Opponents of conservative-backed initiatives to undo changes to the rights of parents and public school students and restrict the participation of transgender girls in sports officially launched their campaign to defeat the ballot measures this week.

The No Hate in WA State campaign argues the two Let’s Go Washington initiatives would invade children’s privacy, vilify transgender youth and leave vulnerable kids unwilling to seek help when needed. A few hundred people attended the campaign kickoff Wednesday night at Seattle club Neumos, organizers said.

“We have to balance the rights of loving parents with the additional life-saving duty to protect the safety of youth who are victims of domestic violence and child abuse,” said King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, a Democrat. “There is no easy answer here. There’s no magic bullet, but I can tell you these poorly written and reckless initiatives do not meet that balance.”

More than $1 million has already poured into the campaign against the initiatives, with large sums coming from unions and the American Civil Liberties Union.

IL26-001 looks to eliminate changes Democratic lawmakers made in 2025 to a Let’s Go Washington initiative on the rights of parents of public school students that the Legislature approved a year earlier.

The group’s 2024 proposal aimed to ensure parents can easily access school materials and their child’s medical records, among other things. One of the most significant changes in the 2025 law, which was recently upheld in court, was to remove parental access to medical records.

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, said the initiative “forces our schools to out LGBTQIA+ kids to the very families that might throw them out.”

The other ballot measure, IL26-638, would bar transgender K-12 students from competing in girls’ sports. It would accomplish this by confirming children’s sex assigned at birth through routine athletic physicals. A flyer handed out at Wednesday’s event says Brian Heywood, the financier leading the Let’s Go Washington political committee, “wants the state to look at our kids’ genitals.”

Let’s Go Washington sees the measure as a way to restore fairness to competition, despite just a handful of transgender students reportedly participating in girls’ sports across Washington.

A similar proposal will be on the ballot in Colorado this year. An initiative in Maine to limit what school sports teams, bathrooms, and locker rooms trans students can access has been the subject of a legal fight after the secretary of state there invalidated it.

Jayapal, who has a transgender child, said Heywood wants to “bring the hate that they’ve been trying to spread in Congress, and across the country” into Washington state.

Heywood countered Thursday that the opposition campaign is “literally fueled by hate.”

“Hate for strong and informed families, hate for female athletes, and hate for Washingtonians who disagree with them,” he said in a statement.

“Our campaign is just the opposite: we are standing for girls who are being told their safe spaces and opportunities don’t matter if boys want to take them,” Heywood continued. “We’re fighting for parents who are being cut out of decisions and conversations about their own children because the state thinks it does a better job caretaking.”

Many coastal towns along the West Coast can’t afford to build lifesaving structures in the event of surging waves, putting homes and residents in jeopardy.

You’ve seen Law & Order. You’ve heard the Miranda Rights. You know that if someone charged with a crime cannot afford an attorney, all US states have a constitutional obligation to provide one. But, because of the backwards way we fund it, the public defense system in Washington has been destitute for decades.

Complicating things further, last year the Washington State Supreme Court set new caseload standards, stating that public defenders could only take on a fraction of the cases they currently see now, which will make it impossible to cover everything that needs covering with current staffing levels. That creates a new monetary problem and a constitutional crisis.

Former Attorney General Rob McKenna and the Citizens Action Defense Fund have officially filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Washington’s newly passed income tax on high earners, also known as the “millionaires tax.”

Opponents of Washington’s new income tax asked the state Supreme Court on Friday to allow them to pursue a referendum in hopes of giving voters a shot at repealing the controversial new law this November.

Brian Heywood, founder of the conservative political committee Let’s Go Washington, filed an emergency petition that asks justices to direct Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to process the referendum paperwork submitted Monday.

If successful, Heywood’s group must submit signatures of 154,455 voters by June 10 to qualify for the fall ballot.

“Time is already running out. Not granting accelerated review of this matter would unfairly render the entire process moot by significantly limiting the time available” to collect signatures, Heywood argues in court documents.

Heywood filed a referendum on Senate Bill 6346 shortly after Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the legislation known as the “millionaires’ tax.” It imposes a 9.9% levy on household wage income above $1 million starting in 2028.

But, as expected, the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday declined to process it, citing the Legislature’s inclusion of language that the new tax “is necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions.” Democratic lawmakers put this so-called “necessity clause” into the law to prevent a referendum.

Reminder that Heywood moved here to escape what he would describe as a leftist hell hole (California). When he realized WA state was even more progressive, he formed a PAC to abuse the ballot initiative process in our state and mislead voters about tax reform and pricing of utilities. He's a shitty person, and he should move to Idaho where he'd get the keys to the government.

The DOE just ordered the TransAlta coal plant to keep running. But it has been offline since December, and a new state law would make it too costly to turn back on.

The bill imposes a 9.9% tax on income of over $1 million a year, with the first payments due in 2029. It would raise an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion annually, helping to fund schools and other state services.

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Washington state is poised to ban employee noncompetes and related repayment agreements under a bill that’s headed to Gov. Bob Ferguson (D) for his signature.

The failure of HB 1175 to make it to the state Senate floor mirrors a similar fate two years ago. Bill sponsor Mark Klicker placed the decision to let the neighborhood cafe bill die squarely on Local Government Committee Chair Jesse Salomon.

The proposed state House operating budget would zero out the Washington State Urban and Community Forestry program, which cities across the state rely on to leverage federal dollars for trees. The effects of those cuts could be wide-reaching.

The $2 billion in new bonding in the Senate's transportation budget would help bolster the state's highway and bridge maintenance spending, which has lagged due to longstanding prioritization of new highway projects. But the debt load could create problems for future budget writers.

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