August 3, 2026 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

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Monday, August 3, 2026

August 3, 2026 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 8:44 AM :: 186 Views

Lawsuit: UH Hides Public Records to Protect Climate Scheme

The Curious Career of Ford Fuchigami

OHA Launches National Search for Chief Executive Officer

Hawaii Congressional Delegation How they Voted July 31, 2026

Oswald Stender: A Model of Fiduciary Duty

County Lied Twice About Front Street building permit—none have been issued

MN: … But Saturday will mark three long years since the fire. Not one recovery building permit has been issued for a commercial property destroyed on Front Street.

It’s been frustrating to Herzog and a few other land owners who have served as guinea pigs in the complicated process to rebuild a historic town located in a special management area due to its proximity to the ocean and with known concentrations of iwi kūpuna (ancestral remains).

But they are blazing a path through the maze of federal, state and county codes and regulations. And soon, the first commercial building permit for the area is expected to be issued. It is 612 Front Street, which had housed the Pacific Whale Foundation, Maui Hands Art Gallery, Andrew Shoemaker Fine Art Photography and a foil boarding rental company in a kiosk.

“We’re close,” said Ryan Churchill with Pacific Rim Land, which manages the property for landowner AJI LLC. “We’re very close and expect to have building permits in the coming weeks. We’ll start construction immediately thereafter.”

He said he was receiving calls earlier in the month when a county official misspoke at a Lahaina Recovery Meeting on July 1 and said the property already had been issued a building permit. A county news release also says one commercial building is under construction…

Read … 3 years after the Lahaina fire, rebuilding Front Street no longer on the backburner : Maui Now

Keohokalole Exposed -- Just Another Dark Money Clone Candidate

CB: … Hawaiʻi State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole has spent much of his campaign deriding the influence of outside money in politics.

Now he’s the one benefitting from it.

Future Progress, a Washington-based super PAC, reported spending $75,000 on digital advertising last week in support of Keohokalole, who’s challenging U.S. Rep. Ed Case in the Aug. 8 primary.

So far it’s been the only super PAC to weigh in on the race. Where its money is coming from, however, remains a mystery since the super PAC won’t be required to disclose its donors until after voters have cast their ballots. …

These “pop-up” super PACs, Chlopak said, “are a particularly insidious way to prevent voters from accessing accurate information about election spending, and they are often deployed at the direction of deep-pocketed special interests.”

Campaign spending records show Future Progress has a history of supporting Democrats and opposing Republicans, including President Donald Trump in 2024.

Since 2020, the super PAC has reported raising more than $1.8 million. Most of that money came from unions, in particular the International Union of Operating Engineers. Its largest single individual contributor during that span was Sander Levin, a former U.S. representative from Michigan who contributed $185,000 to the PAC in 2022 when it was backing his son Andy Levin’s bid for reelection.

The new filings with the Federal Election Commission show that Future Progress hired the same media vendor, Hamburger Group Creative, that Keohokalole has been using to run his own digital ad campaign.

Hamburger Group Creative was founded by Martin Hamburger, a D.C.-based consultant who has a long history of playing in Hawaiʻi politics, including as a consultant for the Pacific Resource Partnership during the 2012 Honolulu mayor’s race. …

Read … Keohokalole Derides Dark Money. A New Super PAC Is Backing Him - Honolulu Civil Beat

Dist IV Council Race: ‘Making it up as they go along’

KITV: … As the August 8 Primary Election approaches, questions continue to swirl over the District 4 race.

“It seems like everybody's making it up as they go, which is not making us as a community feel like we should be out there voting,” said Camrom Hurt, state director for Common Cause Hawaii.

A recent court ruling found Councilmember Tommy Waters is not eligible to run for another term because of term limits. But Waters has appealed the decision, and ballots with his name have already been cast….

Read … District 4 voters confused, frustrated as Honolulu ballot chaos grows | News | kitv.com

How Hawaii was Freed of $68M of Bogus ‘Green’ Energy Projects

CB: … Jeff Novak, a lawyer for the U.S. Energy Department, admitted in court documents that when his agency announced in October 2025 it was terminating hundreds of Biden-era grants worth more than $7.5 billion, it wasn’t for the reason given at the time, which was that the projects “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

Instead, Novak wrote, the decision was “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

Hawaiʻi, which voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and is represented by an all-Democrat delegation in Congress, had six projects on the Energy Department’s October termination list, representing nearly $68 million in total grant awards. …

(TRANSLATION: These worthless projects were lifted off our necks as a reward for voting against Trump.)

Read … Trump Administration Lawyers Admit Hawaiʻi Funding Cuts Were Partisan - Honolulu Civil Beat

Protesters Upset that Military Hotel is not Anti-American

HNN: … HNN does not have video of the luau itself, but Wahinekoa and Kaleleiki argue that anything to do with America has no place in an event sharing the Hawaiian culture, given what they call the U.S. government’s illegal occupation of the islands.

“This place that is built on Hawaiian land, and specifically the name Hale Koa, utilizing Hawaiian language and bastardizing it against us,” Wahinekoa said. “Our people that are forced to dance on a stage like monkeys, dancing for peanuts, when really, our culture is not being respected.”

Kaleleiki added, “They didn’t even wanna have a simple conversation today, they wanted to kick us out and silence us. That’s not right as Hawaiians, in our own homes, silencing us?”….

Read … ‘Hale Koa hates Hawaiians!’ Protesters say hotel is misusing their culture | Hawaii News Now

DoE Cellphone Ban Won’t last Long

CB: … I’ve taught at two schools that have enacted similar prohibitions on phone usage, and in both cases it went something like this: Students were initially frustrated by the ban, got used to it, and in many cases even felt relief at being forced to take a break from being on their phones. But sometime around the holidays, they reverted back to their pre-prohibition norms, figuring out ways to bend and sneak past the rules as they always do.

Teacher and administrative enforcement started strong, but as the school year went on and the regular, non-phone related responsibilities started to pile up, confiscations and calls home increasingly became verbal warnings and blind eyes. The teeth of the policies were dulled into corks.

Enforcing phone policies became yet another task to manage, another spinning wheel to balance alongside social-emotional care and behavior management and parent communication and special needs accommodations and instruction and grading and the latest curricular strategy du jour to implement with fidelity until the next year’s and … I won’t go on, but I could. All teachers could….

Read … Eric Stinton: School Phone Ban Is A Good Idea, But The Problem Runs Deeper - Honolulu Civil Beat

Termites Eating DoE Schools

SA: … At Honaunau Elementary School in Kona, second-grade teacher Anika Agerlie said deteriorating facilities have disrupted instruction. In February, she reported a section of her classroom floor that appeared to be sinking beneath the carpet.

Although crews responded quickly, Agerlie had to move classrooms while workers drilled into the floor, which the state Department of Accounting and General Services later determined was damaged by a combination of rot and termite damage….

Jennifer Kaaikala, a special education teacher at Lana‘i High & Elementary School who has taught on the island for 26 years, said deteriorating facilities undermine the state’s message that student learning is a priority.

About four years ago, Kaaikala said she and her husband spent their own time removing termite-infested shelving from the school’s front office after a maintenance request went unanswered.

“When I carried those shelves out, it was almost like the termite droppings looked like liquid pouring out,” she said. “I left a path all the way out to the sidewalk.”

Although some buildings on campus have since been fumigated, Kaaikala said her building has yet to receive treatment. Termite droppings still fall onto her desk, forcing her to keep drinks covered. She recently opened a box of nearly new wooden math learning tools and found termites had eaten through the tray and damaged the materials inside….

SA: Air conditioning in Hawaii classrooms limited by aging infrastructure | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Read … Hawaii public school teachers say aging facilities disrupt learning | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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