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Editor’s note: The Civil Beat Editorial Board and reporters recently spoke with U.S. Rep. Ed Case, who represents the 1st Congressional District that covers the urban areas of the City and County of Honolulu. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Case, who was reelected in November, began by explaining the remaining work of the lame-duck Congress when it returns to Washington in December.

We’ve got a number of things to do still. First of all, we haven’t finished our fiscal year 2025 appropriations. It’s an open question whether we’re going to be able to finish that in the next three weeks of Congress. We are probably going to kick it down the road into the next year on another continuing resolution. It’s possible that we can still pull it off, but time is running out on us. So that’s the biggest piece of business.

Related, very topical for us here, we have a disaster relief supplemental funding bill, which is to replenish the coffers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been funding Maui. And the coffers are low, not just because of Maui, but because there have been many other disasters across the country that have drained it. And so we really need to pass that and that’s really my single biggest priority, to make sure that that FEMA is fully funded by the end of the year. That affects the ongoing FEMA loans and other assistance itself, as well as small business assistance for Maui.

Third, we have our National Defense Authorization Act, which is our annual military bill, which should come up (this) week, I hope. There’s many provisions in there that I and the delegation have worked on from a Hawaii-specific military perspective.

And then fourth, kind of a long shot, we still have a farm bill out there that we should pass. But I think it’s more likely that’s going to be extended. We’re simply out of time.

To stay with the budget for now, can you identify what’s top of mind for you in terms of Hawaii? And how concerned are you that that might not come through or be significantly limited because Trump is already putting his stamp on the budget, even though he’s not been sworn in yet?

Well, first of all, there’s a fundamental disagreement between the parties, which is pretty stark as to defense versus non-defense bills. If we’re talking about defense bills, I believe we’re pretty much on the same page in terms of the Indo-Pacific in particular. I think the final figure in the bill was something like $1.4 billion in military construction for Hawaii, which is the most of any state for the current fiscal year. And so that’s major. I want to keep that in there, because we need our military facilities to be upgraded. And it certainly helps us from an economic perspective.

How did we get to that high level? I know Oahu is heavily populated with military installations, but we’re competing with some big states like California.

We have the largest military construction project in the country here right now — the Pearl Harbor renovations. The new dry dock at Pearl Harbor takes up a lot of that money. But we also have major construction going on at many of our military bases too. And by the way, to include Red Hill, because we’re still spending significant amounts of money (for shutting down) Red Hill. So we need to keep that funding going.

Maui is a big deal and continues to be. I think the latest was we have probably spent somewhere in the range of $3 billion in assistance of one kind or another on Maui — federal money — since the Lahaina fires. We have large expenditures still to go, which are probably going to be in our fiscal 2026 bill, which I’m working on right now. That’s the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 of next year.

President Biden has asked for money for FEMA. Is that what you’re pushing for, or is that something separate?

We’re pushing for two things and we’re all on the same page. The delegation is on the same page on Maui.

The first thing that we are focused on is the basic disaster assistance and relief that’s been going on since the Maui wildfires. Housing, temporary shelter, food. How do you get people back into a living situation for them that’s halfway decent? And that’s taken a huge amount.

How do you clean up Maui? Because we’ve cleaned up Lahaina. We’ve gotten it ready to rebuild once the county of Maui decides what it wants to rebuild as, which is a big issue, a huge issue.

The basics are still about trying to develop good policies, trying to find fellow travelers on both parties and trying to find the opportunities to work together when you can.

It also impacts some other agencies such as the Small Business Administration, which is a huge puka (hole) right now in the funding. They’ve run out of money. We have to replenish that money for them to continue to help our small businesses

The second thing that we are very focused on is what we call CDBG-DR — Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery. That’s federal funding to communities to develop those communities. And there is a special category of CDBG, which is called the Disaster Recovery. And that is where the federal money has to come to actually rebuild Lahaina — to rebuild the infrastructure, to rebuild the basic backbone of life.

We want to get that. We’re looking for a lot of money in CDBG-DR, either in the current fiscal year or in the next fiscal year, to sequence so that the money is there when the county of Maui decides where it wants to go.

Is there a total figure for that? The grant money.

A billion-plus (dollars).

In light of the new administration, where are you headed on climate change?

If you step back objectively and ask yourself what are the implications of a Trump presidency in the current environment, you come to climate change pretty fast, because the last Trump presidency was not at all understanding of or sympathetic to climate change. And there is no reason to conclude that they’re going to be on any different track this time around, despite the fact that there’s plentiful evidence of accelerated climate change just in the last four years since President Trump was last president. And so that is one of the biggest concerns that we should all have in the next administration.

Anything related to environmental protection, it’s not going to be a friendly administration.

And with a Republican majority in Congress on both the House and the Senate side, where even the significant number of Republicans that do believe climate change is a reality, do believe we should invest in climate change mitigation and prevention, are probably not going to be as vocal about it this time around.

Which is really a macro question going into the next Congress. Is there a Republican check and balance on this president in Congress? That’s a huge question and it implicates all kinds of issues out there.

We see it happening right now in terms of the president’s Cabinet nominations, which have to go through the Senate. The question is, are there enough senators to say no to some of these? Climate change is one of them. I don’t know what the answer is yet. I know it’s a huge issue.

I’m on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, so I’m responsible together with my colleagues for our defense budget, which is half of our budget. And this year, as we went through the fiscal 2025 appropriations process, there was a systematic effort to word check the entire document to take out any reference to climate change. I mean, you can go in that bill and look for “climate change.” You’re not going to find it. You may find “extreme weather.” You may find “weather mitigation,” you may find lots of other stuff, but you’re not going to find “climate change.”

And so I expect that entire approach to climate change will continue and it will be very immediate pretty fast, because if you take a look at one of the signature bills of the last four years, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is focused in large part on climate change together with tax provisions and incentives to move us away from fossil fuel-based energy to more climate change-resilient forms of energy. Those tax provisions and the Inflation Reduction Act are going to be literally front and center early on in the next Congress in the tax bill that’s going to be coming up.

You brought up the Inflation Reduction Act. President Trump wants to make sure that his tax cuts back in 2017, which expire next year, continue. But tied to that, how much is the Biden record — the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan — what happens to all of that? How safe is that? How much can a new Congress and the president chip away at Bidenomics, essentially?

So the dynamic of Congress is that although it is a technically a Republican trifecta, it is a narrow majority in both the House and the Senate. The final numbers in the Senate are 53-47, so anything that is subject to a filibuster still need to get the 60 votes to pass anything out. On the House side, it looks like we’re going to end up at about 221 to 214. A majority is 218. So if you’re the Republican caucus, you can only lose four votes and everybody has to be present to vote. And right now, they’re down a couple of vacancies anyway.

The bottom line is that it is not automatic that just because Trump says to do something, that it will be done. There is still an actual check and balance in Congress. We’ve already talked about the Republicans acting as an internal check and balance. There is certainly a dynamic of Congress disagreeing that would prevent government by decree.

They have the huge semiconductor plans and other investments from foreign car manufacturers that are taking advantage of tax credits (and) are located in Republican districts, by and large. So I don’t know the answer. But I’m going to guess that it’s not going to be quite as easy as perhaps some people think to revoke Biden-era legislation. Republicans like the bipartisan infrastructure plan just as much as Democrats do. There’s major infrastructure funding going into communities across the entire country. I don’t think that that’s at significant risk. I think the major risks are climate change and other related provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

How are you, personally, going to get through this divided Congress now? What is it that you’re going to be doing?

So this is going to be my sixth full Congress. I had a piece of my first Congress, which was 2002. That was a Republican trifecta Congress. My second full Congress was a Republican trifecta. When I went back to Congress in 2019, that was a divided Congress. It was President Trump, a Democratic majority. So my fourth full Congress, it was a Democratic trifecta. In my current Congress it is divided government. Now I’m going into a Republican trifecta.

Essentially I’ve been to all of those parties and it doesn’t particularly change the basics. The basics are still about trying to develop good policies, trying to find fellow travelers in both parties and trying to find the opportunities to work together being the firm and committed loyal opposition, without getting personal about it, trying to create, maintain and foster and expand relationships, trying to work with other people on their issues where you can and ask them to work on your issues.

None of the basics changes. What changes is the decision-makers and how you interact with the decision-makers. If the decision-makers are in your party, that’s a little easier than if they’re not in your party. That’s pretty obvious.

So I’m not throwing up my hands and going, “Woe is me. I’m not going to get anything done.” I have gotten stuff done for 10 years in Congress now under all of those circumstances. And I have great seniority, great committees, great relationships, preexisting rhythms of working in a less partisan way through things like the Problem Solvers, the bipartisan fiscal forum, which is a bipartisan group focused on the federal budget, (and) the Pacific Islands Caucus, which is completely bipartisan, a very successful caucus. I wish it was just a different situation, but this is the reality that the country dealt to me. I still have to do my job and I think I know how to do it.

To me, the biggest unknown is going to be to what extent is the incoming administration a different administration than the last Trump administration? Obviously, they’re out to, apparently, to basically take a wrecking ball to the federal government. Disruption is one thing, but destruction is another thing.

As the president tries to flood these Cabinet and presumably sub-Cabinet political appointees into the federal government, how is that going to leech down into the overall system and influence the ability to work with the administration on issues?

Air tour operators in Hawaii is an area you’ve had a great deal of interest in. What do you see then as the kind of pathway forward at the federal level for the delegation in terms of reintroducing legislation, modifying or pushing through some mechanisms to get better oversight that you clearly see is necessary?

There’s three pathways and have been for some time. The pathway of actually changing federal law to change the regulatory assumptions under which FAA operates, which is in so many words, safety is the only thing that really matters and we have our limitations in terms of what we can do even on safety, and we certainly cannot regulate to time, place and manner of operation to avoid disruption on the ground or other consequences from excessive air tour operations.

In the bills that we introduced, we tried to provide a limited range of regulation there. We also tried to require the FAA — and this is one that to this day just bothers me deeply — to get them to have to adopt National Transportation Safety Board safety regulations. They’re the ones that have to clean up after crashes. They know why they happened. They make recommendations and the FAA throws them out the window. NTSB has no regulatory authority. So we did try to change those in law. Air tour operators were very active in Congress and they had, unfortunately, key allies in key positions. So it was tough.

So we gave it a good fight. We got a lot out of it. I think we definitely got some provisions that were specific to Hawaii in terms of requiring the FAA to participate in a Hawaii-based air tour management task force. That’s coming up right now. And, you know, sometimes you can introduce a bill for a long time and it can be discouraging. But then sometimes it just pops. And so I’m going to keep on doing the statutory side of it in the hopes that one of these days it’ll pop. And the zone of allies out there will expand.

So that’s one. No. 2, even if that particular effort was only moderately successful, it still has an effect on the FAA because you call them out on what they’re doing. And I continue to call them out on what they’re doing. So I believe that that has had impact. Now, they may not call me up one day and say, “Congressman Case, we listened to you and we did this.” Because they’re a proud and even arrogant agency and they’re not going to give me credit for that. But if they get it done, that’s what I care about. So I’m going to keep on shining a light on them.

And No. 3, there are still things that the state can do that I think would be insulated from the FAA, from the air tour operators’ arrogant lawsuits. And one of them, which was very unfortunate in the last state Legislature, was a bill to require higher insurance liability in property insurance for air tour operators as a condition to use state facilities. I think that that is a permissible zone of state regulation. And that bill, which would go a long way towards taking out the fly-by-night operators that get very, very cheap helicopters and they skimp on their pilots and they skimp on their training. They skimp on their regulatory compliance. They’re the worst offenders.

And actually, if you take a look at the actual crashes, you can see that those are the ones that are crashing for the most part, not the long established ones. And they actually carry high levels of insurance. And so the state Legislature got all the way through the House, got all the way through the Senate, got all the way into conference. And bluntly, the air tour operators sabotaged it at the last minute.

So I’ve already talked to the state legislators and said, “You’re the ones that told me in a resolution you passed unanimously that this is your concern. I’m telling you, If you’re going to ask me to go through and do all of this stuff, which I agree with, then, hey, you’ve got to do your part, too. And so pass that bill.” That’s the biggest thing that they can do next session, is start with that bill and then we move on to the task force on local safety and operation.

Do you have any comment about the operations of the key field office of the FAA and their ability to provide oversight, given that the tour operators consistently push for more FAA regulation?

Well, I think that in general, there’s far too cozy a relationship between the air tour operators and the FAA overall. And I think the FAA defers to them at the drop of a hat, does not really operate as a truly independent agency focused on complete safety and willing to say no to air tour operators up to and including them going out of business — not willing to do that. And the Flight Standards District Office in Honolulu has been pretty acute from that perspective. And they’re the ones that are able to make a lot of these very direct calls on a day to day basis.

The other thing to note is that the FAA is in the process of modifying its common air tour standards manual. And they’re actually throwing it out and starting with a new regulatory approach. And I’ve definitely been in contact with them about it. They’re going to be releasing that pretty soon. We’ll find out from that whether the FAA has gotten real about concerns or whether they’re just kicking it down the road. I’m optimistic that they listened, but we’ll see.

You introduced the Invasive Species Response Act just last month. Can you share a little bit more about why you introduced that bill?

Starting with the basic observation that if anybody didn’t think we had an invasive species problem here in Hawaii, we’ve just seen it in spades — all over again, by the way. I introduced it in 2003 and I’ve reintroduced it every Congress to keep it on the front so that people have to read it and think about invasive species problems in Hawaii at the federal level.

What it would do is basically say if it’s good enough for California that we have to go through an inspection process to keep fruit flies from Hawaii out of California, that it should be that everybody else has to go through an inspection process to keep invasive species out of Hawaii. Pretty simple concept, not novel in the world.

And that bill, you wouldn’t believe how much opposition there is to that bill. The airlines scream about it because they don’t want to have the responsibility. The federal government doesn’t want to undertake the responsibility. The state is concerned about undertaking the responsibility. But what do you want? You want invasive species or you want a regime that will try to keep them out? If you can lose all your coconut trees, is that enough for you to realize that you’ve got an issue finally? And so it’s frustrating and disappointing that people understand the problem but they’re resistant to a solution. So that’s that bill. I’m going to reintroduce that and try to push it forward again in the federal government.

What if you actually had pre-established a coordinated response team that kind of could move very fast, very quickly, and implement responses and prevention protocols very fast? That’s what that says. It’s not going to be the the answer, but I think it’s part of the answer and it’s a way to continue to highlight the issue.

Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to the UN is specifically urging the U.S. really get going in terms of deep-sea mining. One of those deep-sea mining spheres is not too far from the Hawaiian Islands. Your thoughts about that?

The Clarion-Clipperton zone, to be accurate. I’ve been deep into this for about two years, this Congress in particular. I actually introduced three separate bills that were to establish moratoria on U.S. mining, deep-sea mining in U.S. waters and against international approval of deep-sea mining in international waters. And I’m going to reintroduce those bills.

And the fundamental point is nobody really knows what the impact of deep-sea mining is going to be on our marine environment. And we ought to know before we go doing it. Because it’s a tremendously destructive practice. It rips up the seabed. It causes destruction of marine resources. It causes plumes of debris to rise. The effects could be immediate or the effects could happen a long time from now since a deep sea moves through at a very slow pace. But it eventually comes up. It’s a CO2 repository zone.

This is not me talking. This is the predominance of science talking. So scientists around the world are saying, “Don’t do this until you’re ready to do it.” We’ve managed working with the International Seabed Authority to have most countries in the world agree to moratorium twice now to basically defer any decision. And our country has been supportive of that because the current administration agrees with the basic concern for the environment without knowing the result.

With the change in administration, (it’s) very insensitive to the environment, focused on exploitation as opposed to conservation, focused on nonrenewable approaches versus renewable approaches to include the deep seabed, I suppose. And I’m under no illusions that a new administration would not carry the same basic approach in our discussions with the rest of the world and on the International Seabed Authority, which is a United Nations body. So this is a huge problem area, which is just a highlighted area of the overall concern for our environment.

I’m interested in your perspective on what we’re hearing from the incoming administration on two fronts. The first is the tariffs for China, Canada and Mexico. The other is mass deportation.

On tariffs I am by nature an internationalist from a trade perspective. That’s my overall political philosophy. So the approach of the world for the last two-plus generations of trying in a post-World War II world to try to where possible to remove arbitrary tariffs, to facilitate trade, to facilitate exchange between countries, to get the world to be interacting with each other as opposed to being totally protectionist, which was the prior regime — I agree with that.

I’m not a blind agreer to it. There are consequences that you have to focus on if international trade displaces communities, and you have to take care of those communities. And that’s what Trump seized upon during the campaign from his perspective, that we weren’t taking care of those communities. And he was right. But that doesn’t justify throwing out an entire system.

Tariffs with China are very much about national security. Why should we help China with its economy while China is busy creating real threats to our world?

Increasingly, tariffs to me are indistinguishable from national security. It’s different for me to talk about tariffs with China than it is for me to talk about tariffs with Canada and Mexico, than it is to talk about tariffs with Europe. Because for me, the tariffs with China are very much about national security. Why should we help China with its economy while China is busy creating real threats to our world?

President Trump has proposed higher tariffs on China — that’s national security related. But he’s also proposed a common higher tariff across the entire world for entry of goods into the United States. Our closest allies, countries like Japan and the UK and Australia. I don’t agree with that, because I don’t think that that is consistent with trying to keep trade open, especially among friends and allies.

With Mexico, it’s probably a negotiation over legitimate concerns about preventing drugs and people from crossing over our border where the perception is Mexico hasn’t done enough, which I agree with, by the way. Mexico has not done enough.

With Canada, I see less reason for that. Talk about border concerns with Canada are kind of ridiculous, to be honest. I don’t know why we should be protectionist as to Canada.

About immigration and deportations, how do you see that affecting Hawaii?

First of all, I agree with President Trump that our immigration system is seriously broken. And I agree with my Republican colleagues in Congress and many of my Democratic colleagues. And it has to be fixed along a couple of lines. We cannot allow the volumes of illegal immigrants into this country that we have. We cannot just accept the border that is allowing that to happen on a status quo basis. And an asylum system that is too loosely administered is part of that issue. And we have to work with other countries, we have to provide a path to citizenship for people that are here legitimately. So I’m talking DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which they’re obviously in high threat at the moment. So there’s a lot of issues on immigration.

It is not automatic that just because Trump says to do something, that it will be done.

You want to take it from a political perspective, most of the people of this country believed that immigration was broken and thought the Democrats were clueless on it. I’ve been saying this myself. I think I’ve probably said it publicly for a couple of years now that we Democrats are not dealing with that reality and coming up with realistic solutions.

So this is unfinished business in Congress now. It’s pretty hard to see how you’re going to round up and deport 13.4 million people or for that matter, how you’re going to round up and deport 35,000 people in Hawaii. To be determined, the details and where this goes. But I take him at his word that he’s going to make an effort at halting illegal immigration.

The Pacific Islands Caucus — what have you been working on there?

We have had a solid six years here. We have, not solely, but certainly contributed to a much higher level of visibility of the Pacific islands in the big picture. We just passed the Pacific Partnership Act out of the full House. I introduced kind of the next chapter of that, which is called the Pacific Engagement Act, to enhance U.S. support to the civic organizations — the non-governmental civic organizations of the Pacific, which are very, very critical in the Pacific way people associate, relate, act collectively through non-government organizations. For example, the religious community, the faith-based community, which is actually the strongest organization of structure to society throughout most of the Pacific.

And think about the media organizations, which are very strong actually in some of the Pacific. They’re going through the same processes that’s happening with the U.S. media, but they’re still quite strong. So all of that is good.

And the big question is, will it continue? Because the only way to make this work, which is for us to be a far better partner with others around the world in the Pacific islands, is a sustained engagement over time that actually focuses on what they care about — not what we think they should care about, but what they care about.

And what they care about is their economy. What they care about is their education system, their health care systems, their safety nets. They care about protecting their fisheries and their infrastructure. And so we ought to be helping them on that. And when we don’t do that, then the PRC, which is perfectly capable of trying to come in, does so, which has happened. So this is not just a matter of helping the Pacific islands, but it is the reality it is part of the larger geopolitical challenge that we face.

One of the most problematic parts of the Pacific islands right now from that perspective is Kiribati, which is the closest Pacific nation to us. And the PRC is very involved in Kiribati right now. That’s a huge concern from a geopolitical perspective that we would essentially have, worst-case scenario, a PRC military base basically on our flank a thousand miles away from Hawaii. That’s not a good thing. So we ought to be worried about these things.

I think that we have developed enough critical mass and momentum for the Pacific islands-related issues to now sustain themselves both from our engagement and especially our funding. For instance, we now we have solid momentum to increase Peace Corps presence again in many of those countries. They’re going to go into Palau again and we’re trying to get them back into the Federated States of Micronesia. And so that kind of momentum is really critical.

You may be happy to hear that one of the top stories on our site is an op-ed calling for getting rid of the Jones Act, something you have pushed for. Might there be an opportunity working with your Republican colleagues and the dominant parties in both chambers as well as the White House? Are you still hot on the Jones Act?

I am, yes. I mean, what was the vote about in the country in general, in Hawaii specifically? Wasn’t it about the cost of living, the economy? Ultimately, that was a common theme and we better be responsive on the question of pocketbook issues to people in the country or specifically in Hawaii where we do have one of the highest costs of living.

So break it down. What is causing the high cost of living? This is how I think about it. What is actually causing the high costs of living and what can I do about it in my role in the federal government? So shipping is an obvious area because that’s caused by the Jones Act. So of course I’m going to go after the Jones Act and try to hold down shipping costs if that’s adding a 10% to 15% surplus onto somebody’s bill and 600 some odd dollars, by one study, of additional cost per household per year. You take a fixed income household, that’s a significant amount of money.

And so I’m definitely going to continue to highlight that. My Jones Act friends are not at all happy with that. They continue to try to isolate me in various ways. They can’t isolate my voice. So I’m going to reintroduce those bills and I’m probably going to introduce some other bills as well, because I think that they are not only hurting Hawaii, but they’re also hypocrites. Because, for example, they utilize a loophole in the Jones Act to do a lot of their repair and maintenance on their ships in China. I don’t think they should be doing that.

I don’t know whether one of these days I’ll get enough critical mass to actually break through on this. Maybe I will. But again, it highlights an issue and I think it provides hopefully some curb on exploitation of the monopoly by the Jones Act shippers so that they actually do feel there’s somebody looking over their shoulder. There’s a good critical mass of Republicans over on the Senate side who I probably don’t agree with on hardly anything, but they’re Jones Act opponents.

One of the lessons you’ve said that you took away is the need to listen — to listen to what the people are saying. You’ve brought it up already. We didn’t really understand fully the anger over the cost of living, nor did we fully understand the anger over immigration. How do we listen? Not only your party, the Democratic Party, listen to the now majority party, but how do you talk to each other?

When I say we, that’s kind of the collective we. I mean, I hope that I was listening. And I think in part that explains a little bit about my election result, which was solid. I mean, I had a diversity of people that voted for me. So hopefully that means I was listening.

Now, I put a lot of effort into trying to listen. I do a lot of talk stories. I do a lot of events where I am listening. I think I go into some of the communities in Hawaii that are not as supportive of Democrats far more than some of my fellow Democrats. So I think that that helps. Those are lessons. I think it’s an open question.

What actually is going on? I don’t have all the answers, as I said here. I think Sen. Brian Schatz has been saying correctly, “Hey, let’s just slow down and not jump to anything until we understand exactly what did happened.” We think we have a pretty good handle. But there hasn’t been any systematic analysis of why the election turned out this way.

I think obviously, there are a lot of people that are so disenchanted by government, so alienated that if you’re the Democrat or the Republican Party and you’re not being responsive to the real concerns that they have, you’re going to get nailed.

Fundamentally that’s what happened. And I think if you go out there and ask the 37 odd percent of folks that voted for President Trump in Hawaii how they feel about that, they’re going to say something like that. I was with them on election night. I was waving signs out in Kapolei Hale right up to the deadline. So I was talking to them as they went.

And so clearly it was a feeling that there are real-life issues that are affecting us that a Democratic government was not responding to. So if you’re a Democrat in Hawaii, you better be asking those questions. You look at the election results and you ask yourself, well, “Was with this an aberration?” No, it’s been developing now for eight-plus years. If you look at the results from each island, it was consistent. There’s no Democratic stronghold anywhere in the state. In fact, the 2nd Congressional (District) is probably more conservative than the First Congressional now.