August 2, 2026 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Sunday, August 2, 2026

August 2, 2026 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 10:05 AM :: 148 Views

Mafia News: Will Court Ruling Give Miske Pal Council Seat? -- Waters files Appeal

The coast isn’t clear, it’s covered in red tape

DPH boss Freitas on Bribery: “No one’s been convicted. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves….”

SA: … following the 2022 corruption scandal in which former Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English and then-Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen, both Democrats, pleaded guilty to federal charges and were sentenced to federal prison.

(TRANSLATION: They’ve been convicted.)

Their cases are now linked to the state attorney general’s indictments of Luke, Yamane and the other defendants because the allegations go back to a 2022 private dinner between Luke and two donors that Cullen attended and secretly recorded as an FBI informant.

“In some ways, it could depress turnout because of deep cynicism that reinforces this standard belief that the system is broadly untrustworthy,” Garcia said. “… More West Oahu and rural areas who feel disenfranchised by government will end up voting Republican, and I think you’ll see our caucus hold and even increase numbers this election.”

In the 2022 midterm primary elections, only 39.8% of all 853,874 registered voters actually cast ballots.

Voter interest then fell in the 2024 primary, a presidential election year, when only 32.3% of Hawaii’s 839,618 registered voters actually voted.

Makai Freitas, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, agrees the recent indictments may inspire more Republican voters to turn out to support GOP candidates.

But unlike English and Cullen, who pleaded guilty and went to prison, Freitas noted that “no one’s been convicted. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start condemning people before they go through the legal process.”

Among Democrats, Freitas said, “I’ve not heard anybody saying, ‘I’m not going to participate in this voting now.’” ….

(TRANSLATION: We’re all in on this game. Some of us got busted.)

Read … Luke conspiracy indictment could inspire Republican voters, discourage Democrats | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Luke bribery case could pit what’s legal vs. what’s right

Shapiro: … The indictment showed no sign of $35,000 in a paper bag at Luke’s dinner with Solidum about COVID-19 funding now under suspicion. Just two campaign checks totaling $10,000 she’d already admitted to and a promise of $35,000 to $70,000 in further campaign donations later.

Silvert said he saw no quid pro quo.

“It sounds like she’s doing exactly what a legislator does,” he said. “When she’s told about a problem with a project that’s already been OK’d, she meets with the contractor about that, they discuss it, they discuss a new funding source, and then she goes back to the legislative session and recommends where new money could be found.”

With our campaign finance system that amounts to legalized bribery, he may be correct on the law. But if you change the question from legal vs. illegal to right vs. wrong, it’s hard to let Luke off so easily.

According to the indictment, she dined with a bribery suspect in a private room at a luxury steakhouse. She took $10,000 that she failed to report to the Campaign Spending Commission and said “Oh, wow” and “Terrific” as $35,000 to $70,000 more was promised.

The next day, Luke began doing what Solidum asked to advance his crooked enterprise without the due diligence she always boasted of as House Finance chair, which may have uncovered the scam. Her campaign books were suspiciously messy, which the Campaign Spending Commission has referred for separate criminal inquiry.

Just doing what a legislator does? Could you or I get a meeting over a nice porterhouse with the lawmaker who controls the state budget to discuss our favored project that needs money? We’d be lucky to get a few minutes with a staffer who may or may not pass it on to Luke.

There’s just one way to end this conflict between legal vs. illegal and right vs. wrong: Demand that the governor and Legislature stop letting the money talk. Ban campaign donations by government contractors, enact publicly funded elections to diminish special-interest money and impose term limits on legislators ….

Read … David Shapiro: Luke bribery case could pit what’s legal vs. what’s right | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

How Legislative Insiders Kill Campaign Spending Reform Again and Again

Silvert: … Scandals in Hawaii politics almost always end the same way: outrage, a promise to “look into it,” and little real action. We can’t let that happen again.

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others were indicted recently on bribery and conspiracy charges tied to a COVID-19 testing contract with the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii. Prosecutors say lobbyist Tobi Solidum funneled campaign checks to Luke and others while pushing for millions in state testing money. A law banning contractors and family members from bankrolling the officials who control their contracts might have made this scheme harder to pull off.

The Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, chaired by retired Judge Dan Foley, recommended closing this contractor loophole in 2022. A version of it has been introduced, and shut down by leadership, every year since. Senate Bill 2530 would have banned state contractors and their immediate family members from donating to the officials who control their contracts. It passed the state House with backing from the Campaign Spending Commission. This past May, after chamber leaders swapped language back and forth, it died in conference committee on the final day of the legislative session….

Read … Column: Call special session to tighten donor law | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

LGBTQ Commission to be on November Ballot

CB: … Here’s a list of the 20 proposals that the commission has sent to the ballot and here’s the list of ballot questions and brief summaries the voters will see.

The commission made a solid effort to address a few big topics: housing policy and affordable housing, election policy with a proposal switch to ranked choice voting (but not for another six years and only if the Legislature says it’s OK) and to deal with the recent immigration debate by asking voters whether to direct the Honolulu Police Department to basically stay out of federal immigration enforcement.

Other questions relate to cultural topics like creating an Office of ʻŌiwi Resources and Cultural Stewardship and an LGBTQ Commission. More attempt to clean up flaws in the way government currently operates, including who can serve on a local board or commission and what constitutes a quorum….

Read … The Sunshine Blog: Get Ready, Honolulu Voters, 20 Questions Coming Your Way - Honolulu Civil Beat

Big Money In Hawaiʻi Politics — The Carpenters Union Is Crushing Everyone

CB: … Pacific Resource Partnership, a powerful group representing Hawaiʻi carpenters and contractors, is dominating the political landscape this election, according to financial reports filed last week with the Campaign Spending Commission.

A Civil Beat analysis shows that PRP’s super PAC, For A Better Tomorrow, raised $7.3 million in the current election cycle, meaning since November 2024. It has spent $5.2 million, with Democratic Party lieutenant governor candidate Derek Kawakami receiving the largest share — by far — compared to the other roughly two dozen candidates it is supporting.

With the primary election less than a week away, the super PAC has spent more than $2 million to help Kawakami…

PACs (also called noncandidate committees) have raised almost $16.1 million through contributions and other means this election cycle, roughly two-thirds of which was collected before the start of this year.

For A Better Tomorrow has had by far the most cash at its disposal. The group accounts for almost half of all the money collected by PACs this election cycle — a whopping $7.3 million. That’s more than the rest of the top 15 combined.

Only two other groups raised over $1 million – Hawaii Operating Engineers Industry Stabilization Fund PAC and the Operating Engineers Local Union 3 Statewide PAC...

ILind: Who Gives Together? Mapping Hawaii’s Political Contributors | i L i n d

Read … Big Money In Hawaiʻi Politics — The Carpenters Union Is Crushing Everyone - Honolulu Civil Beat

More Bureaucracy Is Not The Answer To A Struggling Economy

CB: … I’ve spent the better part of four decades managing budgets and building organizations — as a chief financial officer, college athletics executive, and as an athletic director right at the University of Hawaiʻi. I have made payroll. I have answered for every line item.

So let me tell you what that ranking actually measures. It is not a measure of how beautiful these islands are. It is a measure of how much friction we place between a person with an idea and the ability to act on it. By that measure, we have spent years making things worse….

Honolulu’s Office of Economic Revitalization.

The city auditor took a hard look at the 6-year-old office and reached a blunt conclusion. It had run through hundreds of millions of dollars, accomplished very little and operated with a striking lack of transparency.

The Honolulu City Council did the fiscally responsible thing and cut its funding. When opponents lobbied Mayor Rick Blangiardi to veto the cut and restore the $2.9 million he had requested, he did — and enough council members held the line to override him.

Grassroot Institute’s Ted Kefalas was among the handful of people at that hearing urging them to do exactly that. Remember what the office was created to do in the first place: manage the distribution of federal stimulus money during the pandemic.

That is the tell. Hawaiʻi took an emergency windfall and, instead of using it to remove the barriers that make this the hardest state in the country to do business, stood up a permanent bureaucracy to hand it out. Six years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the auditor found Hawaiʻi had little to show for it.

That is the instinct that put Hawaiʻi at 50th — the belief that a new office, a new program, one more layer of bureaucracy is the answer to a struggling economy….

Read … More Bureaucracy Is Not The Answer To A Struggling Economy - Honolulu Civil Beat

Climate NGOs have forgotten mission

SA: … Increasingly, the climate movement has become too centralized, with large environmental NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) shaping its priorities while facing little accountability. In the process, the movement has lost sight of what actually matters: protecting the environment itself.

Environmental NGOs love to tout renewable energy as the primary solution to climate change without acknowledging its downsides.

Solar panels, for example, require fossil fuels to manufacture and produce a huge amount of harmful waste in our landfills. Solar panel companies cannot justify recycling this waste, given that it costs $30 to recycle a single panel compared with roughly $1 to throw it in a landfill. As more panels reach the end of their lifespan over the coming decade, this waste challenge will intensify. The climate movement promises solutions, but no one is held responsible for the unintended consequences.

The problem also extends to how corporations use “net zero” pledges to placate environmentally conscious consumers without meaningfully reducing emissions. Meat processor JBS, for example, has promised to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, yet the company’s actual emissions increased by 50% between 2016 and 2021. Amazon also claims it offsets its emissions by planting trees, but it would need to plant trees over an area the size of Costa Rica annually to match its actual output. These examples illustrate how ambitious climate promises often function more as public relations campaigns than as measurable progress.

The worst part of the problem is that the NGOs meant to hold these companies accountable have prioritized profit over protecting the environment. Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund and Conservation International have received funding from corporations like Coca-Cola, Clorox, British Petroleum, Shell Oil, Unilever, McDonald’s, Boeing, Monsanto, Starbucks, Walmart and Ikea in exchange for their stamp of approval.

Moreover, the CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society was paid nearly $1.5 million in 2025 while the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund was paid $1.2 million, making them among the highest-paid charity CEOs….

Read … Column: Climate NGOs have forgotten mission | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Hawaii Politician Arthur Brun Breaks Bad

RS: … Miller told Brun he'd been pulled over because of the tint on his windows. Brun responded that his front windows had been rolled down. It was the back windows, Miller said, and he asked Brun to roll those down. The officer scanned the inside of Brun's Honda sedan. Soon, a police dog was barking at the door. Miller asked Brun to step out of the car. "You didn't stop me for the tint," Brun said. "This isn't right."

Miller reached across Brun to grab the keys from his ignition. Fuck you with this setup, Brun thought, shifting into drive and slamming on the gas. His car lurched forward with Miller's arm still reaching through the window, briefly dragging the cop down the street. Brun shook him loose, peeling past the council building and through downtown Lihue. He swerved onto a side street toward the airport, with its sign wishing travelers "Mahalo: Until We Meet Again," past rows of helicopters and tanks of jet fuel, along the bumpy road to the Ahukini Pier. It was a dead end, but it was a place where you could hide something.

For the past two years, Arthur Brun, or "Ata," had been living two separate and distinct lives. During the day, he was a suburban dad who would umpire Little League games, volunteer at church, and perform the mundane work of municipal government, like championing a bill to expand the definition of guesthouses to allow kitchens.

But at night, he was participating in the largest drug-smuggling operation on the island. Through his connections with the shady Hawaii underworld, and the powerful United Samoan Organization prison gang, he moved a pound or two of meth a week. His crew operated with "impunity," according to John Tobon, who supervised the case at Homeland Security. "It was unsophisticated in a manner that was not normal to the drug world," Tobon says. "They just assumed that there was nobody there to watch."

It was not fun or glamorous or particularly lucrative. Most of the dealers and suppliers who worked with Brun were addicts themselves, feeding an island ravaged by meth addiction since the 1980s. Brun was selling, in part, to feed his own addiction, which by 2019 had left him a husk of his former self. ….

Read … Hawaii Politician Arthur Brun Breaks Bad

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