A crowd of perhaps 300 showed up Saturday at a town hall hosted by U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) at the Pahoa High and Intermediate School cafeteria.
The majority of attendees were gray or graying. The mood, however, was boisterous. Cheers, applause and hoots filled the air for the few able, in a seemingly brief hour, to express their anger and frustration with President Donald Trump and the slash-and-burn budget cutting by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
“DOGE is a dictatorship,” Tokuda proclaimed. “What we are seeing here is a dictatorship. What we are seeing here is someone that is trying to take away all of the balances of power, the checks and balances that have made us a democracy that I thought we all loved and cherished and were fighting to protect — what many who went to war and died sacrificed to protect.”
She urged people to call their Republican friends, wherever they are, and have them turn up the pressure on GOP Congress members.
“We’re going to get statistics exactly on those red states on how maternal morbidity is higher in rural red states,” Tokuda said. “We’re an industrialized country, and yet our women are dying at a faster rate than poverty-stricken countries because they don’t have access to basic OB/GYN care. That is absolutely unacceptable.”
“This is not about just a couple of trillion dollars worth of cuts,” she added. “This is Medicaid for 80 million people. This is 40 million people who depend on (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). It’s tens of thousands of your neighbors right here on Hawaii Island who depend on that for food and health care who will literally die if we do nothing.”
Michelle Gilbert was among the audience members sounding off, decrying Musk as “someone who was granted access to the Treasury and protected information of private citizens, which are both illegal.”
“I would be removed and arrested if I did that,” Gilbert said. “Musk should be arrested and removed and prosecuted. At a minimum, he should be barred from access.”
Gilbert also hinted there should be legal sanctions levied on members of Congress who are in league with Trump and Musk.
“Democratic members of Congress have a fiduciary duty to enforce the law — remove, expel, imprison,” she said. “If they did that today, the Democrats would have both houses of Congress, and they could impeach, try and convict the president. Have a backbone, please, please — the moral fortitude of Jimmy Carter, of John Lewis, even John McCain.
“We are in a constitutional crisis and an authoritarian government. The Reichstag did the same in Nazi Germany. We cannot wait for the courts to move slowly.”
Karen Hester of Opihikao identified herself as an immigration activist. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023, there were about 256,000 immigrants in Hawaii, which is about 17.8% of the state’s population. That’s higher than the national average of 14.3%. Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in Hawaii range from 41,000 to 51,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Migration Policy Institute. This represents about 3.3% to 3.5% of the state’s total population.
“As you know, the president has demonized immigrants,” Hester said. “I’m challenging people in this room to really speak up for the people being targeted first here, trans people, immigrants. … As most people, I think, understand here, immigrants contribute more financially to our society than take benefits.”
Tokuda replied she had been talking to immigration activists statewide, including those who help immigrants of Micronesian descent in the U.S. via the Compact of Free Association.
“You might be thinking, COFA doesn’t get rounded up. They are legally entitled to be here,” she said. “They have been deported. We know for a fact some have actually been deported.”
Tokuda said immigrants need to be educated on what their rights are if authorities knock on their door.
A Keaau woman identifying herself as Joan said she’s “very scared right now about the world, not just the country.”
“I’m also very alarmed by what’s going on with this authoritarian motion by Trump to align himself with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and to lie about Ukraine starting the war and say that Ukraine’s a dictatorship and that only 4% of the people in this country support (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy).”
Joan said she’s been calling 10 Republican senators a day, as well as Hawaii’s all-Democrat congressional delegation, asking them to “tell the world that Trump is a liar.”
“Ukraine did not start this war,” she said.
Tokuda said that as a mother of two teenage boys, she’s concerned they may be sent to fight a future war because of Trump and Musk’s announced intentions to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“It’s not just food programs, it’s not just education and health care, it is about peace, global peace,” she said. “Anybody with any child right now should be absolutely terrified that we are abdicating our role to keep peace … not just in this country, but the world.
“The abandonment of USAID, removing ourselves from the World Health Organization, you are actually creating entrée for adversaries to come in and fill the void, whether it’s China or Russia. … For less than 1% of our entire budget, the military’s 14%, that’s what we’re paying for global peace through USAID.
“That’s a lot cheaper, to me, than sending our kids off to war.”
A Waikoloa woman named Tina Marie praised Tokuda for calling “Elon Musk the president and the other one his sidekick” at a Washington, D.C., rally.
“Mr. Hitler-wannabee is a direct threat to our democracy, as DOGE actively dismantles our government,” Marie said. “And I hope everyone is clear that the ‘e’ does not stand for ‘efficiency.’ It stands for ‘elimination.’”
She railed about Democrats “acting as if the old rules still apply, trying to be polite and take the high road.”
”We’re told to protest, sign petitions, call our reps,” Marie said. “But what’s the point? Republicans break the law, over and over, with zero consequences.
“… I don’t normally encourage this, but shut down the government if you have to. I think now, it’s justified to play as dirty as possible for the time being.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
