Media scrum: In case you hadn’t observed, there’s a brand new day by day information operation on the town. The Aloha State Daily, an online-only information publication, {that a} scroll again via its web site reveals launched in late December. For weeks it seems to have been largely leisure and life-style options however picked up a stable information report notably because the legislative session rolled out.
It’s owned by a Wyoming billionaire who has not been stingy along with his political contributions to conservative candidates together with President Donald Trump. The man, B. Wayne Hughes Jr., additionally owns a flourishing on-line information web site in Wyoming, the Cowboy State Day by day, that has generated some latest controversy.
Earlier than he started dabbling in journalism, Hughes contributed a half-million dollars to Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential marketing campaign and $117,000 in 2016 to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. (You possibly can search the Federal Election Commission’s individual donor data to scroll via web page after web page of Hughes’ contributions.)
Whereas Aloha State Day by day could not have had a lot of an impression on Hawaiʻi’s media panorama in its first few months of operation, Hughes seems to be critical about his Wyoming web site.
He purchased the Cowboy State Daily in February 2022. With a workers of 15 journalists plus six columnists listed on its web site, it’s referred to as “one among Wyoming’s largest information retailers” by one other on-line publication, Honor Wyoming. By comparability, Aloha State Day by day lists six journalists on its web site, masking information, meals and eating, arts and leisure, and sports activities.
Honor Wyoming, which remember is a competitor, has been elevating a crimson flag about whether or not Cowboy State Day by day is admittedly an unbiased information web site. In a recent report it calls Hughes “a significant participant in state politics” who contributed almost $600,000 to political campaigns in the course of the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
Honor Wyoming analyzed 562 articles revealed by Cowboy State Day by day and located them to closely favor lawmakers and candidates who Hughes has financially supported — “a median 100% extra constructive protection than these he didn’t help.”
The Weblog reached out to Honor Wyoming to take a look at the methodology it utilized in that assessment and didn’t get a response.
This doesn’t appear to be your basic finger-pointing by liberals at conservatives. It’s exhausting to search out the previous in Wyoming anyway. Along with Hughes’ well-right-of-center bonafides, Honor Wyoming calls itself “a conservative lens on essential political points shaping Wyoming’s future.”
Regardless, it’ll be attention-grabbing to see how a crimson state activist develops his new blue state information web site right here.
Hughes is not any stranger to those islands. In 2005 he based American Commercial Equities, which acquires and manages properties in Hawaiʻi and California. It owns Aina Haina Purchasing Heart in east Oʻahu.
The Weblog solely discovered one Hawaiʻi political contribution by Hughes — he gave $4,000 to Trevor Ozawa’s profitable marketing campaign for the Honolulu Metropolis Council in 2014.
The Aloha State Day by day newsroom is run by A. Kam Napier, former editor-in-chief of Pacific Enterprise Information who was additionally a longtime editor at Honolulu Journal. He introduced alongside his former affiliate editor at PBN, Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros, now a “senior editor reporting on neighborhood information.”
You’ll have the ability to decide for your self whether or not the brand new child on the town leans proper.
And earlier than you begin pounding too closely on the remark button, sure, we all know, Civil Beat’s billionaire founders, Pierre and Pam Omidyar have donated fairly closely to Democrat candidates and PACs particularly lately, our personal scroll via the FEC information web site reveals. Though they did donate to George Bush in 1999. Civil Beat has been a nonprofit for greater than 13 years and their donor-advised fund presently supplies a few third of our funding.
Simply to be clear, the Omidyars have all the time steered strictly away from Civil Beat’s information selections and, regardless of what we hear now and again (civil feedback all the time welcome), we’ve got all the time strived for unbiased, unbiased investigative, watchdog and explanatory information protection.
The concept of a year-round Legislature is on life help: New Home Speaker Nadine Nakamura was so convincing when she mentioned at a latest Civil Cafe that lawmakers ought to no less than examine the thought of a year-round Legislature.
She wasn’t suggesting a rise within the most variety of ground session days — 60 — however relatively that legislative committees may unfold out their hearings over the course of the 12 months as a substitute of cramming their enterprise into about three and a half months from mid-January to early Could.
Nakamura launched House Bill 1425 to kind a examine group to “take a look at what are the completely different points, what are the prices,” and twisted the arm of her fellow Kauaʻi legislator, Senate President Ron Kouchi, to suggest a companion measure in his chamber.
And even on Friday, she instructed The Weblog “it will be good for the state” if the legislative session wasn’t so rushed.
And but …
Each payments died this week once they weren’t given hearings within the Home and Senate cash committees. The Weblog thinks that probably wouldn’t have occurred if the speaker was pushing exhausting to get it finished this session.
However the subject isn’t fairly useless but. Nakamura mentioned Friday that as a substitute of instantly ordering up a full-fledged examine of what it will take to transform to a 12-month Legislature, lawmakers will watch for the completion of a extra modest report on the subject that they requested last session from the Legislative Reference Bureau.
Which may be awhile.
“We now have been working very diligently on this effort however are nonetheless awaiting important info from exterior sources,” LRB Director Charlotte Carter-Yamauchi instructed The Weblog in January. “Furthermore, our potential to dedicate time to this examine will now essentially be sporadic till after the 2025 common session adjourns.”
So to summarize, first end a report, then perhaps kind a activity power.
Reefer unhappiness Half I: First it was alive, then it was useless. Then it was alive, and now it’s useless but once more.
A invoice to permit for authorized grownup use of marijuana starting in 2026 didn’t meet a Friday deadline to advance. Senate Bill 1613 handed two Senate committees Feb. 13 and was set for decision-making in two extra Wednesday. However the Senate Methods and Means Committee and the Commerce and Client Safety Committee deleted it from their agendas Monday.
The Weblog hears there was some query about whether or not the Senate had sufficient votes to move the measure, and whether or not it was even price it to ship it over to the Home because the Home had killed its model of recreational pot legislation earlier this month, saying it wanted extra work and was not a significant precedence.
Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, the CBC chair who launched the Senate’s rec-pot invoice with Sen. Pleasure San Buenaventura, says his colleagues will now concentrate on Senate Bill 1064. It goals to develop medical hashish dispensaries in Hawaiʻi and crack down on the med-pot black market, which Keohokalole mentioned is substantial.
Reefer unhappiness Half 2: On Friday, the Senate snuffed a invoice from Sen. Pleasure San Buenaventura that will have raised the allowable stage for possession of decriminalized marijuana from 3 grams to 15 grams. Possession of marijuana as much as the 15-gram restrict would have been categorised as a civil violation, punishable by a fine of $130.
Voting no had been 12 senators — Tim Richards, Brandon Elefante, Troy Hashimoto, Samantha DeCorte, Kurt Fevella, Henry Aquino, Lorraine Inouye, Donna Kim, Mike Gabbard, Glenn Wakai, Sharon Moriwaki and Donovan Dela Cruz. There have been 11 sure votes and no dialogue or debate previous to the ground vote. Sens. Carol Fukunaga and Michelle Kidani had been excused.
The Hawai’i Alliance for Hashish Reform was disillusioned within the vote on SB 319.
“Current information from the state Division of the Legal professional Common present that a whole lot of Hawai’i residents are nonetheless being introduced into the legal authorized system for hashish possession,” the alliance mentioned in a press launch. “Even and not using a conviction, an arrest can have critical and lasting penalties, together with a legal report that stands in the way in which of employment and profession alternatives and securing enough housing.”
Need to study extra about pot coverage in Hawaiʻi? Watch Civil Beat’s latest discussion board:
No secret: Open Secrets, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that tracks and publishes information on marketing campaign finance and lobbying, has been profiling members of the Trump administration. Out this week is a report on Tulsi Gabbard, the previous Hawaiʻi congresswoman who’s now director of nationwide intelligence.
Right here’s just a few takeaways from the report, which provides to Civil Beat’s extensive reporting on Gabbard over time:
- “Gabbard has run for public office seven times since 2002, elevating a complete of over $21 million. Her biggest contributors had been members of the U.S. Military, adopted by Protection Division staff, Hawaii civil servants, Boeing staff and the corporate’s political motion committee.”
- “Gabbard has established a number of PACs since 2023, a few of which have raised questions on donor documentation and monetary administration after they raised tens of millions of {dollars} however spent solely a small fraction of that cash on candidates, all of whom had been MAGA-aligned Republicans.”
- “Gabbard can be the founding father of We Must Protect, a nonprofit targeted on catastrophe reduction in Maui. Regardless of promising “every dollar” would go to fireplace reduction, the group spent solely about 34% of funds raised, with almost half the cash remaining in its checking account at 12 months’s finish.”
Ethically minded: Earlier this month The Weblog reported that some state boards, companies and departments had been falling quick by way of getting their workers to finish obligatory ethics coaching. That included the Division of Accounting and Common Companies, in keeping with the annual report from the Hawaiʻi State Ethics Fee.
Diane Ako, DAGS’ communications wiz, tells The Weblog that the division’s compliance charge was virtually 95% as of Feb. 20, one thing confirmed by the Ethics Fee. That’s an enchancment over the 75% compliance charge reported earlier.
Home and residential: Elle Cochran, the Democrat who represents Lahaina and different elements of Maui within the state Home of Representatives, has missed a lot of the 2025 session, which hits the midway mark subsequent week.
Her workplace confirmed that Cochran has been absent attributable to a household sickness, which was first reported by Maui Now.
