Green looks for common ground with Trump to help Hawaii

Gov. Josh Green said he has chosen a more conciliatory, collaborative approach with President Donald Trump if it means preserving as much federal support for Hawaii as possible.

Unlike some Democratic governors who have openly challenged Trump and his policies, Green said he wants to avoid direct confrontations with Trump on issues where they likely disagree in order to gain Trump’s support for Hawaii priorities such as reducing homelessness that affect both red and blue states.

Challenging Trump on his stances can be “combustible,” Green said, as evidenced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s testy exchange with Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, followed by Trump this week halting U.S. military support for Ukraine amid its three-year-long war with Russia.

Trump has pledged to slash federal financing and the federal workforce across the country, prompting Green to search for common ground because, Green said, “I need to protect our budget … and protect resources to help our people.”

As usual, Green flew in coach and took a red-eye to Washington, D.C., for a whirlwind, five-day trip beginning Feb. 18 to attend the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, where Green also met face to face with Trump and members of his administration to lobby for support for Hawaii.

Trump’s early pledges to slash federal funding for a long list of programs could cost Hawaii “several hundred million if we don’t fight for every dollar,” Green told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday in his fifth floor office atop the state Capitol.

He especially wants to ensure that $1.6 billion in promised federal aid arrives to help Maui rebuild following the August 2023 wildfires.

“If Democratic governors don’t show up (in person), he’s only going to hear opinions that are much more conservative,” Green said. “If it’s good for Hawaii, I’m going to push it.”

Green said he recognizes Trump’s desire to rely even more on fossil fuels, for instance, but will work to serve as a “bridge” for more renewable-energy efforts, a key issue in an island state that continues to push for clean energy and reduce its dependence on imported oil and fuel.

Green said Trump told him that he didn’t mind if Green continues to challenge his new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy for RFK’s failure to emphasize the need for vaccinations, especially following the current measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico that led to the death of an unvaccinated child in Texas.

But when it comes to Trump, specifically, Green said, “I established that I don’t have a desire to be punching one another.”

With Trump’s landslide victory in November, recognition of Hawaii’s often moderate Democratic values and now into his third year as governor, Green said he considers himself more politically moderate. But he said he will keep battling to help the needy and working-class families and to reduce Hawaii’s high cost of living while continuing to push forward on social issues, including guaranteeing reproductive rights.

Overall, Green said, “I’ve changed a lot … and don’t focus on purely ideological purity tests.”

While in Washington, Green believes, he received a sympathetic ear from Trump on issues such as homeless kauhale by appealing to Trump’s business background.

Green repeatedly referred to the ROI — or return on investment — for getting homeless people off the street and into kauhale, which Green referred to only as “villages” while addressing Trump and Democratic and Republican governors from around the country.

Getting homeless people the help they need while living in kauhale tiny homes diverts them from emergency rooms, often saving hospital bed space and thousands of dollars per patient, along with reducing the demand for first responders who treat them on the street and transport them — only for them to return to the street.

“This is a model that will make sense if we’re talking about resources,” Green said he told Trump both in private and during a luncheon with other other governors.

Green also encouraged the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to create a “villages” pilot program for three red and three blue states, including more and less populated ones, that he said will show that kauhale save $4 for every $1 spent.

Green said he wanted to “throw in a dash of return on investment, or fiscal conservatism,” in order to “find a balance where we can work together. There has to be some form of compromise. … I’m going to try to apply a little bit of calm.”

Green said his outreach in Washington means he now has access to Trump administration officials to further advocate for Hawaii and continue lobbying for federal support that will help Republican and Democratic states.

Green avoided issues such as how Trump’s ban on programs that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion continue to generate fear, anxiety and confusion in Hawaii, which has no ethnic majority and traces its diversity to immigrant plantation workers who began arriving in the 1890s.

Green especially avoided talking about Hawaii’s ongoing efforts to help Native Hawaiians.

“We should not draw extra attention to the issue of Hawaiians,” he said.

If pushed, though, Green said he would argue that the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Kamehameha Schools do not reflect “a demonstration of favoritism.”

He continues to support DHHL, OHA and its board chair, Kai Kahele — a former Senate colleague turned political gubernatorial rival — “to restore lands to the Hawaiian people,” Green said.

Personally, there’s also been a change of attitude regarding the desire by a majority of Hawaii’s first family for a dog.

First lady Jaime Green — who’s allergic to dog fur — has long vetoed the idea but finally agreed to let Green and their son and daughter have a new poi poodle puppy at Washington Place.

Poodles have hair, not fur.

The puppy was born among a litter of eight in Kailua, continues to be weaned but has been promised by Green’s “uncle.” The puppy should join the first family in April.

Its name has not been decided, but the leading contender at the moment seems to be Boba, after the Star Wars galactic bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Jaime Green made her canine concession after Green had advocated that walking a dog every day would be good for both the physical and mental health of America’s only sitting governor who’s also a medical doctor.

Green’s position was that a dog would help relieve some of the stress after long days at the state Capitol and, now, while advocating for Hawaii with a new Trump administration.