As Seattle drivers choke on gas prices north of $5.25, Democrats are floating a “gas tax holiday” like it’s some kind of financial lifeline. Sounds nice—until you realize it’s mostly political theater.

Even budget expert Mark Goldwein isn’t buying it. The much-hyped federal gas tax cut? It’s just 18 cents per gallon to begin with—and drivers wouldn’t even see most of that. Between demand spikes and predictable price adjustments by suppliers, the actual savings could amount to a laughable 0.1%.

So what’s really going on here? Democrats have spent years layering on regulations, restrictions, and anti-energy policies that help drive up fuel costs—then turn around and pitch a temporary tax gimmick as “relief.” It’s like lighting your house on fire and handing you a garden hose.

Goldwein points out the real culprits: global oil markets and government policies like the Jones Act, which makes transporting fuel more expensive in the first place. Meanwhile, the push toward electric vehicles is quietly undermining the very gas tax Democrats now pretend can solve the problem.

Bottom line: this isn’t a serious fix—it’s a political Band-Aid slapped on a problem Democrats helped create. And like most Band-Aids in Olympia and D.C., it won’t hold for long. Read more at Seattle Red.

In a rare moment of course correction, Gov. Bob Ferguson just signed a bill rolling back Washington’s sky-high estate tax—undoing a massive increase he and fellow Democrats pushed through just last year.

That hike had turned Washington into a national outlier, jacking the top estate tax rate up to a staggering 35% on large estates. Not surprisingly, concerns quickly followed: wealthy residents looking for the exits, family businesses at risk of being sold off, and yet another signal that Washington was becoming increasingly hostile to investment.

Now, with Senate Bill 6347, Ferguson is reversing course—bringing the top rate back down to 20% and pulling the state out of the “highest in the nation” category.

To his credit, Ferguson didn’t try to spin it. He essentially admitted the obvious: sometimes lawmakers get it wrong.

“Sometimes we’ll do things that aren’t the best things,” he said. That might be the understatement of the session.

Of course, this doesn’t erase the bigger pattern. The same Democratic majority that created the problem is still in charge—and still pushing new taxes elsewhere to fill budget gaps they helped create. And rolling back this tax will mean less projected revenue in future budgets, which likely just tees up the next round of “creative” ways to squeeze taxpayers.

But for once, Olympia actually hit the brakes instead of the gas.

It’s not a full reversal of the state’s tax-heavy trajectory—but it is one small, overdue step in the right direction. Read more at the Washington State Standard.

The timing couldn’t be more on-the-nose. Just one day after Washington Democrats rammed through their shiny new “millionaires tax,” listings for homes priced at $2 million or more suddenly spiked—up 65% compared to the same day last year.

Coincidence? Sure, if you believe people randomly decide to sell multi-million-dollar homes the exact moment lawmakers vote to take a bigger cut of their income.

The raw numbers tell the story. On the day after the bill passed, 53 high-end homes hit the market—compared to just 32 the year before. And this wasn’t totally out of the blue. Realtors have already said many clients were planning to list specifically because of the new tax.

Of course, enter the economist cleanup crew.

Windermere’s Jeff Tucker urges everyone to calm down, pointing out that single-day data can be noisy and that selling a luxury home isn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision. Fair enough—but even he admits the broader trend is real: high-end listings are up this year.

And that’s the part Democrats can’t spin away.

Because this is exactly what critics warned about. When you target high earners with new taxes, they don’t just shrug and write bigger checks—they reconsider where they live, where they invest, and whether sticking around makes any sense at all.

So while Democrats celebrate squeezing “the rich,” the early returns suggest they may just be exporting them instead.

And when those taxpayers—and their revenue—walk out the door, don’t worry… Olympia will have a “solution” ready. It’ll just involve taxing whoever’s left. Read more at Center Square.

Seattle’s political machine just got a not-so-gentle reminder that “public records” actually means the public gets to see them.

Journalist Brandi Kruse scored a legal win against the city after officials slow-walked her records request tied to a conveniently timed vote flip by former councilmember Andrew Lewis.

Kruse wasn’t asking for anything radical—just emails and texts to figure out who might have influenced Lewis’s last-minute reversal on a controversial drug policy vote. You know, basic accountability stuff.

Instead, the city played the classic bureaucratic dodge: delay, delay, delay. Officials told her records wouldn’t be ready until after the primary… and then the rest not until after the general election. Pure coincidence, of course.

Except it wasn’t.

In court, it came out that the city didn’t even follow its own rules handling the request. A lower court shrugged it off, but on appeal, judges unanimously sided with Kruse—essentially confirming what everyone already suspected: Seattle’s transparency laws aren’t optional, even if Democrats treat them that way.

And here’s the bigger issue—this isn’t some one-off mistake. The city has a growing track record of “losing” or settling public records cases, raising an obvious question: how many decisions are being shaped behind the scenes while voters are kept in the dark?

To her credit, Kruse struck a more measured tone, expressing hope that new leadership might actually follow the law going forward. But after years of delays, excuses, and quiet settlements, that’s a pretty generous benefit of the doubt.

When it comes to transparency, Seattle Democrats seem to prefer sunlight only when it’s politically convenient—and thanks to this ruling, that just got a little harder to pull off. Read more at Center Square.

Sen. Maria Cantwell took to the Senate floor to assure everyone that non-citizen voter fraud is basically nonexistent in Washington—because the penalties are just too scary. Five years in prison, $10,000 fines… case closed, right?

Well, not exactly.

Cantwell’s entire argument boils down to: “People won’t commit crimes if the punishment is bad enough.” Which is a bold claim, considering people commit serious crimes all the time despite far harsher consequences. The existence of penalties doesn’t prevent crime—it just punishes the ones who get caught (and that’s a big “if”).

And that’s where things start to unravel.

The same “system” Cantwell is asking voters to blindly trust has already shown how unreliable it can be. In a separate case highlighted this week, an illegal immigrant was caught at the border, released, arrested again, released again, and then went on to commit a horrific murder. The system didn’t fail once—it failed repeatedly.

Yet somehow, we’re supposed to believe that this same system is flawlessly catching every instance of voter fraud?

Cantwell even admitted the quiet part out loud: fraud is caught “when we do.” In other words, when the system happens to detect it. But here’s the problem—Washington doesn’t cross-check citizenship in real time, and audits happen after ballots are counted. So any fraud that slips through? We’ll never know.

But instead of addressing that gap, Democrats pivot to their usual playbook: label any attempt at verification as “voter suppression.” Requiring proof of citizenship suddenly becomes an attack on “millions,” blurring the line between actual voters and those who shouldn’t be voting in the first place.

This isn’t about strengthening election security—it’s about defending a system built on assumptions, not verification. And when Democrats say “trust the system,” what they really mean is: don’t ask too many questions. Read more at Seattle Red.

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