They should cut their losses right now and plan for moving to Chile.

You’re right about the control part. And they will remain in control until liberal Democrats are ousted from political control of the 50th state. A party built on a foundation of racial identity politics will never deny the grievances of “activists” with an ethnic basis of complaint. Given the extreme unlikelihood of such a thing occurring short of the archipelago’s “native” malcontents going over to a widespread strategy of open armed rebellion, I have to share your general pessimism about the probable future – or, more properly, the lack of same – for big league astronomy in Hawaii.

But the opposition of the “native” activists is not based on hostility to the search for knowledge about the universe, but on hostility to the presence and economic dominance of “haoles” – non-Polynesian Hawaiians, especially whites. It simply happens to be the case that the dominant use of the summit of Mauna Kea is big-bore astronomy. The “activists” would be equally confrontational if instead of large telescopes on Mauna Kea, there were large geothermal power plants, large luxury hotels or any other land use that was initiated and mainly run by the hated haoles. This current agitation is not in the least about astronomy. It is about racially-based grievance-mongering. Period.