TIME with ... Mazie Hirono
ON A RAIN-SOAKED MORNING IN LATE APRIL, Mazie Hirono was walking from the U.S. Supreme Court back to her Senate office. She had just watched the nine Justices hear arguments on President Trump’s ban on immigrants from six countries with Muslim majorities and North Korea, and as she listened to arguments over the rights of immigrants and religious minorities, she couldn’t help but take the debate personally. Hirono, Hawaii’s junior Senator, is an immigrant from Japan and the chamber’s sole Buddhist. “Immigrants come here and leave everything that they know behind,” she says. “We have a sense of the opportunities that this country provides. We do not take those for granted.”
At age 70, Hirono has become one of the surprising avatars of what is known among liberals as
