Former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna is stepping in to challenge Democrats’ favorite new hobby: passing a clearly questionable income tax and hoping the courts sort it out later.

McKenna, joined by the Citizen Action Defense Fund and former Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, filed a lawsuit in Klickitat County targeting the state’s newly minted “millionaires’ tax”—which they’re bluntly calling illegal. And not in a vague, debatable way, but in a “we’ve already been through this multiple times” kind of way.

At a press conference, McKenna didn’t mince words: lawmakers are bending over backward to avoid letting voters weigh in, while pushing a tax that runs straight into Washington’s constitution. That constitution, inconveniently for Democrats, has a long-standing interpretation: income is property.

And that’s where things get awkward.

Washington courts—from Superior Court to the Court of Appeals—have already ruled that income taxes violate the state’s uniform property tax requirements. The precedent isn’t fuzzy. It’s not evolving. It’s been sitting there, unchanged, for decades. Judges have consistently said they don’t get to rewrite it just because lawmakers wish it were different.

McKenna’s argument is essentially: nothing has changed legally, so why would the outcome?

Still, Democrats appear to be banking on a last-ditch Hail Mary—that the Washington Supreme Court will suddenly decide that income isn’t property after all, despite nearly a century of rulings saying the opposite.

Bold strategy.

In the meantime, the lawsuit includes plaintiffs ranging from farmers to small business owners—people who, unlike Olympia lawmakers, don’t have the luxury of pretending settled law is optional.

Bottom line: Democrats passed it, voters didn’t get a say, and now everyone gets to watch the courts explain—again—why that might be a problem. Read more at MyNorthwest.com.

A group of eastern Washington sheriffs is taking Democrats to court after the Legislature passed—and Gov. Bob Ferguson signed—a law that lets an unelected, governor-appointed board effectively decide who gets to be sheriff.

Senate Bill 5974, pushed through on party lines, creates new requirements for sheriff candidates and gives major authority to the Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC)—a 21-member body mostly appointed by the governor. Translation: the people can vote… but only after Olympia decides who’s allowed on the ballot.

Sheriffs from Spokane, Pend Oreille, Stevens, and Ferry counties aren’t buying it. Their lawsuit argues the law flips the entire structure of local elections on its head and forces candidates to swear to vague, ever-changing standards that no one can clearly define. In other words, you have to promise you’ve never violated rules that aren’t clearly spelled out—good luck with that.

They also point out this isn’t some gray area. Courts have rejected similar power grabs for decades. But that didn’t stop Democrats from charging ahead anyway, brushing off both legal precedent and widespread opposition from law enforcement.

Even Ferguson, while calling it a “great bill,” admitted there might be some… issues. Nothing says confidence like signing a law and immediately suggesting it’ll need fixing later.

The law is set to take effect April 30—right before election filing begins—unless the courts step in first. A hearing is already scheduled.

It appears that Democrats didn’t just rewrite the rules—they’re trying to decide who gets to play the game at all. Read more at Center Square.

A King County judge pro tem just turned a decade-long legal career into a cautionary tale—over a $10 parking discount. Yes, really.

David Ruzumna, who had been serving across multiple cities and even sat on the state bar’s character and fitness board, decided the rules didn’t apply to him. After failing to talk his way into a discounted parking rate, he escalated things in spectacularly bad fashion—grabbing a sitting judge’s signature stamp and the official court seal to forge a fake employment letter. All for cheaper parking.

It didn’t work. The garage flagged it immediately, HR launched an investigation, and the courts quickly showed him the door. The Washington Supreme Court just made that removal permanent, unanimously. Turns out forging judicial documents is frowned upon—even in a system Democrats often claim is all about “restoring trust.”

And the irony is hard to miss. While Democrats spend plenty of time lecturing about ethics and institutional integrity, this case is a reminder that those principles don’t always hold up behind the scenes. The concern wasn’t whether he deserved a discount—it was the jaw-dropping lack of judgment in abusing judicial authority for personal gain.

Even worse, Ruzumna didn’t just make a bad decision—he doubled down with shaky explanations and contradictions that only made things worse. Investigators concluded his dishonesty caused “irreparable damage” to trust in him as a judge. Translation: not exactly the guy you want deciding other people’s cases.

In the end, the court spelled it out plainly: integrity matters. Apparently more than $10—though it took a full-blown scandal to prove it. Read more at Seattle Red.

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