Senator Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle) recently sent out a glowing email claiming Washington is one of the best states for business—based not on actual business metrics, but on how easy it is for unions to organize. The data he cited came from Oxfam, a global socialist advocacy group that dreams of 60% investment taxes, nationalized everything, and global wealth redistribution—not exactly pro-business credentials.

Meanwhile, the CNBC report Pedersen referenced actually ranks Washington 42nd in business friendliness. Oops.

To make matters worse, Pedersen touted SB 5041, which forces businesses and taxpayers to foot the bill for workers on voluntary strike. Because nothing says “thriving economy” like paying people not to work.

While small business owners scrape by, often skipping their own paychecks to keep their companies afloat, Olympia’s tax-happy Democrats keep piling on: B&O tax hikes, license fees, fuel taxes, estate taxes, you name it. No wonder businesses are fleeing.

Despite the rosy spin, real data from nonpartisan sources—including the Washington Policy Center—shows Washington is one of the worst states for business. If Democrats want to stop the bleeding, they might try cutting taxes, slashing red tape, and maybe—just maybe—stop letting Oxfam write their press releases. Read more at the Washington Policy Center.

Independent journalists Cam Higby and Brandi Kruse were violently attacked by Antifa during anti-Trump and anti-ICE protests in the Seattle area—and the response from local authorities and corporate media has been silence, shrugs, and excuses.

Higby was blindsided, beaten, and choked unconscious with steel-loaded gloves by someone who had previously threatened to kill him. He suffered a concussion, vision problems, and memory loss—but when he called 911, Seattle police never even showed up. Police say the case is “open and active,” and they know who the suspect is, but no arrest has been made. Higby and others say they’ve been told prosecutors likely won’t press charges, despite the brutal nature of the attack and the clear video evidence.

Kruse, meanwhile, was mobbed and sprayed in the face with hornet killer at a protest in Tukwila—within 30 seconds of arriving. Protesters blocked her camera, threw things, and followed her when she tried to leave. She filed a report with Tukwila Police and says members of the Trump administration are monitoring the case, but again: no arrests, no real progress, and no accountability.

Both attacks were caught on video. Neither resulted in a single arrest. The media? Nowhere to be found. Local journalists privately texted Kruse to check on her—but didn’t dare report what happened. As Kruse put it, if this had been Proud Boys doing the attacking, it would’ve been national news.

Seattle Democrats love to grandstand about “protecting democracy” and “defending the free press,” but when Antifa assaults journalists, the response is weak investigations, political cowardice, and media blackout. The message is clear: if you’re not on their side, you’re on your own. Read more at Center Square.

Faced with hard numbers showing Washington’s per-student spending ballooning from $13,775 to over $19,000 while academic performance tanks—60% of students failing math benchmarks and half falling short in English—Superintendent Chris Reykdal didn’t offer solutions. He offered spin.

In a jaw-dropping exchange with Q13’s Hana Kim, Reykdal waved away the dismal results by attacking the Washington Policy Center, which merely cited the data. Never mind that the numbers came straight from his own agency, OSPI. Instead of addressing student failure, Reykdal launched a partisan dodge—accusing WPC of being too political, all while conveniently forgetting he’s literally an elected Democrat who campaigned as “the Democrat” for a supposedly nonpartisan position.

When pressed on the accuracy of the numbers, Reykdal resorted to fuzzy math and vague feel-good statements about public schools being the engine of our economy (despite, you know, most kids not meeting academic benchmarks). He then blamed inflation, poverty, and mental health—everyone and everything except the people running the system.

In classic bureaucratic fashion, Reykdal managed to praise himself, smear his critics, and dismiss taxpayer concerns—all without offering a single new idea to actually improve student outcomes.

Washington spends more and gets less. Reykdal’s solution? Talk in circles, hope no one notices, and vilify anyone who dares cite inconvenient facts—even when they come from his own office. Read more at the Washington Policy Center.

As Shift WA previously reported, on a move that’s as refreshing as a splash of cold river water, President Trump recently repealed a Biden-era scheme that would’ve set the stage for breaching the Snake River dams. Now a new op-ed in Center Square describes how Biden’s secretive memorandum—cooked up with activists behind closed doors—threatened to gut over 3,000 megawatts of clean, reliable hydropower, devastate agriculture, kill a critical freight route, and raise energy prices, all for a symbolic “win” that wouldn’t even help salmon recovery.

Trump’s executive order pulled the plug on the nonsense, rightly calling out the catastrophic impact such a reckless plan would have had on the Northwest’s economy and power grid. The decision drew praise from everyone who actually understands how electricity works—from the American Public Power Association to rural co-ops and policy experts like Todd Myers, who reminded everyone that salmon do just fine with the dams, thank you very much.

Democrats, once again, tried to score political points by flirting with an environmentalist fantasy while ignoring science, economics, and basic logic. Fortunately, this time, the adults stepped in before they could flip the off-switch on clean energy for millions.

Unlike the progressive dream of ripping out essential infrastructure for no measurable gain, protecting the Snake River dams means keeping the lights on, food moving, and costs down. Turns out, dam power beats virtue signaling—and the Northwest is better off for it. Read more at Center Square.

While Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell tries to dazzle the public with decorative lighting and media spin, residents and workers in Belltown are stuck living in what’s become an open-air drug den. Fentanyl addicts roam the streets half-naked, businesses are under siege, employees are getting assaulted, and some shops now keep their doors locked during business hours just to stay safe.

Walk down Blanchard Street and you’ll find drug dealers, mentally ill homeless individuals harassing women, trash piling up, and a dog park now too dangerous to use. One business manager told The Jason Rantz Show that employees have been knocked unconscious, pepper-sprayed, and injured by deranged addicts—and she has to clean up human waste just to open up for the day.

The police are trying—undercover stings and arrests have been made—but the problem always comes back, sometimes worse. Why? Because there’s no real system in place, and prosecutors often won’t book offenders. Even the city’s CARE team admits there’s no infrastructure to support recovery or treatment. Arrests mean nothing when drug users are simply released or ignored.

And Harrell? He’s MIA. His response to the crisis is to keep up appearances, delegate hard decisions, and quietly shift homeless encampments from one block to the next to create the illusion of progress. He even let a local business foot the electric bill for those decorative lights while refusing to address the rising death toll from overdoses just a block away.

Belltown isn’t improving—it’s unraveling. Residents are traumatized, workers are under threat, and the city leadership is busy patting itself on the back for managing a PR crisis while ignoring a humanitarian one. But hey, at least downtown looks “activated” if you squint hard enough and avoid the fentanyl foil. Read more at KTTH.

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