U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz has spent the last several weeks back home in Hawaiʻi, traveling across the islands to talk to voters. He heads back to the nation's capital next week.
HPR talked to Schatz about what’s on voters' minds and what the Democratic Party can do to counter the Trump administration's actions.
Interview highlights
On which national issues are at the forefront for Hawaiʻi residents
U.S. SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ: Most people are just trying to survive and want to understand what all of these changes are going to mean for their lives. And I think the most pressing issues coming up are the costs of Medicaid, the reductions in food assistance, and the possibility of the increase in energy costs. And so on the Medicaid piece, we have a little time before that bill is actually, or that law, is implemented, but one of the things that we have to do is really reach out to every community member who is currently eligible for Medicaid and make sure they stay on the rolls, because these new eligibility requirements are actually designed to kick people off. And so, for instance, Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center has 6,000 people who are on Medicaid, and they have eyeballs on each one of the 6,000 human beings. ... The whole purpose of these new eligibility requirements is to get fewer people Medicaid. And so we have to work against that, but I think we're in a good position to do that, just because we have more social trust and more institutions that are capable of working together. And I think the same goes for SNAP, for food assistance. On the electricity side, the loss of those tax credits doesn't mean that we won't go forward with our solar and wind projects, because, frankly, it's all we have, the alternative being to ship in fuel oil from Asia, usually at a higher price. But it does mean that some of these new power purchase agreements are just not going to be as cheap for the consumer over the next two to three years. So, some things we could do something about. Other things, not in the short run.
On how Hawaiʻi faces challenges
SCHATZ: The one thing I think differentiates us from almost any other place is when there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster, or any massive change in our society, we're actually able to assemble key community leaders and come up with a plan together. That is not the kind of thing that you can do in other states, just because it's not an island state. And so we have to really take advantage of what differentiates us as we navigate through this. We are going to get through this, but I'm not sugarcoating it. Usually I come home and I focus on all the federal funding that I got and all the rest of it, and we're still delivering more than 95% of the federal funds that we expected, but it's not a "good news" story. There are some really rough patches, especially as it relates to the University of Hawaiʻi and climate action and some other areas.
On the Democratic Party and its leaders
SCHATZ: I think it is understandable to be frustrated with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party had a nominee until the last moment, who was, I think, in the eyes of the voters, just incapable of doing the job. And then you have this person who seems to have done multiple disqualifying things over the last decade, who won pretty decisively, didn't just win the Electoral College, but actually won the popular vote by a point or two. And so it should cause Democrats to do some self-reflection. I think that we became afraid of the future. We became interested in protecting the status quo. And when you think about all the gains that we've made as a party, if it's civil rights, if it's human rights, if it's abortion rights, that we had, frankly, made so many gains, both in the cultural and the political context, that we got a little comfortable with the idea of protecting those gains, as opposed to leaning into the future. And whatever you thought about Donald Trump in this last election, whether it was the crypto stuff or the way his rallies were operated — it looked fun, it looked confident, it looked like they were not uptight, and it looked like they wanted to disrupt the status quo and lean into whatever the future would hold. And I think Democrats became the party of the status quo and protecting all the gains of the past. And so whatever, whoever our nominee is in the future, and whatever the sort of next iteration of the Democratic Party is, we have to be a little more inclined towards risk and a little more optimistic. I think one of the, couple of the areas where Democrats can thrive, but it would be a break from the past, is to be the party of building things, but also physically. ... Of course we want to restore women's reproductive choice. Of course we want to be fair and just with our LGBTQ friends. Of course we care about all the gains that were lost. But we also have to describe a government that works a little better than it did in the first place. So I think housing and energy are a place where we could be a little more, I don't know if the right word is hawkish, but a little more leaning forward into building stuff and not being so terrified about it all.
On President Donald Trump
SCHATZ: It's a bit of a challenge, I think, for all of us, because you don't want to overreact or underreact. It is very clear that sometimes, when Trump is nervous about either job numbers or what Wall Street is doing to respond to his tariff policies or the Epstein files, he actually does things specifically to distract the general public. And so I think it's worth pointing out that these are distractions, but sometimes those distractions are real actions that cause real harm. Like his idea of essentially controlling the content inside of the Smithsonian museums is, so that's really dictator stuff. Like, that's cultural revolution stuff, right? The fascist playbook is: you win a democratic election, and then you consolidate power by controlling the media, controlling cultural institutions — and he is trying to do that. The thing that gives me a bit of hope is that, yes, he's goofing around on all this, but he doesn't have the raw power to control the culture. And he can mess with CBS, and they can buckle, and he can do authoritarian things, but he's a heck of a long way from being able to control free speech in the United States of America, because we have too many great institutions that would not roll over for him.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 20, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Sophia McCullough adapted this interview for the web.
