ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower..."}]

Smile 26 4 28

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026</title>

Now let's all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower...

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 Now let&#039;s all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower...

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Crime & Courts

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke has been indicted for bribery by a O‘ahu grand jury.

Luke’s bail was set at $80,000 Friday after being charged with bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and falsifying her campaign spending report.

Four others were also indicted Friday in connection with the State Attorney General’s investigation into a purported paper bag full of $35,000 paid to an unknown, but “influential,” lawmaker referenced during a 2022 federal bribery investigation.

Those others included former State Rep. Ryan Yamane, lobbyist Tobi Solidum, former chair of the state Public Utilities Commission Leodoloff Asuncion Jr., and Ford Fuchigami, airports administrator for the state Department of Transportation.

According to the indictment, during Luke’s 2022 campaign for lieutenant governor, Solidum was seeking additional state money for Covid community testing centers. The indictment cites a conversation between Solidum and Ty Cullen — the former Hawai‘i Rep. who, at the time, had turned informant for the FBI — where Solidum was worried that the state DOH would cut funding for Covid testing centers soon.

During the conversation, Solidum reportedly told Cullen Luke was running for the lieutenant governor position, adding: “All I gotta do is give her more money.”

Solidum, Cullen and Luke all reportedly met on Jan. 20, 2022 at Morton’s The Steakhouse in Ala Moana, where Solidum’s stepdaughter Kristen Pae placed an envelope on the table containing two $5,000 checks, one from Solidum and one from Pae. Luke reportedly took the envelope.

Solidum then told Luke, “By next week we’ll have 35, so it will be halfway to our 70.”

Later during that meeting, Solidum asked Luke about the possibility of drawing upon federal funds to continue Covid testing, to which Luke agreed to follow up.

The two $5,000 checks were subsequently deposited into the Friends of Sylvia Luke bank account, the same day Luke arranged for a meeting to discuss emergency appropriations for additional Covid community testing. In February, Luke’s Finance Committee, which she chaired, passed 

, a bill approving more than $170 million in state funds for Covid mitigation measures for the next two fiscal years.

The indictment does not specifically mention an exact $35,000 transaction, let alone a paper bag, although the the transaction in Morton’s strongly resembles an event Luke described in February: she admitted accepting two $5,000 checks in a dinner involving Cullen, although she also claimed she never cashed the checks.

Asuncion’s presence in the indictment entirely stems from his role as Luke’s campaign treasurer, wherein he allegedly knowingly failed to disclose the donations by Solidum and Pae, and also his subsequent claims in March that the checks had been returned to those donors unspent. Asuncion reportedly claimed that those checks had never been deposited into the Friends of Sylvia Luke bank account, and therefore believed he didn’t need to report them.

Despite this, Deputy Attorney General David Van Acker said Friday that he believes Yamane to be the “most culpable” of the five named in the indictment.

According to the indictment, Solidum had sent money to Yamane in 2020 and 2021, and later asked about the status of health care measure 

, which failed to move forward through conference committees that year. Yamane texted Solidum “Sorry couldn’t deliver it.”

Solidum and Yamane continued to meet throughout 2021 and 2022, with Solidum repeatedly giving Yamane money. Solidum reportedly “texted Yamane in an effort to get a rival Covid testing company fined,” which Yamane assisted by forwarding Solidum’s claims about said company to the state Department of Health.

In early 2022, Yamane, Solidum and Fuchigami met frequently to discuss HB 2392. At one point, the text conversation between Yamane and Solidum turned to the federal charges against Cullen, leading Yamane to text Solidum “Might not be good to been [sic] seen with me.”

At the end of the 2022 legislative session, Yamane spoke effusively in support of HB 2392, and specifically named Luke in his thanks for getting the measure passed.

Fuchigami, for his part, received a $7,000 check from Solidum in Jan. 2022. Fuchigami, who worked for the Senate Ways and Means Committee at the time, was party to subsequent conversations with Solidum and Yamane regarding HB 2392.

Yamane was indicted for bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery; Solidum for three counts of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery; Fuchigami with use of false statements, conspiracy to commit bribery and obstruction of justice; and Asuncion with falsifying candidate committee reports, use of false statements and obstruction of justice.

“For years, people in Hawai‘i have wondered: ‘why can’t we investigate and prosecute our own public officials for corruption?’” Attorney General Anne Lopez said at a briefing Friday. “This is the reason why the Legislature created the Special Investigation and Prosecution Division [within the AG’s office] … We have a commitment to following the facts to where they lead, no matter how long it takes to get there.”

Nonetheless, Van Acker emphasized that Luke and the others in the indictment are still presumed innocent, and that the statements in the indictment remain only allegations. Van Acker and Lopez did not take questions Friday.

Luke took an indefinite leave of absence from the lieutenant governor position in April, which has continued to this day.

 For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

PXL 20260725 020059478 TS 000 16x9

<title>Luke indicted for bribery</title>

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others have been charged in Attorney General corruption investigation

Luke indicted for bribery

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

Hawaiʻi now has more residents 65 and older than children under 18.

At statehood, the Islands were young. They are not anymore.

This did not simply happen. Some of it was planned. The man who led the planning died in April at the age of 100, after a long life of honorable service. He counted the slowing of Hawaiʻi’s growth among his proudest achievements.

Gov. George Ariyoshi led the state of Hawaiʻi for 13 years, from 1973 to 1986 — longer than anyone before or since. He belonged to the last generation that believed, without irony, that government could improve the condition of man. He dressed for the office he held: pressed suits, perfect hair, a bearing that reminded people of Kennedy. He and his wife Jean matched the dignity of the role. Today’s politicians often carry the detachment of people who half-suspect the whole thing is theater. Ariyoshi never did.

Ariyoshi was not a cynic or a schemer. He was a capable, earnest man who believed the most respected experts of his age. And the experts were wrong.

In 1968, a Stanford biologist named Paul Ehrlich published 

. It opened by declaring the battle to feed humanity already lost. Hundreds of millions would starve in the coming decade, he warned, no matter what anyone did. Four years later, the Club of Rome released a report built on a computer model. Factor in population growth, food, resource depletion, industry, and pollution, and the machine predicted total collapse. The model was treated less like a guess and more like an oracle.

The books sold millions. But beneath the charts sat one assumption: that a human being is a mouth and nothing more. The models saw people as problems, never as problem solvers. Every child arrived on the ledger with a minus sign.

Scripture starts from the opposite premise. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him,” says Psalm 127. A blessing, not a burden.

The blessings came. The same humans the models had written off went on to breed drought-resistant crops and feed them manmade fertilizer. Famine retreated to the margins of the earth. A trucker named Malcom McLean packed cargo into standard steel boxes, and over the next 50 years the shipping container rewired world trade. Moving goods became so cheap that distance nearly stopped mattering. A farmer in Iowa could feed a family in Osaka, and a factory anywhere could serve customers everywhere.

None of this was in the model. A computer could extend a curve. But it could not foresee the impact of a steel box.

Where the prophets were believed most completely, the results were darkest. China’s One Child Policy enforced the arithmetic with forced abortions and sterilizations.

Hawaiʻi’s response was gentler, and the worry behind it was not lunacy. The Islands grew fast after the war — new subdivisions, new hotels climbing out of the sand at Waikīkī. A reasonable person standing in the governor’s office in 1975, watching the curves climb, could honestly ask how much the Islands could carry.

Ariyoshi’s answer was “managed growth.” He used no coercion. Instead, he built a State Plan that set targets for slowing population growth. And he wielded a Land Use Commission that kept most land closed to building. What land remained was wrapped in red tape that slowed development to a tree snail’s pace.

The plan worked the way a tourniquet works. Growth slowed, as did homebuilding. The supply of houses fell behind the number of families who needed them. Prices did what prices always do when many people chase few homes. Working families were priced out, then pushed out — to Las Vegas, to Texas, to anywhere the math still worked. The state that set out to slow the growth of its population ended by exporting its children.

Ariyoshi never disowned the project. In 2009 he published a short book looking back on 50 years of statehood. In it he wrote with evident satisfaction that annual population growth had “slowed to about 1.5 percent, at least partly due to managed growth policies.” In the same pages he looked ahead: by 2035, he projected, our state’s population would be 1.6 million people.

Ariyoshi was optimistic. Hawaiʻi’s population has declined now in five of the past six years and is below its peak of 1.45 million. The model missed again, this time in the other direction.

The planners who could not foresee abundance also could not foresee the empty cradle. Today, Hawaiʻi has nearly twice the population it had in 1972, yet has 

The old ideas did not die when the famines failed to arrive on schedule. They split. One branch grew more radical. There are people today who describe humanity as a cancer on the planet, who greet falling birth rates as good news, who tally each new child chiefly as a carbon cost. That is the same arithmetic with the mask off: People as problems, all the way down.

The other branch grew respectable, and it lives closer to home. The staunchest defenders of Ariyoshi’s machinery today are not socialists. They are homeowners whose home values owe much to the scarcity his policies built. Many are conservatives who distrust government in every arena except land use. They praise the free market on Tuesday and testify against the apartment project next door on Wednesday. Managed growth survives because scarcity has shareholders.

Ariyoshi deserves better than blame and worse than a shrine. He placed too much faith in academics to predict the future and too much faith in the state to control it. In this he was a man of his time.

Every generation believes some prophecy. Ours may be the conviction that decline is destiny — that the young will leave, that the schools will empty, that the best a government can do is manage the shrinking.

There is another way to plan. Build as if children are a blessing. Open land for the families we hope to welcome rather than ration it to keep out the ones we fear. Build the houses, the classrooms, and the roads for a Hawaiʻi that grows, and let families, churches, and builders do the work the models never accounted for.

A state that plans for decline will get it. A state that receives the next generation as a gift may be surprised by what that gift brings with it.

The Islands were young once. They could be young again.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Empty playground

<title>Hawaiʻi population decline: How George Ariyoshi’s managed growth policies shaped today’s…</title>

George Ariyoshi dressed for the office he held and trusted the most respected experts of his age — and the experts were wrong. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on the population prophecy that failed twice.

Hawaiʻi population decline: How George Ariyoshi’s managed growth policies shaped today’s crisis

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Business & Tourism

The best of Hawai‘i — the best family attraction, cruise, lū‘au, resort, restaurant and tour company — has been decided by voters in USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice Awards.

Nominees in each category were chosen with the help of a panel of experts but the winners were determined by votes and announced July 22.

[{"type":"text","text":"Here's who made the cut in 2026:"}]

Oahu aerial unsplash 051525

<title>Here's the best of Hawai‘i, according to the people</title>

The best family attraction, cruise, lū‘au, resort, restaurant and tour company in Hawai‘i have been decided by voters in USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice Awards. Read on to see who made the lists.

Here's the best of Hawai‘i, according to the people

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Arts & Entertainment

Aloha Spirit

 of people who move from Hawai‘i to Las Vegas every year, about 100 are inside the Beach House Las Vegas on a Sunday afternoon. 

Located about 15 miles southeast of the Las Vegas strip, the Beach House is a Hawai‘i-themed bar and grill owned by Kāne‘ohe 

natives Ona and Roz Souza. Dropped inside of it, and one would be more convinced they're in West O‘ahu rather than the Vegas suburbs. Plates of garlic chicken and pitchers of beer are being transported to multiple tables while Island reggae plays on the speakers. 

It is estimated that the vast majority of the Beach House's customers are natives of the Aloha State who immigrated to the so-called ninth island. Whether they move to Las Vegas because of financial or family reasons, customers come to the Beach House in search of a taste of home. And on this day, they're certainly going to get it. 

"Uncle Frank will be here in five minutes! Five Hawaiian minutes," an emcee jokes. 

In January 2025, Hawai‘i comedy legend Frank De Lima became another member of the Island diaspora, relocating to a retirement home in Las Vegas after facing mounting health issues. 

De Lima, who turned 77 on July 8, ended his birthday week with a show at the Beach House. One hundred tickets, priced at $20 apiece, were quickly sold out. 

Emerging from a door and onto the stage, De Lima's presence drew rousing approval and applause from the crowd. Dressed in a sumo costume, he immediately broke into song, parodying Bruno Mars' "24K Magic," PSY's "Gangnam Style," and Silentó's "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)."

In De Lima's 90-minute 77th birthday show, he switched between dialogue and song. Following his opening number, he thanked the crowd for coming out. He then asked the Hawai‘i-heavy crowd how many had watched the 

UFC 329 fight the night before between Wai‘anae's Max Holloway

 and Ireland's Conor McGregor, referring to McGregor as "the babooze who wen broke his adda leg."

De Lima then went on to more songs, poking fun at seemingly every demographic in Hawai‘i, as he is wont to do. He welcomed and worked the crowd simultaneously, displaying he still has the wit at his age to make locals laugh. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"De Lima: Any Chinese in here? "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Audience member: Here! "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"De Lima: What's your last name? "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Audience member: Ah-Hee"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"De Lima: Ahi? That's Hawaiian! "}]

In the days following his 77th birthday, De Lima was in a reflective state of mind. He reminisced about being on the cheer team instead of the football team at Damien, then years later leaving the parish to pursue show business. He fondly looked back at his career beginnings, particularly shows at the Noodle Shop. He told a story about performing in front of 100 people, then 50,000 at the old 

"All these years later, here I am in front of 100 people," De Lima said, which drew more raucous laughter from the audience. 

"Tita Turner" and "Filipino Christmas" were some of the hits De Lima played, but he also broke out some new material. A recently written song described how he went from 320 to 190 pounds thanks to swimming, walking, and most of all, Ozempic. 

Following the show, the audience sang Happy Birthday to De Lima, and he stuck around for photos and autographs. 

Despite moving away from home, De Lima says he's comfortable and happy in Las Vegas. 

"I enjoy it," De Lima told Aloha State Daily after the show. "I live in a brand new senior home, very reasonable. My family lives here. My sister, my cousins, and a lot of friends."

De Lima's relationship with Las Vegas began back in 1985. He had a big fan and friend in renowned casino developer and entrepreneur Sam Boyd, and he'd stay at one of his hotels, the California Hotel & Casino, every year for 25 years while he continued to sell out shows in Vegas. 

As De Lima alluded to in his birthday show, his health issues, which include diabetes, forced him to retire from his all-time favorite gig: the Frank De Lima Student Enrichment Program, where over the course of over four decades, he visited with every school in the state multiple times. 

Comedy keeps De Lima young, sharp, and happy. His day-to-day life in Las Vegas includes keeping up with the news back home and writing jokes on his computer. He's in good health and good spirits due to his recent weight loss, but it hasn't limited the doctor visits. 

"Like every senior, we all gotta go doctor twice a month. We all get like eight doctors to go to, and that doesn't include X-ray and all that kind of stuff," he lamented. 

Though De Lima hasn't stopped performing since moving to Las Vegas, his shows are far more spread out, both in time and location. He's done three shows at the Beach House, and a few more are on the way, but at the pace of about one a month. He's also performed in Utah and California. In November, he'll perform multiple shows in Hawai‘i for the first time since moving away, including a Nov. 21 show with Augie T and Andy Bumatai at the Hawai‘i Theatre. 

Without a doubt, De Lima misses the people back in Hawai‘i. "But then there's plenty (of locals) up here, so, you know, hard to say," he joked.

[{"type":"text","text":"Who does De Lima miss the most? The keiki. "}]

"The number one thing I think I miss the most that I don't think I'll ever change if I had to go back and do it again, is assemblies. The students. That is the most wonderful thing that happened," De Lima said. "I miss the students the most."

[{"type":"text","text":"After his birthday show, a long line of fans approached De Lima. "}]

“You talked to my school when I was in the fourth grade," a woman told him. 

[{"type":"text","text":"De Lima's eyes glistened as he smiled and nodded. "}]

Frank De Lima 072326

<title>Frank De Lima is still making everyone laugh</title>

The legendary Island comedian, who recently celebrated his 77th birthday, now resides in Las Vegas and still writes new material.

Frank De Lima is still making everyone laugh

According to the document, Bayer in Hawai‘i, whose corporate office is in Kunia, has a total of 380 employees. The company will begin layoffs “due to the consolidation of certain breeding activities in Hawai‘i” on or after Sept. 25 through Dec. 31.

The move will affect 62 employees at its Lower Kunia site, which has 133 full-time employees, and 14 at its site in Kihei, which has 144  full-time employees.

Bayer, a global pharmaceutical and life science company, this week announced plans to make changes to its operations in Hawai‘i to "strengthen agricultural innovation" in the Islands.

In an announcement Wednesday, Bayer said the changes aim to "better align its land, facilities and resources with the future needs of the company's work in plant breeding, data-driven decision-making and agricultural technologies."

According to the July 22 announcement, these changes include consolidating some of Bayer's farm activities on O‘ahu and Maui over time, which will affect about 76 employees.

Bayer says it has filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN Act, notice, but that notice has not yet been 

In addition to several months advance notice and severance packages for eligible affected employees, Bayer says it also will offer support services throughout the transition, including career coaching, resume and interview preparation, job search assistance and financial well-being resources, the announcement noted.

"Bayer will continue operating on Maui, Molokai and O‘ahu, where its teams play a significant role in developing high-quality, sustainable seed products for farmers in the U.S. and internationally," it states.

“These changes are part of a broader transition that supports Bayer’s ongoing success in developing high-value seeds for agriculture, and our Hawai‘i operations will continue to play a critical role in that important work," Becky Ryan, Hawai‘i breeding pipeline and delivery lead, said in the announcement. “At the same time, we fully recognize that business changes do affect our employees, and we are heavily focused on supporting them throughout this transition."

When asked about consolidation plans, what farm activities will be affected and when these changes take effect, a Bayer spokesperson told Aloha State Daily in an email that the company did not have additional details to share at this time.

 on its website, Bayer said it had been operating in the Islands for more than 50 years with more than 8,000 acres of farmable cropland dedicated to the "development of new varieties of crops, both conventional and biotech."

The company said in that post that it uses modern agricultural technologies to grow conventional seeds as well as genetically engineered seeds.

Bayer Soil health 072326

<title>Updated: Bayer to make changes to Hawai‘i operations</title>

These changes include consolidating some of the company's farm activities on O‘ahu and Maui over time, which will affect more than 70 employees.

Updated: Bayer to make changes to Hawai‘i operations

This session the legislature raised the income tax on anyone in Hawaiʻi earning more than a million dollars a year. Our 13% top rate now sits among the nation’s highest.

The bill passed quietly. The papers noted it the way they note a road repaving: a thing done, presumably good, needing no comment.

Nobody is weeping for people earning a million dollars a year.

That is precisely why the tax deserves a second look. The measures that pass without argument reveal what a society has stopped arguing about.

Envy is the one vice that never announces itself. Pride struts and greed hoards, but envy always arrives dressed as justice. A tax on millionaires feels like fairness. But fairness is not the only good.

A society can absorb a great deal of unfairness and survive. What it cannot survive is a politics that runs on resentment.

Envy used to know where its target lived. The peasant could see the landlord’s manor from his field, and the plantation worker could see the manager’s house from the rows of pineapple. Hawaiʻi’s own labor movement emerged from those fields with real grievances.

Wealth has since moved out of sight. It lives in brokerage accounts and holding companies now, not on estates. The wealth of the super rich has become intangible, and even their ranches are mirages. Mark Zuckerberg feeds his cattle macadamia nuts on Kauaʻi but eats perfectly well at his home in Palo Alto. Meanwhile, beachfront hotels in Waikīkī are owned by thousands of shareholders. You cannot storm an investment portfolio.

Envy is fed like a furnace. Social media puts every lifestyle on earth in every pocket in Hawaiʻi, heaping the coal into the flames. Envy becomes a mood — a low, constant awareness that somebody, somewhere, has the kitchen or the vacation or the body you were denied. A mood cannot be satisfied, but it can be channeled, and it is channeled toward whatever target happens to be within reach.

On Maui, neighbors were within reach. The short-term-rental phase-out was sold in the language of housing justice, taking from the wealthy to shelter the poor. But the owners it actually strikes are schoolteachers, retirees, the upper middle class — and a seaside condo in Kīhei carrying a $3,000-a-month maintenance fee cannot be cut into four pieces and handed to four needy families. It can only be made worthless, which is a strange kind of charity.

The county plans to phase out roughly 7,000 units, though a cleanup bill 

 could exempt 4,500 units. That suggests Maui’s councilmembers have noticed the problem.

The partisans of envy are running the same play on the Mainland. New York has Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax. California has a wealth tax on the ballot, from which the billionaires are already excusing themselves by moving out of state.

The fair-minded reader will object that we owe something to the needy, and the reader is right. The widow and the orphan have a standing claim on us, and it’s older than any state. But the objection assumes the claim must be discharged through the state. Taxes for the rich, assistance programs for the poor.

Hawaiʻi already carries one of the heaviest state-and-local tax burdens in the country. The needy are not much better off for it. The burden of our state shows up in the rent, in the grocery bill, in the exodus of local families headed to Las Vegas. A man who can imagine no way to feed a widow except by voting to tax his neighbor has not discovered compassion. He has misplaced his imagination, and it is worth asking where he lost it.

He lost it at school. Consider the life of the average humanities Ph.D.: nine years spent in college and graduate school, paid for with loans and forgone wages. Now, a lottery for a shrinking number of academic posts, stagnant pay, and a publish or perish culture.

Nearing 30, our young doctor has many degrees, but no clear path to supporting a family. He has to take a part-time job as a barista to pay the bills. Meanwhile, his high school classmate who skipped college to fix air conditioners owns a home by the time of their 10-year class reunion.

A man in the professor’s position does not need much to grow resentful. He only needs to marinate. The trouble is that his marinade becomes his students’ curriculum. The resentment gets footnoted and graded. The graduates leave catechized in a simple creed: every problem is a distribution problem, and every solution is a state solution. Take from the rich, and give to the poor. Take from them, and give to me.

Our young professor enjoys a standard of living beyond nearly every human who has ever lived. He carries in his pocket marvels his grandparents would have gladly sweated in the pineapple fields to afford. None of it satisfies. He only needs to see someone doing slightly better, and the resentment is stoked again. Social media is happy to oblige.

That is why the millionaire tax will not be the last. Envy is not a debt that can be paid down because every payment enlarges the claim. When the millionaires have been taxed, the mood will remain, and it will go looking for whoever is next within reach.

This is an old road. The first murder was not committed for money or land. It was committed because one brother’s offering was blessed and the other’s offering was not. Envy had finished its work in Cain long before he lifted his hand. It hollowed him first. It always hollows the envier first, depriving him of the blessings he has by making them invisible.

The exit is not a cleverer tax or a purer market. It is contentment — the settled conviction of having received more than one was owed. It frees a man to look at his neighbor’s good fortune and simply be glad.

Nobody weeps for millionaires. Nobody needs to. They were never the ones in danger.

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Monday, July 27, 2026

Daily Smile: Sunday, July 26, 2026

Daily Smile: Saturday, July 25, 2026

Daily Smile: Friday, July 24, 2026

Most read

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Monday, July 27, 2026

Daily Smile: Sunday, July 26, 2026

Daily Smile: Saturday, July 25, 2026

Daily Smile: Friday, July 24, 2026

Most read