of senators — two progressive Democrats and a pair of conservative Republicans — to join forces. The Democrats — Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut — and the Republicans — Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama — are all parents of young kids or teenagers. They unveiled legislation recently that limits access to social media...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Katie Britt says she hears about it constantly when she is at home in Alabama — at school track meets, basketball tournaments and on her regular morning walks with friends. And when she was running for the Senate last year, Britt says, “parent after parent” came up to her wanting to discuss the way social media was harming their kids. Britt also navigates the issue in her own home, as the mother of a 13-year-old and a...

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday introduced legislation that aims to protect children from any harmful effects posed by using social media. The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would set a minimum age of 13 to use social media apps, such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and would require parental consent for 13- to 17-year-olds. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said earlier this year that 13 is too young to join social media. The bill would ban social media...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz is at the forefront of an effort to ban kids under 13 from having social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. On Wednesday, Schatz unveiled new legislation that seeks to regulate who can have access to social media and require tech companies to put strict age restrictions in place to ensure that minors are not creating their own accounts without parental approval. The bill also seeks to block social media companies from...

More than a dozen senators are pressing for the museums and universities that hold the most Native American remains to explain why they’ve failed for decades to return thousands of them to tribes as required by federal law. Members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and other senators singled out for scrutiny the five institutions identified in a recent ProPublica and NBC News investigation as having the largest collections of Indigenous remains — including powerful...

Morning Consult reported Wednesday that Democrat Brian Schatz has the highest approval rating of all U.S. senators — 65%. Just 24% disapprove. Bernie Sanders, the independent of Vermont, was close behind at 64%. Hawaii’s other senator, Democrat Mazie Hirono, ranked as eighth-most popular with a 60% approval rating. Surveys were conducted Jan. 1-March 31 among representative samples of registered voters in each state. Morning Consult is a business intelligence company that...

The United States is in the midst of a severe housing affordability crisis. Eighty percent of U.S. homes are now unaffordable to the average American, meaning that the monthly mortgage payment would eat up more than 30 percent of monthly wages. The number of renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent is higher than it has been in decades. Homelessness is at record highs, and high-cost cities have become so expensive that they are driving national migration...

WASHINGTON — Among Democrats, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz is the earmarker-in-chief, at least according to a new analysis from the New York Times. The newspaper ranked lawmakers for their ability to secure federal funds for special projects in their districts through a process known as congressionally directed spending. The rankings found that Schatz, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, requested $530 million in earmarks in the fiscal year 2023 budget bill, which was signed into...

President Joe Biden has signed into law two bills supporting Native American language education that were authored by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. The first bill signed Thursday by Biden is the Native American Language Resource Center Act, which will establish native language resource centers across the country with the capacity to create grants and offer other forms of support to organizations that perpetuate native languages. The second bill — the Durbin Feeling Native American...