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<title>Hawaiʻi Skies: On top of the world</title>

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Rich on Hawaiʻi Island.

Hawaiʻi Skies: On top of the world

Today&#039;s Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Rich on Hawaiʻi Island. &quot;Mauna Kea is so glorious in all its heights. Literally on top of the world. Hawaiʻi skies have it all!&quot; To submit your Hawai&#039;i Skies photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.

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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.

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<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

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

The United States Tennis Association's Hawai‘i Pacific division is going straight to local schools in an effort to grow the game in the Islands. 

The program began in March, free of charge to the schools. Schools that partner with the USTA contact the organization through one of the school's administrators or teachers, then USTA Hawai‘i Pacific director of recreational tennis Alana Larcombe provides the school with a lesson plan in addition to two introductory sessions. 

"We realized that the issue with bringing in more children to tennis is not really the lack of courts or anything like that, it was more the exposure," Larcombe told Aloha State Daily. "We just wanted to be known that tennis is accessible to everyone. I think there's a common misconception that it's typically for the upper class or country clubs, and we just want to ensure that children of all ages from get a chance to hold a racket and play some tennis."

Larcombe also says Hawai‘i public schools seeing an end to federal pandemic funding in the fall of 2024 was a motivating factor for the USTA. Physical education departments across the state received less funding as a result.

Each school that participates in the program will also receive 30 rackets and 72 tennis balls (36 red tennis balls and 36 felt tennis balls), rolls of tape, bags and chalk. The plan is for the supply of equipment to be replenished every three years for each school in the program. 

Tennis courts are not required for schools for the USTA to set up shop, as classes have taken place in parking lots, gyms, volleyball and basketball courts, and other places where there is space on each respective campus. 

So far, Larcombe and the USTA have visited Ka‘ewai Elementary School, Enchanted Lake Elementary School, Sergeant Samuel K. Solomon Elementary School, John H. Wilson Elementary School, Hahaione Elementary School, and Nanakuli High and Intermediate. 

"They've gone absolutely awesome," Larcombe said of the sessions. "I've got some amazing feedback from teachers. I think it's so beautiful to see the kids when they realize we're playing tennis. They just light up, and by the end of class, they're just on the floor exhausted, but definitely with a smile."

As for the upcoming school year, USTA Hawai‘i Pacific has partnered with 16 more schools and hopes that number increases by the end of the year. 

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<title>New program brings free tennis to Hawai‘i schools</title>

The United States Tennis Association already began its tour of Island schools in March, which brings free lessons and equipment to schools.

New program brings free tennis to Hawai‘i schools

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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:"}]

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<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

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.

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<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

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Sterling Higa

Columnists

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.

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<title>Hawaiʻi millionaire tax: Why the new 13% bracket won’t be the last</title>

The millionaire tax passed with barely a murmur. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why the measures nobody argues about deserve the second look.

Hawaiʻi millionaire tax: Why the new 13% bracket won’t be the last

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

I have to tell you a short story about Minnesota before I can tell you something about Hawai‘i. Sit tight for some unpleasant details.

It starts with Tou Lue Vang, from Laos, who was at one point legally living in the United States, in Minnesota. Vang went on to behave terribly while here. He was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual assault for repeatedly molesting a 10-year-old girl over two years, from 2002 to 2004, 

 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“He once offered his victim $10 to keep quiet about the sexual assaults,” DHS said. “When interviewed by police, he tried to justify his actions as ‘a cultural thing

’ and even said that his victim was just as guilty as him and should also be arrested.”

These actions cost Vang his right to be in the United States. On Oct. 31, 2006, a Department of Justice Immigration Judge ordered that he be removed.

 the Center for Immigration Studies, Laos refused to take back its deported citizens until 2025, until it finally relented under pressure from the United States.

According to DHS, ICE arrested and detained Vang in December but by then, Minnesota was in full meltdown over immigration enforcement and in February, a District of Minnesota judge ordered him released from custody.

That wasn't only the ally Vang found. At some point he applied for a pardon, in hopes that wiping his record clean would eliminate the reason ICE was coming after him for deportation, as reported by 

That pardon was granted, in a unanimous decision. In Minnesota, such pardons are granted by a three-person panel: 

 (D), and nominally non-partisan Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice 

This was widely seen as an extension of Minnesota’s sanctuary state policies, done out of spite to frustrate Trump and ICE.

On July 14, media asked Walz about the deportation and he had the audacity to question the 

 motive for removing a convicted child molester.

. “Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”

On question 1: Yeah, it did. Vang's conviction disqualified him from staying here, that’s the law. He only evaded it because Laos didn’t want him back.

Question 2: Walz is possibly, obliquely referring to Vang’s own children. What is the logic here? Our prisons are full of natural born American citizens who are separated from their children by incarceration and no one sane goes around saying, “Wait, we can’t put people in prison for molesting children! Doing so destabilizes their children!” If it's a tragedy for Vang and his family, it's one he wrote himself.

Question 3: It’s possible the syntax of this one is so garbled and awkward because some tiny voice in Walz’s head is second-guessing what’s he’s saying. No one likes to be judged by their worst day. OK. Fair enough. For most people, their worst days do not include serially molesting a 10-year old over two years. But Walz’s inner sociopath smacked down his last sensible neuron and he said this ludicrous thing anyway.

[{"type":"text","text":"What does any of this have to do with Hawai‘i?"}]

You might not know this, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was the guest of honor as keynote speaker at the Hawai‘i Democratic Party’s state convention in Waikīkī at the end of May. 

“Walz … brought the nearly 400 party delegates and guests to their feet several times at the Hilton Hawaiian Village ballroom,” 

 Civil Beat, covering the convention on May 31. “He got a lot of whoops and shout-outs, too, by calling Trump a ‘corrupt, petty, cruel wannabe dictator’ and ‘a pile of crap.’”

[{"type":"text","text":"Tim Walz, greeted in Hawai‘i with applause and aloha."}]

Surely, the local invitation predated Walz’s bizarre defense of an illegal immigrant child molester. But local Dems had plenty of facts before them at the time that Walz had stepped forward to defend, categorically, every convicted criminal in Minnesota that ICE had gone in to arrest. Surely, they were aware that they were inviting, with honors, a man who presided over a state government that 

 for as much a billion dollars’ worth of fraud across multiple social programs. Surely, they could’ve known that in January, Minnesota lawmakers accused Walz and his administration of retaliating against whistleblowers about this fraud, thereby enabling it.

Surely, they remembered that Walz himself withdrew his re-election attempt in light of these many scandals.

[{"type":"text","text":"They overlooked it all and gave this guy a hero’s welcome."}]

I've been meaning to write this ever since the convention happened, but news about Walz just kept evolving and I wanted to see where his latest escapades would go. Now that this Vang chapter is over, I have same question I had in May: If he’s the role model for the party going forward, what does that mean for the future of Hawai‘i?

What does that tell us about who they serve? Local interests and concerns? Or, as we saw with 

 just fully colonized by Mainland politics and priorities?

The party is running on fumes of nostalgia for when it was sensible and stood for the betterment of people right here in the Islands. But the party of serious people like Burns, Ariyoshi, Inouye and countless others — sober, responsible — seems intent on following the pied pipers of Act Blue, Indivisible, and the Democratic Socialists of America, straight into insanity.

Based on historic voting patterns, there’s a good chance if you’re reading this that this your party. You’ve voted for it all your life. You likely always will. Anything but cast a vote for those icky Republicans! If so, please do everyone in the Islands a favor: Get involved, and knock some sense into your people. If Walz is their idea of an accomplished statesman, an example to cheer on and follow behind, they need an intervention.

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.

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<title>Pipikaula Corner: The company they keep</title>

Hawai‘i Democrats invited a special Mainland guest to their annual convention in late May, as keynote speaker. If this is their role model, ASD Editor in Chief A. Kam Napier opines, Hawai‘i is in trouble.

Hawaiʻi Skies: On top of the world

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Hawaiʻi Skies: On top of the world

Authors

ASD Staff

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