When 400,000 voters speak, Democrats hit the snooze button and let “democracy” wait until the ballot.

Democrats Dodge the Parents, Pass the Buck to 2026

The Secretary of State has officially certified Initiative 26-001, which would restore the original Parents’ Bill of Rights that voters approved in 2024 before Democrats rewrote it to strip parents of access to their own children’s medical records. Instead of engaging with the will of hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians, Democratic leaders are choosing the easiest option: ignore it and dump it on the 2026 ballot.

House Speaker Laurie Jinkins and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen made it clear they won’t even hold hearings. Pedersen bluntly admitted it won’t pass and said voters can deal with it later. Translation: when citizens push back against Democratic policy, the Legislature just shrugs and walks away.

The initiative, backed by Let’s Go Washington and Brian Heywood, gathered over 400,000 signatures and aims to restore the original language affirming parents’ rights to know what’s happening with their kids at school. Heywood summed it up simply: “We don’t co-parent with the government.” A statement that somehow now counts as controversial in Olympia.

Democrats and their allies, meanwhile, are rolling out the usual fear-based talking points, claiming the initiative would endanger LGBTQ+ students and harm vulnerable kids. Teachers unions and activist groups argue it’s a privacy nightmare, while accusing supporters of division and misinformation. Conveniently, none of that explains why lawmakers refuse to even discuss a voter-backed measure.

Republicans and parental rights groups say this is exactly why the initiative process exists: to bypass a Legislature that treats citizen input like an inconvenience. And despite reported harassment and even violence against signature gatherers, Let’s Go Washington pushed it through again.

So now Initiative 26-001 heads toward the November 2026 ballot, not because Democrats want voters to decide, but because they don’t want to. When parents show up, collect signatures, and demand accountability, Olympia’s majority response is simple: stall, deflect, and hope the problem goes away. Read more at MyNorthwest.com.

Democrats: If You Can Do the Crime, You Can Pick the Politicians

Washington Democrats are pushing House Bill 1196, a proposal that would let more than 15,000 incarcerated felons vote while still serving their prison sentences. The only exception is for crimes punishable by death… which is meaningless, since Democrats abolished the death penalty in 2023. Translation: everyone behind bars gets a ballot.

Supporters say stripping voting rights is an “outdated punishment” and doesn’t make communities safer. Rep. Tarra Simmons, the bill’s sponsor and a former inmate herself, argues that voting helps prisoners feel connected and makes reentry easier. Because nothing says “justice served” like mailing ballots from a prison cell.

Democrats and their allies also frame it as a racial equity issue, noting that felony disenfranchisement hits Black and Latino communities harder. And once again, the solution is not fixing crime or improving public safety, but redefining consequences out of existence.

This would make Washington only the third state in the nation, alongside Maine and Vermont, to allow all incarcerated people to vote. The state already restored voting rights the moment prisoners are released back in 2021. Now Democrats want to skip the “release” part entirely.

Even Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, is pumping the brakes, warning about costs, security concerns, and the basic idea that losing the right to vote is a reasonable consequence for serious crimes. Republicans argue the same, pointing out that consequences are supposed to mean something.

If the bill passes, inmates would register using their last home address and vote by mail from prison, just like sending legal paperwork. Simple, they say. Secure, they promise. Totally normal, apparently.

So while Democrats lecture everyone else about law and order, their latest innovation is letting convicted criminals help decide who writes the laws. In Olympia, the message is getting clearer every year: victims wait, taxpayers pay, and criminals… get a ballot. Read more at Seattle Red.

Democrats Double Down on Seattle’s Failed Tax, Now Statewide

Olympia Democrats just gave a public hearing to House Bill 2100, a massive new payroll tax cooked up by Seattle socialist Rep. Shaun Scott. And voters were not subtle about their feelings: more than 12,000 people signed in against it, making this one of the most lopsided hearings of the session.

HB 2100 would slap a 5% payroll tax on employers with large payrolls and higher-paid workers, modeled after Seattle’s JumpStart tax – the same one that brought in $47 million less than promised in 2024 and coincided with Seattle losing 5,500 jobs while Bellevue gained 4,000. Naturally, Democrats saw that record and said, “Let’s go statewide.”

Scott claims the tax is needed to patch holes allegedly created by President Trump, even though state spending has doubled since 2015 and Democrats already passed a $12 billion tax hike last year. The current deficit sits somewhere between $2.3 billion and $4.3 billion, depending on who’s counting, but somehow the solution is always another tax on employers.

Business leaders from every corner of the state lined up to oppose it. The Association of Washington Business, the Washington Roundtable, chambers of commerce from Bellevue, Seattle, and Spokane, and even Joe Nguyen, a former member of Gov. Bob Ferguson’s cabinet, all warned the bill would drive up costs, slow hiring, and push jobs out of Washington. Their message was simple: this is the wrong direction during an affordability crisis.

Even with last-minute “fixes” that raised the employee threshold and carved out special exemptions, critics said the tax still hits construction companies, grocery stores, and mid-sized employers that Democrats pretend are “big business.” Contractors warned it would mean higher bids and fewer projects, leaving taxpayers paying more for less.

And despite Scott insisting companies won’t leave, the evidence is sitting right next door: Seattle loses jobs, Bellevue gains them, and Jeff Bezos saved billions by moving to Florida. But Democrats continue pretending capital flight is just a myth invented by greedy employers.

The best part? For the first two years, all the money goes straight into the general fund, not the shiny new “Well Washington Fund” Democrats are using as political cover. Translation: it’s a budget bailout now, a social program later.

So Democrats, facing another self-inflicted budget crisis, are trying to jam through the largest payroll tax in state history, copying a policy that already failed in Seattle, ignoring overwhelming public opposition, and calling it “progressive.”

As one citizen put it during testimony: the budget is already being written, and “we the people will be trapped to make up the difference.” In Olympia, that’s not a warning. It’s the business plan. Read more at Center Square.

Democrats Want to Turn Your Pension Into a Political Protest

Senate Bill 6304 is Democrats’ latest attempt to hijack Washington’s public pension system and turn it into an ideological playground. Instead of letting investment professionals focus on returns and risk, the bill would force the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) to follow rigid ESG mandates that prioritize politics over performance.

WSIB’s job is simple: maximize returns at a prudent level of risk. And it’s been doing that well—Washington’s pension system is among the best funded in the nation precisely because it avoids trendy political stunts like mandatory divestment. The board has even said outright that divestment is inferior to active ownership because it reduces diversification, increases risk, and hands influence to short-term speculators.

SB 6304 blows that up. It mandates exclusions for fossil fuels, prisons, immigration detention, tobacco, coal, and vague categories like “unacceptable greenhouse gas emissions.” Translation: lawmakers get to define morality, and retirees get to absorb the financial consequences.

The timing couldn’t be worse. The financial world is running away from ESG. Returns have been disappointing, fees are higher, and investors are dumping ESG funds. A $10,000 ESG portfolio would be nearly 44% smaller than a standard S&P 500 investment over 10 years. Even BlackRock’s Larry Fink has abandoned the term, and major firms like Vanguard, State Street, and JPMorgan have bailed on climate alliances and ESG voting commitments.

Yet Democrats want Washington to lock itself into a framework Wall Street is actively abandoning.

This is especially reckless because the legislature just raised pension return assumptions to an aggressive 7.25% and delayed paying down pension debt. That means the system already needs strong performance just to stay afloat. Adding political restrictions that shrink the investment universe is the opposite of responsible management.

And let’s not forget the real-world example: CalPERS lost $3.5 billion by divesting from tobacco stocks. The companies didn’t disappear. Other investors just bought them. The pension fund lost money. Activists got a press release.

Now Democrats want to repeat that mistake with billions of Washington workers’ retirement dollars, including the $7.4 billion already invested in the energy sector. And with language vague enough to expand endlessly as political fashions change.

SB 6304 doesn’t protect workers. It protects politicians from having to admit that ESG is collapsing. It trades retirement security for ideological virtue signaling and sticks taxpayers with the bill when the numbers stop working.

The ESG gig is over. Unfortunately, Olympia hasn’t gotten the memo. Read more at the Washington Policy Center.

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