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Aloha, Pennsylvania Avenue? Is Tulsi Gabbard seriously considering another run for president?

The former Hawaii congresswoman turned right-wing political pundit seemed to tease the idea this past week during on Fox News with Sean Hannity. 

When asked by Hannity if she would consider another attempt for the White House Gabbard said “if there were a way for me to best serve this country in that fashion I would.”

Hannity followed up by asking if she would run as a third-party candidate. To which she offered a similarly coy response. 

“I’d consider all options, put it that way,” Gabbard said.

Oooh, the intrigue. 

As you’ll recall, Gabbard ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat. She barely registered in the polls and dropped out after a series of last place finishes. 

Since then, Gabbard, who’s known to be a political chameleon, has rebranded herself as a darling of the political right. 

She abandoned the Democratic Party, took a gig as a guest contributor to Fox News and has been a reliable troll of President Joe Biden and his policies, attacking him over everything from immigration and his approach to Ukraine to culture war issues, such as transgender rights and “anti-white racism.” (Yes, those really are her words even though Gabbard herself is mixed race.)

Whether Gabbard actually runs is an open question.

In January, she was reportedly one of several women on former President Donald Trump’s short list of . 

Whatever she decides we can promise you one thing: We’ll be watching through the cracks between the fingers that cover our eyes. 

Dysfunction junction: The Hawaii Republican Party has lost its third chair in six months. Tim Dalhouse has told local GOP members that, well, the party’s problems are just too much for him to handle.

“The legal and financial issues that existed prior to my tenure, severe dysfunction and factional fighting, subversive activities and blatant violations of confidentiality agreements, as well as the complete lack of focus on doing anything to achieve the goal of getting Republicans elected, have proven insurmountable to me,” Dalhouse said in an email Thursday.

Dalhouse was chosen to lead the Hawaii GOP just two months ago at the state convention in Hilo.

The party has had difficulty in recent years holding on to a chair, even as it has managed to place more party members in the Hawaii Legislature. It certainly cannot be any fun to be attacked online by dissident Republicans like Eric Ryan, who two weeks ago attacked Dalhouse on the .

The internal squabbling appears to have reached a new level. Diamond Garcia, the immediate past chair and currently the House minority floor leader, told The Sunshine Blog that he “totally understood” why Dalhouse resigned but expressed confidence that the conservative movement would continue to grow.

Budget in brief: The Blog confesses to finding the current Hawaii state budget, , almost impossible to understand. And believe us, we’ve tried.

Which is why it is great to share that the , a program of the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, has just released along with .

Here’s a few highlights from the highlights:

• $827.6 million for housing and homelessness
• $175.9 million for healthcare and wellness
• $52.4 million for early learning
• $344 million less for the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, “mostly due to post-pandemic reductions in unemployment”
• $142 million for the Department of Land and Natural Resources to “better preserve and restore our at-risk natural environment”

The budget analysis also offers some very good observations and recommendations, including the following, which is worth quoting in full:

“The process and timeline for determining the budget this year received vocal criticism from, among others, legislators themselves. Multiple lawmakers have spoken about the inaccessibility of the process of creating the budget, our most important policy, and the need for a significant overhaul.

“Part of the problem is that there is no access to timely specifics about the budget, even for legislators who sit on the money committees. Budget worksheets are the most useful tools to understand budget details, but they can be difficult to understand, and can run up to nearly a thousand pages at times. Most legislators — and the entirety of the public — have no access to the worksheets before the final budget decision. This year, the worksheets for the final executive budget were not posted to the legislative website until May 19, more than two weeks after the legislative session ended.”