On Wednesday morning, Hawaiʻi woke up to the latest eruption at Kīlauea volcano and day one of a federal government shutdown.
Fountaining soared to 300 feet overnight amid uncertainty about what services would be available at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. The National Park Service website indicates the area is open for now.
The Hawaiʻi congressional delegation has sent out statements denouncing the shutdown. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono were in Washington, dealing with the political drama Wednesday. Rep. Jill Tokuda is en route home to the islands, and HPR was able to connect with Rep. Ed Case.
Interview highlights
On why the shutdown occurred
U.S. REP. ED CASE: This is just a deeply disappointing, if not disgusting, shutdown. It was completely avoidable, and a bipartisan solution to finishing it as soon as possible is completely doable. And so it's extremely frustrating that it happened, and it's frustrating that we're not cracking through on a very obvious set of possibilities to end the shutdown as soon as it begins. This shutdown is occurring because the president and his majority colleagues in Congress, and they are in control of Congress, so this is the president and the Congress acting, they do not want to face and extend an existing law which provides really critical health care benefits to tens of millions of Americans, including tens of thousands of people throughout Hawaiʻi who are reliant upon this law to be able to afford their basic premiums for health care, and thus to afford health care itself. Those premiums would increase by over 100% really, by the end of this year, if we don't extend this law. And so fundamentally, they don't want to do that, and thus the shutdown. And that's highly unfortunate, because there are definitely solutions to this. Congress requires a bipartisan compromise vote on this because 60 votes are needed in the U.S. Senate. So unless Democrats are just going to outright agree to the president's avoidance of this issue, which they voted several times now not to do, we're going to have to come up with a bipartisan compromise solution to get this done. And that's very, very doable, and that's where my efforts have been focused over the last several days, is to try to fashion that, that bipartisan solution.
On previous shutdowns
CASE: There have been times when the shutdown has lasted one or two days. Everybody got up to the actual deadline of midnight, when a federal funding bill expired, without passing a new federal funding bill, and came to their senses when they woke up in the morning. Unfortunately, Washington woke up this morning and didn't come to its senses. The longest one was over a month, back in 2018, 2019, as I came back to Congress, that's what I was welcomed with was a federal government shutdown that was disruptive. Finally ended, and the answer is, I have no idea. It certainly seems from the statements and actions of the Trump administration that they intend to drag this out, at least unless there is unconditional surrender to their demands and to their avoidance of the consequences of health care to legitimate concerns about DOGE reductions, rescissions, impoundments, curtailment of federal spending without congressional authority. These are the issues that are on the table, but they seem to have a my way or the highway approach, going so far as in the last couple of days to President Trump threatening that if a shutdown occurred, he would not just furlough federal workers, he would outright fire them, which I think is absolutely irresponsible.
On resources for the public
CASE: If people will go to my website on the very first opening page, there will be, among one of the rotating images, a link to a summary that I put out last night as the shutdown happened of what exactly is happening, why it is happening, how it is affecting folks. And I've tried there to answer some very, very basic questions that people have. For example, will I continue to get my Social Security benefits? The answer is, and absolutely should be, yes. Will I continue to be able to get VA benefits and access the VA health care facilities? The answer to that is yes. Will I be able to continue to travel through the airport? The answer is yes. There's a lot of misinformation that goes out, and frankly, it is very deliberate misinformation on some occasions from this administration, which I think is irresponsible in and of itself. Now there's stuff that we don't know, because not only do we have a confusing and chaotic situation, but it is being administered in the middle of a shutdown by an administration that is confusing and chaotic to start with, and so it's hard to predict exactly what where they may differ from some very long standing assumptions about what does and doesn't get affected during a shutdown. … And over time, if we don't get this fixed fast, the strain on just the delivery of the federal services, even if essential, like Social Security, like VA, will start to be felt in just delayed responses or non-responsiveness from those offices themselves, as those federal workers just get burned out and again, let's remember that they're working without pay, subject to reimbursement, but they're working without pay. That's not a very good working condition. So some of the things, I think we can predict pretty well, but a lot of it we can't.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 1, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
