Still awaiting blast off: Rep. Scot Matayoshi readily admits “the Fourth of July is a very different holiday here than on the mainland.”

Independence Day is the biggest day of the year for most Americans when it comes to shooting off their own fireworks, but it pales in comparison to New Year’s Eve in the islands.

Heck, Matayoshi told The Blog on Friday that he’s yet to hear any pre-holiday fireworks going off in his Kāneʻohe neighborhood with only two weeks to go until the Fourth. In the lead-up to year’s end, he typically starts hearing explosions as early as October.

Still, he’d hoped that his bill targeting illegal fireworks would have been signed by the governor by now so that police could use its enforcement-enhancing tools in the run-up to the Fourth as a “low-level trial run.”

A Special Commentary Project

Civil Beat opinion writers are closely following efforts to bring more transparency and accountability to state and local government — at the Legislature, the county level and in the media. Help us by sending ideas and anecdotes to sunshine@civilbeat.org.

Read More

House Bill 1483 and three others were passed in response to the fireworks accident last New Year’s Eve that killed six people in Salt Lake. The measures will take effect July 9 at the latest, but sooner if they’re signed before then.

Matayoshi requested a bill-signing ceremony for the fireworks legislation, but hasn’t heard back from the governor’s office yet.

Of course, Kāneʻohe isn’t the only place in Hawaiʻi where New Year’s-related fireworks typically start going off weeks and even months early, and that’ll provide “a good test case for police to issue citations” well before 2026 arrives, Matayoshi said.

Meanwhile, The Blog reminds Oʻahu residents that all amateur fireworks displays are illegal except for firecrackers purchased with a special permit that must be obtained online from the Honolulu Fire Department.

Aerials are illegal statewide, but fireworks that stay on the ground can be ignited on the neighbor islands from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. on the Fourth. That’s the time frame for firecrackers as well, and they also require special permits in Maui and Hawaiʻi counties.

In Kauaʻi County, no firecracker permits will be issued for the Fourth because no vendors are selling them on the Garden Isle.

The Blog’s advice: Leave the pyrotechnics to the pros.

You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’: Who else besides The Sunshine Blog predicted this? Raise your hands.

By most reports, Donald Trump has soured on Tulsi Gabbard, which ICYMI, is all because of Iran. Gabbard says Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Trump says she’s wrong.

In March Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the spook community believed Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. But the Washington Examiner reported this week the president disputes the assessment from his director of national intelligence, stating his belief that Iran was “very close” to developing a nuclear weapon prior to Israel’s attack on its facilities earlier this month.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Tuesday. On Friday, the president went further, saying that Gabbard is “wrong” on whether Iran is trying to build a weapon, The Hill reported. In the latest development, as the BBC reported Saturday, Gabbard is now saying Iran could indeed produce nuclear weapons “within weeks.” Hence the headline from The Hill Saturday: “Gabbard’s standing in Trump World comes into question.”

The tension arose in no small part because of a dramatic short video that Gabbard posted on social media June 10 after visiting Hiroshima. In it she warns that the “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” — and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”

I recently visited Hiroshima, and stood at the epicenter of a city scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945. What I saw, the stories I heard, and the haunting sadness that remains, will stay with me forever. pic.twitter.com/TmxmxiGwnV

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) June 10, 2025

“Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according to three people familiar with the episode,” Politico reported.

The Blog can only assume Trump missed the part in her DNI job interview where she likely reminded him she has has long condemned “interventionist regime change wars,” as she often put it.

All this comes as the war between Iran and Israel shows no sign of abating and Trump on Saturday sent U.S. war planes to bomb Iranian nuclear sites despite telling the whole world he would decide in two weeks wther to get the U.S. directly involved.

Meanwhile, the White House has now posted the video of Gabbard testifying before Congress, according to Mediaite, but it was edited to make it look as if she warned that Iran was close to getting nukes. As The New Republic reported, it leaves out the part where she said Iran is not building a bomb.

The Blog has a phrase for that: fake news.

Weekend update: Speaking of no surprises, Tyler Dos Santos-Tam has been officially dumped as Honolulu City Council budget chair. This followed last week’s reorganization of leadership at the City Council which followed Dos Santos-Tam and a couple of other council members crossing council chair Tommy Waters on an earlier vote on sewer rates.

He’s been replaced as budget chair by council member Val Okimoto, one of the four who joined Waters to create a new majority faction on the council, still under Waters’ chairmanship.

In fact, he’s kind of hard to find these days. The Blog had to scroll quite a ways down on the council website to find Dos Santos-Tam as the chair of the Government Efficiency and Customer Services Committee.

Blog Fans who know much more about council politics than we do can perhaps better speculate on what all this reshuffling really means. But The Blog hears it might have just a tad to do with who may be considering a run for mayor in 2028.

Weekend update, Part 2: And this just in, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group are coming out against any move by the Trump administration to open the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.

This announcement comes as the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, which helps oversee fishing in a huge area of the Pacific, publicly begins lobbying for the sanctuary status to be lifted.

“The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is steadfast in its commitment to Papahānaumokuākea,” OHA Board Chair Kaialiʻi Kahele said in a press release. “This is a pu‘uhonua that allows our people to revitalize practices like navigation that depend on healthy ecosystems and helps fish populations recover which benefits all Hawai‘i nei. Our marine monuments are fulfilling their purpose — there is no need to alter what is already working.”

Read the full statement here, which is pretty strong in its condemnation of Wespac and its fishery assessments.