The article, “Tupola seeks restraining order against activist” (Star-Advertiser, April 22), is a timely testament that the Hawaii GOP is being fractured by destructive splinter groups like Hawaii Republican Action (HIRA).

The Hawaii Republican Party continues to dwindle in number due to fringe, alt-right groups whose profane and unethical messages are inconsistent with the aloha spirit. Whereas many younger voters hold fiscally and socially conservative values, few choose to identify as such due to the negative energy harbored by such factions.

State Rep. Andria Tupola is one of the few Republican leaders in the state, and her tireless work is repeatedly acknowledged by her community. To flourish, the Hawaii Republican Party needs positivity rather than destructive entities like HIRA that recklessly malign our leaders and blight the party.

Kaiwiola Coakley

Waialae-Kahala

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Media coverage of Kauai not fake news

In comments trying to demonize the media as examples of fake news (“National coverage of Kauai ‘fake news’,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 21), a media denier said the national news “seems to say” that all of Kauai was almost destroyed, and that “maybe one-eighth or less” of the island saw the brunt of the damage.

These are his impressions, assumptions and estimates.

As the oldest of the major islands, Kauai is subject to erosion more than the others. The fact is that Kauai was hit hard.

Let’s also remember where people live on our islands: flatter lands, areas closer to the sea, or on mountainsides that are subject to mudslides. I see one-eighth of a mountainous island as significant.

I also see our local and national news media as professionals that are trying to get it right.

Joseph Althouse

Kakaako

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Lots to learn in the morning paper

Even as a retired newspaperman, I’m sometimes too “busy” to read every Star-Advertiser. Last week I thought about cancelling. But then six stories on Saturday caught my eye and made it all worthwhile: I read that married couples catch more early signs of skin cancer, that an airport defibrillator saved a man’s life, E. coli in romaine lettuce is getting worse, carriers rigged phones so it’s harder to switch, a court ban halted taking aquarium fish from our coral reefs, and how loneliness makes people even more lonely when they binge on Facebook.

Nice work! What’s in this morning’s paper?

Walter Wright

Kaneohe

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‘Bully Law’ may not pass legal muster

Abortion facilities, not crisis pregnancy centers, fail to fully and truthfully educate vulnerable women about abortion (“Centers must include abortion information,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 20).

Crisis pregnancy centers charge nothing for their services to the woman, unlike abortion facilities that make most of their income from doing abortions. Centers will truthfully inform the mother that, biologically, in her womb is a human being with a different DNA from hers. If requested, the center can provide the woman with an ultrasound of her baby, which will show it is a living developing person.

Abortion facilities reassure the mother that her baby is not a “person” because of age, size and disability (dependent on mother’s care).

The “Bully Law” that Hawaii enacted, requiring abortion notice posting by centers, will probably be ruled invalid if the recent Supreme Court justices’ comments about California’s “Bully Law” is any indication. Even liberal justices noted the law was enacted primarily to punish centers.

Robert R. Taylor

Nuuanu

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Abortion notification patronizes women

Senate Bill 501 required that private pregnancy centers post notices advertising abortion. Here is a quote from the bill: “In 2010, 16,000 women in Hawaii experienced an unintended pregnancy, which can carry enormous social and economic costs to both individual families and to the State.”

In 2010, 18,933 births occurred. Evidently, abortion providers cannot advertise effectively, so it must be the women’s centers’ fault.

And, according to Dorien McClellan (“Centers must include abortion information,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 20), women are too dumb to realize that crisis pregnancy centers do not do abortions.

How patronizing.

William Funk

Mililani

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HI-EMA should change Twitter use

On Friday, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted a picture of pretty flowers even as Kauai residents suffer the loss of their homes and possessions due to the recent storms. How insensitive.

Three months ago HI-EMA panicked all of us with a false warning of imminent nuclear attack. They still do not have a Twitter account dedicated to emergency alerts and guidance.

Instead, they tweet trivialities, discouraging followers from displaying the tweets on smartphone lock screens.

A widely seen tweet could easily have spread the word on Jan. 13 that the alert was a drill gone wrong. Not a perfect remedy, but one that would have been effective with no cost to the agency.

Without delay, HI-EMA should announce to its 23,200 current Twitter followers that this account will now be used only for actual emergencies. They can set up a new account for non-urgent matters.

Larry Geller

Downtown Honolulu