Danny De Gracia: With DC In Chaos, We Need To Assess Local Needs, Pronto

When crises occur, our institutions are often ill-suited to respond due to excessive pedantry, navel-gazing and an overall lack of initiative. The best way is to just start figuring out what needs to be done.

We now have a president who issues on-the-fly directives that no one understands how to implement, and even fewer understand the implications of what these policies will mean for state and local governments. 

I get the sense that Republicans and Democrats alike are taking a wait-and-see approach to the second Donald Trump administration’s policies, at least with respect to how they will deal with the effects of reduced (or completely cut) federal funding, reductions in federal agencies, and even how tariffs will affect everyone’s bottom line.

What does this mean? Elected Republicans may or may not personally agree with the blitz of executive orders, but you can bet all of them are going to pretend in public that they do, saying at best, “I have some concerns about (fill in the blank issue)” if their conscience or their constituents are giving them flack over it. 

For the elected Republican, the game theory likely works like this: Perhaps, for example, they want the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies functionally gutted by DOGE; perhaps not. But they’ll let it happen anyway because they don’t want to be attacked over it, and they may even revel in it the whole way.

If this results in a beneficial outcome, they’ll claim to have supported it the whole time. If it doesn’t, and their constituents start revolting to the point they are endangered for reelection, they’ll claim that they had “concerns” the whole time. How do I know this? Just look at the manic way that legislators like Sen. Lindsey Graham flip-flop constantly.

Will Democrats Be Part Of The Solution?

And let’s not get started with the Democrats. If John F. Kennedy were alive today, he’d likely write a book entitled “Profiles in Cowardice” as an inglorious sequel to his “Courage” book.

Democrats are in the unique position of having a moral hazard where they can do one of two things: A) Do their constitutional duty in both federal and local government to “check” perceived abuses by the president, but in doing so, mitigate the effects of bad policies; or B) Allow the Republicans to succeed at everything on purpose so that they produce the obvious chaotic outcomes that will incense the American public against them, thus leading to a Democratic wave in the next election.

Mr. and Mrs. Hawaiʻi, you’re sandwiched between two useless factions in Washington, D.C., who are thinking more about their careers than they are about your safety, security and future prosperity. The good news is, all across America, the real rubber will meet the road in days to come with state legislatures and city councils who can (and should) fill the gaps left by the federal government.

If I were the president of the state Senate or the speaker of the House, the first thing I would do right now would be to get a full-spectrum policy perspective from 60,000 feet to ground level in Hawaiʻi about potential gaps and oversights that need to be addressed.

I would suggest the immediate creation of a “State of Hawaiʻi Next Steps Needs Assessment” in which, over the course of a narrow two-week period, the Legislature solicits qualitative data in the form of key interviews. Talk to everyone from residents who are in underserved and vulnerable communities, to people and organizations who will be affected by changes in federal funding or staffing, all the way up to subject matter experts in highly technical fields who have strategic concerns about public safety or regulatory moral hazards. The responses, with the help of artificial intelligence, can then be coded.

Do It Before The Session Ends

This is a little more advanced than your ordinary “information briefing” where legislators sit and watch PowerPoints and ask a question or two, because it would be structured specifically at getting as much information in the shortest amount of time possible and turning it around to reprioritize legislation before the current regular session ends.

In cases where the state constitution does not allow us to modify viable existing bills to fit new needs, a special session can be held to allow for follow-up. This can also include partnership with county councils, for even more local support for closing gaps.

We need to know, for example, if there’s a report someone wrote warning about a critical local safety risk, that’s now going to be sat on or ignored because their agency has been gutted. Or we need to know if there’s a program that was funded and is no longer that is going to result in a cliff effect that causes something in our local economy to flounder.

This information can then be organized and uploaded to a publicly visible website where all Hawaii residents, and especially community-based organizations, could read the key informant interviews and see the various trends. For example, maybe a nonprofit might see a list of people who they could personally help offset the termination of a grant, or they may be able to provide a service that is no longer available.

In either case, knowing what’s out there will be essential to preventing a crisis in the days to come where the current administration’s approach of “cut it all off, those people will figure it out” leaves too much to chance.

In closing, I would also like to make a personal appeal to our congressional delegation to try and talk offline to our new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Say what we may about her now, as someone who is close to the president, we should attempt to appeal to her previous, earlier virtues as a progressive and mention that the “old” Gabbard would have thrown previous presidents under the bus for doing (and saying) the things that our current president is doing.

I don’t remember the first DNI, John Negroponte, having as much time, post-9/11, as Gabbard does now to do TV interviews and social media posts, so she should have the scheduling freedom to be able to meet with her Hawaiʻi peers.

This is not about party anymore. This is about what can we do to ensure that things work for as many people as possible, without leaving gaps that invite chaos or harm upon our nation and states. Let’s get on that, ASAP.