In the News

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...

A new law signed by President Joe Biden and co-authored Hawaii US Sen. Brian Schatz puts money into preservation efforts of Japanese internment camps across the US. The Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act re-establishes funding to the Japanese American Confinement Sites Program (JACS) to promote education and awareness of one of the darkest periods for Japanese American citizens in history. One of those sites that will receive more money for conservation include the...

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) was sworn in to a new term today by Vice President Kamala Harris. Schatz won reelection to a second full term in November, garnering more than 71% of the vote – the largest margin of victory by any Senate candidate in 2022. Schatz has served for a decade in the Senate, first joining in 2012 before winning a special election in 2014. He then won his first full term in 2016. “It has been the honor of my life to represent the great state of Hawai‘i...

Hawaii U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono on Thursday announced that they had collectively secured nearly $1 billion in federal funding for a wide range of Hawaii projects. Schatz said the more than $500 million he secured in so-called earmarks will increase federal funding to shut down Red Hill and “strengthen housing,” health care and education, among other programs and projects. Hirono separately announced that she had secured nearly $450 million in earmarks for nonprofits...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure Thursday that would bolster Native American language schools and programs with coordinated support. The bipartisan Native American Language Resource Center Act, authored by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, now heads to President Joe Biden for final approval. “As we have seen in Hawaii, native speaker-led language programs have proven that culturally based instruction is key to revitalizing and maintaining indigenous knowledge and...

Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino announced today that the County of Maui will receive $15.3 million in congressionally directed spending thanks to the determination of US Senator Brian Schatz, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.   Congress is expected to pass the 2023 Appropriations Bill this week. With President Biden’ signature, the following County projects will receive federal funding: Hālau of...

On the list of unfinished business of the departing Democratic-controlled Congress is reforming an often-overlooked keystone of U.S. democracy — the census. Democratic lawmakers were among the most prominent critics of the years of census interference by former President Donald Trump's administration. The meddling laid bare many of the vulnerabilities facing the national tally. Those numbers are used to determine each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, redraw...

Congressional leaders released a bipartisan government funding bill early Tuesday that includes a rewrite of federal election laws aimed at preventing another Jan. 6-style attack and choking off avenues for future candidates to steal elections. They expect to pass the bill in the coming days to avoid a government shutdown slated to begin this weekend. It is the product of lengthy negotiations between the two parties and has President Joe Biden's support. The Senate voted 70 to 25...

Red Hill continues to be an issue with many residents impacted by multiple recent leaks of jet fuel and aqueous film forming foam. Located above an aquifer, these leaks have raised concerns for local leaders and residents as the Navy attempts to fix the problem. Sen. Brian Schatz announced today, Dec. 20, that he was able to secure $1 billion in funding in the annual appropriations bill to permanently shut down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. “This is new federal funding to drain...

Honolulu’s rail project will be receiving nearly $64 million in additional funding from the federal government. Sen. Brian Schatz, who chairs the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, announced the latest injection of funds Tuesday morning. The $63.8 million funding will help the Honolulu Rail Transit Project offset the cost of inflation, according to Schatz’s office. The money is also separate from the hundreds of millions...

The internet has become a ubiquitous feature for anyone who needs information or wants to find a job or needs to access educational tools… the list can go on for pages. However, internet access, particularly high-speed internet, is not available for everyone, leading to a disparity in access to information on things necessary to be a part of today’s digital world. Sen. Brian Schatz announced today, Dec. 19, that $17,284,762 has been released to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to...

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, sent a letter to the Department of Defense Thursday, saying the agency must provide health care resources to individuals affected by chronic conditions related to drinking fuel-tainted water, including those who are not beneficiaries of the Military Health System, according to a news release. On Nov. 20, 2021, the Navy spilled fuel at Red Hill, which entered Oahu’s groundwater and impacted 93,000 people using the Navy’s water system. The letter was...

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, joined Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in introducing a new measure that would protect the right of individual adults to engage in private, non-commercial, consensual sexual conduct. The companion version of the Right to Private Conduct Act was introduced in the House by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. “Our bill makes one thing clear: What goes on between consenting adults in their private lives is their business, not the...

A live grenade with the power to blow up the U.S. economy is rolling into Washington in slow motion: sometime next year, lawmakers must once again extend the federal government’s borrowing authority or else risk a catastrophic default on its debt. Lifting the so-called “debt ceiling,” once a quietly accomplished bipartisan task, has now become a routine drama of brinkmanship in which congressional Republicans leverage the threat of economic ruin to make demands on policy. But...

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz continues to rise through the ranks of Democratic leadership in Washington. This week Schatz was voted in as deputy conference secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus, a new position within the party’s leadership structure headed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Schatz will also remain the party’s chief deputy whip, a position that entails counting votes. The new role comes just one month after Schatz won re-election to his second full term in...