First Democrats override the voters, then they build the tax, then they promise it won’t spread. Sure.

The Income Tax They Swore You’d Never Get

A leaked working draft reviewed by KIRO News Radio shows Democrats quietly constructing a full-blown state income tax, even while pretending nothing is final. Legislative leaders admit the document is real. The governor’s office insists it’s “not his proposal,” yet refuses to dispute a single provision inside it. Translation: it’s absolutely their plan.

The draft creates a 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1 million starting in 2029. Make $1.5 million? You’d owe about $49,500. But the bigger bombshell is this: the bill explicitly overrides Initiative 2111, the voter-approved ban on income taxes passed in 2024. No new vote. No constitutional amendment. Just a quiet legislative eraser.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen already dismissed the ban as a “pie crust promise… easily made, easily broken.” So much for respecting voters.

Calling this a “millionaire tax” is also misleading. The $1 million threshold is statutory, not constitutional. A future legislature could lower it anytime with a simple majority. That’s why the Tax Foundation warns this kind of tax always expands: start narrow, normalize it, then widen the net.

The draft adds some especially ugly twists:

• Married couples must share one $1 million deduction, creating a marriage penalty.
• Visiting professional athletes get hit with a “jock tax.”
• Public pensions over $1 million are taxed.
• Losses can’t be carried forward, meaning you pay even if you lost big money the year before.

The entire law exempts itself from Washington’s normal tax review process, dodging future accountability.

Ferguson says the tax is needed to fix a budget crisis and “unfairness” in the system, yet the tax wouldn’t collect until 2029 and only if it survives court challenges. So it solves today’s deficit how, exactly?

Republicans warn this is about building permanent infrastructure for an income tax, not just taxing “the rich.” As GOP Rep. Travis Couture put it: first it was billionaires, now millionaires, and soon it’ll be everyone else.

This isn’t tax reform.
It’s Olympia finally admitting the income tax was always the plan. Read more at MyNorthwest.com.

Democrats Go Soft on Sex Predators

Democrats are pushing Senate Bill 5312 to cut sex offender registration from life to five years and community supervision to just three years for people caught in “net nanny” sting operations. These stings target adults who believe they’re communicating with children for sex, and since 2015 have led to 311 arrests.

Democrat Sen. Lisa Wellman says the bill is about giving people a “second chance” and not making sentences feel like life sentences. Lefty criminal defense attorneys even argued the stings are a “waste of resources.”

Law enforcement isn’t buying it. Police and sheriffs warn that the only reason no child was harmed is because officers intervened, and that intent to abuse a minor should still matter.

Once again, Democrats are choosing to worry more about the future comfort of offenders than the safety of kids. Read more at Center Square.

Single-Payer Dreams, Budget Nightmares

A recent op-ed by Dr. Roger Stark of the Mountain States Policy Center calls out Democrats for, once again, pushing a state-run, single-payer health care system through Senate Joint Resolution 8206, which would amend the constitution to declare health care a “fundamental right.” Even they hedge, admitting it can’t interfere with funding other state priorities — translation: the promise disappears when the costs explode.

Stark notes this comes after years of wasted time and money by the Universal Health Care Commission, which was supposed to deliver a plan by 2026 but has produced nothing except meetings and reports. Other blue states already tried this and failed. Vermont abandoned its plan after discovering it would require a 35% budget increase, and voters in Colorado and California rejected similar schemes.

Meanwhile, half of Washingtonians have employer-based insurance and over 40% are already on government plans. Democrats still want them all herded into a taxpayer-funded system that no state has figured out how to afford. Read more at Center Square.

When You Can’t Fix Washington, Pick a Fight With Trump

As Jason Rantz notes in a recent op-ed, with Washington’s economy sputtering, taxes rising, housing unaffordable, and homelessness spiraling, Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown are choosing to manufacture a crisis with ICE and President Trump instead of addressing the disasters voters actually live with. There is no surge of federal agents, no intelligence of any unusual activity, and no emergency. Ferguson admitted as much—then immediately floated deploying the National Guard anyway.

That’s not leadership. That’s reckless political theater designed to excite the activist base and distract from years of policy failure.

Brown followed up by hinting that local police shouldn’t “look away” if federal agents allegedly violate the law, carefully stopping short of saying what he really means: setting the stage for confrontations between state and federal authorities while pretending his hands are clean.

When Democrats can’t talk about unemployment, taxes, housing, or homelessness, they pivot to Trump. Escalation becomes their strategy, and Washington residents are left paying the price for a performance that solves nothing. Read more at Seattle Red.

Democrat Crime Policies: Great for Thieves, Terrible for Drivers

Washington and Oregon are once again topping the wrong kind of list, ranking among the worst states in the nation for vehicle theft. Washington sits at number two with 627 thefts per 100,000 people, while Oregon isn’t far behind at number four. Meanwhile, Idaho quietly ranks near the bottom, proving that tougher-on-crime policies actually work.

Pickup trucks are the biggest targets, especially Ford and Chevrolet models, with the Ford Pickup, Honda Civic, and Honda Accord dominating theft charts in both Washington and Oregon. In other words, if you drive something common, Democrats’ soft-on-crime experiment has painted a giant bullseye on your vehicle.

While Olympia lectures residents about equity and criminal “compassion,” car owners are left buying GPS trackers, parking under streetlights, and hoping their truck is still there in the morning. Idaho drivers get security through enforcement. Washington drivers get theft-prevention tips to compensate for policy failure. Read more at Seattle Red.

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