Mazie Hirono

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad to join my colleague Brian Schatz in supporting the two nominees from Hawaii.

I do have a question about some of the categories or the--some specific populations that have a higher incidence of suicides.

I think that is what should concern us because as more and more women enter the service, their suicide numbers, sadly, are going up.

So would you say that that is a significant number of opioid overdoses that involve veterans?

Thank you for telling us that opioid overdoses are not counted as suicides, because I think that it would be enlightening.

I would suggest to you that you include sexual military trauma in this list that you have.

Is there any evidence that says that exposure to certain kinds of books leads to harm to a community?

I should think that there is more harm to a young person who thinks that he or she can be shot to death in a school than being exposed to certain kinds of subjects in books.

Nobody's talking about interfering with the right of a parent to determine what kind of material his or her child should have access to.

I hope we can do that.

How do we create the bipartisan framework so that when we find this, we create a climate where people can listen?

I worry that with AI, such information will only become more rampant with future disasters.

I would expect that you will do everything you can to have women and minorities be very much a part of a system that really means innovation and leadership in our country.

I have been fighting to reopen this facility in order to provide these important services.

Agriculture has a very large role to play.

We need to be able to share water.

There is a lot more focus in the Judiciary committee even on the visas that will enable our farms to keep going.

We don't have a Forest Service presence here as such, but we did meet with some Forest Service people.

I think that we need to recognize how important it is for flexibility for USDA.

I think that kind of awareness and cooperation is really going to be part of the lessons learned.

Whatever you were talking about, that makes it harder for our people to apply for these particular loans.

The Supreme Court's decisions have an impact on a lot of different things that you may not think is being resolved or addressed by the Supreme Court.

I am honored to have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a bipartisan word, and very proud to be serving our nation's 33 million small businesses.

I think that kind of focus effort to purchase local by the Department of Education, you know, is--I have been trying to get them to put fresh pineapple in our school lunches.

I hope this Administration thinks differently and realizes that Hawaii is basically the invasive species capital of the world.