FIRST ALERT WEATHER DAY ⛈️ A flash flood warning has been extended for Oahu until 6:15 p.m. with thunderstorms producing heavy rain over the Koolau mountains, Central Oahu and leeward shorelines. Video from Rose Cabuyadao Libed shows flooding along Farrington Highway in Waipahu.

CAUGHT ON CAMERA ⛈️ Lightning strikes a utility pole near Waipahu District Park. It's unclear if this caused any outages. HECO reports about 40,000 customers without power on Oahu. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/05/16/storms-trigger-road-closures-flight-delays-power-outages-across-oahu/ 

About 50,000 Hawaii families with unpaid medical debt may soon get relief if the governor signs Senate Bill 3025 into law. Learn more https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/05/16/plan-erase-91m-medical-debt-hawaii-families-heads-governor/

UPDATE: Hawaiian Electric's outage map reports 25,000 Oahu customers are still without power as of Friday at 9 p.m. HECO said West Oahu customers are still without power due to equipment damaged by a lightning strike. Learn more ⬇️

Our Hawaiian Monk Seals are endangered. And they are very sacred to our people. He should go to jail and pay a fine. He broke the law. They better not let him off. We need to protect our precious ocean Ohana from people who have no respect for life or our culture.

According to the witness of the video when she said she called the cops, he said he didnt care. Now his lawyer says he feels bad and he was trying to protect some sea turtles and wasnt trying to hurt Lani. I call BS. He didnt think he did anything wrong until they slapped cuffs on him.

Earlier this year, Hawaii’s MFCU settled a Medicaid fraud case for $208,318 & separately filed criminal charges against two individuals, one of whom has already pleaded no contest... “Political attacks do not change the facts,” AG Lopez said. www.staradvertiser.com/2026/05/15/h...

His atty actually said this: "There is a reasonable explanation for his conduct,” Breiner said. “It has taken a significant toll on him and his family.” No 'reasonable explanation' given. Such BS. He and his client need to stop whining and own up to it. www.staradvertiser.com/2026/05/15/h...

It's a very wet Aloha Friday! Thunderstorm ongoing. Hope we'll see the sun tomorrow.

Crazy rain, thunder and lightning today on Oahu! From Star-Advertiser, Honolulu

The Trump official in charge of hantavirus response is a penile implant specialist who has repeatedly posted videos and images of his patients' procedures online. He does not believe in vaccines.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen whose prior detentions went viral and were detailed by ProPublica, was recently detained for a third time — and shackled. “I just want to live in peace,” he says. www.propublica.org/article/immi...

March 2026: Trump executes 7 purchases of Palantir stock, worth up to half a million dollars April 7-9, 2026: Palantir stock falls 13% in a selloff April 10, 2026: Trump praises Palantir on Truth Social and includes its stock ticker in his post April 10-22, 2026: Palantir stock surges 19%

"You can't say the cost of a puppy is $200 because that was the adoption fee." The Pentagon's $25B price tag does exactly that — it ignores veterans' care, disability payments, and decades of interest. The true cost of war shows up long after the fighting stops.

Voter at a town hall on Republican gerrymandering: "These maps are the wet dream of soft men who won't even look up from their phones to face their voters. These are men who lust for a world where the powerful do what they can and the rest of us suffer what we must. Jesus wept."

Meet Dalton Eatherly, better known online as "chud the Builder," a 28 year old Tennessee livestreamer who has built his entire brand around one thing: pointing a camera at Black people in public and hurling racial slurs at them to provoke a reaction. abc11.com/post/chud-bu...

Whoa, Donnie sure looks old--and disheveled

Love this "goodbye" to CBS, the fallen enterprise by Letterman and Colbert.

Letterman helps himself to a parting gift (or two), before 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' signs off next Thursday.

🚨BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court Friday rejected Virginia Democrats’ emergency request to revive a voter-approved plan that would have allowed the state to redraw its congressional map in response to Republican gerrymanders in other states. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Virginia Democrats’ emergency request to revive their congressional redistricting effort, leaving the current map in place with no noted dissents and no written opinion.

#caturday #cats

This is Machiavellian. This is despotism. This is Juristocracy.

Trump is negotiating to settle his lawsuit against his own IRS, and one of the remedies being floated (along with almost 2 billion dollars) is the IRS dropping all audits of Trump, his family, and his businesses. Just absolutely staggering corruption.

The Pentagon can’t stop lying and undermining Congress, a handful of Republicans gripe and complain about it, not one of them ever does a damn thing about it.

In the last 72 hours, Taiwan has gotten a heavy dose of the reality that Ukraine, Poland, Denmark and others have seen up close and personal. Just because you have been an ally for decades through admins of both parties, the US is not your friend as long as Trump is president.

Democrats have ready-made ad for the elections here. His inability not STFU and his stupidity at not grasping things will hopefully sink him--if the arteries don't take him first.

We’re going back to Selma and Montgomery. Why? The Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act, and the country needs to be reminded who we were before Civil Rights - and why we can’t go back.

The reason people keep doing crimes for Trump is that you get rewarded for doing them, congratulations to Colorado's Dem governor for making sure we get more people trying to overturn elections on his behalf bsky.app/profile/kyle...

😕🇺🇸

As one who started reading Diana Gabaldon's #Outlander series in the 90s, last night's series finale was emotional. Characters I've been with for so long. All done now. The finale did not disappoint w/ a surprise ending--a palliative for those who could not bear the end of such a wonderful story.

$1.7B for a slush fund for the Trump fam & friends $1B for his unnecessary ballroom $15M Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to be pained $1B Upgrade Gifted Plane Millions of Americans have lost or will be losing their healthcare Gas, food, travel etc #WeCantAffordTrump

The Chinese leader later warned Trump that any missteps on Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict”. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Dozens of empty Waymos invaded an Atlanta neighborhood and circled a cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...

It’s time to stop lumping Hakeem and Schumer together. This fight on redistricting is the singular fight of the next 4 years in a lot of ways and Hakeem is seemingly up for the knife fight.

Kilauea is fountaining again — www.youtube.com/live/gXKuUyK...

Why is a 76-year-old man doing all the hard work in this moment? Where are the Millennial/Gen Z artists (ahem, Taylor Swift) to shake their audiences into sobriety about what is going on? open.substack.com/pub/saltypol...

Today's cartoon by Chris Britt:

I rarely say “major breaking” and rarely put out these video hits, but this is pretty major.

Trump is creating a $1.7 BILLION slush fund for his allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted but weren’t — in case you’re wondering why Rep Ogles is making himself the victim. He wants to get in on the heist from taxpayers. abcnews.com/US/trump-poi...

Vance called out Hawaii’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit for not being effective and threatened to defund the unit. He needs to find a new couch to amuse himself and keep out of Hawaii. www.staradvertiser.com/2026/05/14/h...

🙏 Kyiv... the death toll from a Russian missile hitting a house has risen to 10.

One of the VERY FIRST things done after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to have the text of the new Constitution translated into Dutch and German, which were at the time the two largest non-English language spoken in the United States. Here's the National Archives making this point:

It’s 2026, in Oklahoma has finally made child marriage illegal. Congratulations? Also WTF.

This is pretty amazing.

GILLIBRAND: How did we bomb 22 schools? COOPER: There's no indication we have G: So how do you explain publicly available information that 22 schools have been hit and multiple hospitals? C: There's no way we can corroborate that G: Have you investigated those claims? C: We have not

In a major win, the Supreme Court rightly rejected a cruel attempt to limit abortion access. Mifepristone is safe and essential health care. In New York, we'll keep using every tool we have to defend abortion access for those coming here seeking care.

The Senate voted unanimously to ban senators from prediction market wagers. Now it’s the House’s turn. We’re urging Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries to extend that ban to members, their families, and congressional staff.

NEW: We've spent 10 months tracking the outcomes in tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by ICE detainees amid an unprecedented detention push. It's not a cose call: judges have ruled more than 10,000 times against ICE, a 9-1 ratio. See the database: www.politico.com/news/2026/05...