Mazie K. Hirono

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

I would have thought that it would be a part of that information.

It is not. I understand.

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

And as a part of a response to a question that I had asked of Secretary McDonough, he noted that there were demonstration projects related to tailored mental health outreach for specified veteran populations, including AANH veterans and…

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

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

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.

Is there any evidence that says that exposure to certain kinds of books leads to harm to a community? Does exposure to an LGBTQ+ book somehow cause harm to the reader? Is there any evidence to that effect?

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.

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.

As we focus on sustainability and resilience in our communities, agriculture has a very large role to play.

I have been trying to get them to put fresh pineapple in our school lunches.

There is a lot of connection to the awareness of what we need to do, and especially after COVID.

That for one thing, on the Energy committee, that focuses a lot on wildfires and to alert the committee members that Hawaii has its share of wildfires and the acreage burned is on a par with what happens on the mainland.

I would appreciate any other kinds of requests that you would like to put to both me and Congresswoman Tokuda in how we can continue to combat invasive species.

So clearly, there are a lot of grants that have been made available, by the way, through some of the really huge bills that have been enacted by Congress.

Did these farmers work with any organization to alert them to what they could be doing to make sure that the wildfires are contained?

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

Thank you. I just want to note that I think there is an echoing in here.

I think to the extent that SBA programs target women for a particular kind of support, that--I think that is something that the SBA could have an impact.

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.

Outreach is really important and follow through.