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Just the facts, ma’am: U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono knows as well as anyone that a shutdown of the federal government wasn’t going to have any real impact on the recovery efforts currently underway on Maui to get help for victims of the Aug. 8 fire. Federal disaster money for Maui, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration, has been approved, set aside and being spent by the millions.

But that didn’t stop her from exploiting the Maui fire situation to score political points against House Republicans in a Senate floor speech last week where she ranted about how they are putting Maui’s disaster relief at risk.

“By forcing a government shutdown, Speaker (Kevin) McCarthy will be abandoning the people of Maui – the very same people he vowed to help just weeks ago when he visited Maui,” she proclaimed.

A press person for Hirono tells The Sunshine Blog that his boss was really talking about long-term disaster aid, and the issue of whether Republicans would agree to plump up FEMA’s dwindling bank account which was in danger of running out of money at some point. But that’s a different issue than keeping the government operating and federal workers on the job in Maui.

So it seems kind of disingenuous for her to imply that a government shutdown would bring current relief efforts to a halt when what she is really talking about is future funding. People on Maui are very scared and distressed as it is, and suggesting they may lose what little help they are getting if the federal government is shut down is just stressing them even more.

The Blog has been regularly aghast at the people who have taken advantage of the Maui fires, with their terrible toll on the community and the state, to try to leverage political gain or reap some sort of financial advantage for themselves.

In her eagerness to bash political opponents, Hirono is coming across that way as well. Perhaps she should tone down her famous (or infamous) rhetoric on this one.

And as it turned out, a government shutdown was averted on Saturday when McCarthy put together enough GOP and Democrat House votes to pass a temporary funding plan. Hawaii Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda joined in that effort. The bill then went to the Senate where Hirono and Sen. Brian Schatz also supported it. President Joe Biden signed it late Saturday.

Missing man: In 2020, Civil Beat reporter Brittany Lyte and audio producer Claire Caulfield set out on an assignment to look into the odd disappearances of people on Kauai, some of whom likely had some unfortunate accident and others who simply don’t want to be found. At the time, Kauai had 85 unsolved missing persons cases. The island, it seems, is a place where you can walk off into the wilderness and never be seen again.

On this reporting trip, Brittany and Claire accompanied a group of friends who had come to Kauai to look for a guy named Alex Gumm, their close buddy from childhood days in Maine.

Now, the search for their missing friend has become “Lost in Paradise,” a film that will debut Sunday evening on .

“Alex Gumm, a Maine musician interested in Eastern philosophy and all things extraterrestrial, vanishes in Kauai, Hawaii, on February 22, 2018,” says the tease on a press release. “Alex’s disappearance raises several questions, and his childhood friends risk their lives to find the answers.”

. Spoiler alert: Brittany and Claire are featured heavily in the movie.