Washington Democrats and Republicans are treating the 2026 Supreme Court races like the most important battles on the ballot — and for good reason.

With a new 9.9% “Millionaires Tax” already facing a lawsuit and a potential repeal initiative from Let’s Go Washington, both sides know the court could decide the fate of one of Olympia’s biggest recent power plays.

At the state Democratic convention, party leaders made it crystal clear: they’re all-in on preserving a “progressive majority” on the court to protect their agenda. Chair Shasti Conrad and others openly framed the races as essential for safeguarding “progressive revenue,” privacy, and other left-wing priorities. Governor Bob Ferguson himself tied the tax fight directly to the judicial elections.

Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing back hard. They’re highlighting Ferguson’s appointees and arguing voters deserve real scrutiny of candidates who could rule on the constitutionality of the new tax. Several seats are up, including two special elections for Ferguson’s picks.

This is what one-party Democratic dominance looks like in Washington: treat the supposedly nonpartisan Supreme Court as a political insurance policy for your tax-and-spend agenda. While Democrats lecture about judicial independence, they’re mobilizing to keep the court friendly to their expansive government vision.

The message from Olympia Democrats is loud and clear — they’ll do whatever it takes to defend their new income tax from legal challenges and voter backlash. Shift WA readers should pay close attention to these races. The future of taxpayer protections and constitutional limits may depend on them. Read more at King 5.

The City of Seattle and King County are once again proving they’ve learned nothing from years of spectacular failure.

The two jurisdictions are jointly coughing up $900,000 to hire an accounting team for the troubled King County Regional Homeless Authority through the end of 2026. This comes after a damning April audit revealed $8 million in unaccounted funds, a negative cash balance as high as $44.7 million, and millions lost to administrative bloat.

The five-year-old authority — the flagship of Seattle and King County’s homelessness efforts — has been plagued by CEO turnover, fiscal mismanagement, and zero measurable progress despite its massive budget. Yet instead of shutting down the obvious disaster, local Democrats are kicking the can down the road with yet another short-term Band-Aid while they “study” whether to repair or dissolve it by August 1.

This is the Seattle-area homeless industrial complex in action: billions spent over the years, endless audits exposing waste, and the same politicians responding with more money for consultants instead of real accountability or results.

Another textbook example of one-party progressive governance — where the solution to failure is always more spending, never reform or dissolution of broken bureaucracies. Taxpayers deserve better. Read more at Center Square.

Seattle continues its self-inflicted economic decline.

The Seattle-Bellevue-Kent metro lost roughly 1,700 construction jobs over the past year, a 2.4% drop that landed it near the bottom of the country in industry performance. While data centers are exploding nationally — driving massive growth in construction spending — Seattle made sure they weren’t welcome.

The City Council’s unanimous one-year moratorium on large data center projects perfectly timed with a slowing local market: office vacancies rising, housing momentum flattening, and even Microsoft pausing parts of its Redmond expansion. Meanwhile, Microsoft builds big in Quincy, Google invests heavily in Oregon, and Amazon drops billions in Missouri.

Ladies and gentlemen, progressive governance in Seattle: heavy regulations, anti-business hostility, and virtue-signaling green policies that chase away high-paying jobs and tax revenue. National security concerns about keeping critical data infrastructure in America? Ignored.

Republicans warned this would happen. Democrats did it anyway. Now construction workers pay the price while the region falls further behind.

Another day, another example of leftist policies killing opportunity in Washington. At this rate, Seattle will regulate itself into irrelevance. Read more at Seattle Red.

Local governments across the West have perfected the art of raising taxes while hoping nobody notices.

As Sam Cardwell, Policy Analyst for the Mountain States Policy Center, points out, special tax elections in winter and spring routinely see abysmal turnout — often around 19% nationally compared to 44% in general elections. Yet an astonishing 82% of local option tax measures from 1981 to 2020 were shoved onto these low-visibility ballots.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a deliberate strategy by big-spending local officials (overwhelmingly aligned with progressive priorities) to pass tax increases, school levies, and fees with minimal public scrutiny. Why face informed voters in November when you can slide it through in February with a handful of dedicated insiders showing up?

Idaho has taken positive steps by consolidating elections to boost turnout, but there’s still room for improvement by pushing tax measures to the higher-turnout November general election. Other states, including Washington, should follow suit.

Voters deserve maximum transparency and participation when government wants more of their money. Low-turnout special elections are a gift to tax-and-spend interests who prefer to operate in the shadows. It’s time to end the games and force every tax increase onto ballots where the most people are actually paying attention. Read more at Seattle Red.