As Shift WA readers know, Washington drivers are once again paying more than $5 a gallon — among the highest in the nation — and the Department of Ecology is still lying about why.

According to a Washington Policy Center analysis by Todd Myers, the agency continues to claim there is “no clear relationship” between the price of carbon and the price of gas. That statement is contradicted by Ecology’s own commissioned study, which found gas prices jumped roughly 44 cents a gallon higher than Oregon’s after the Climate Commitment Act took effect in 2023 — almost exactly what the carbon price predicted.

Independent experts agree. UC Berkeley’s Severin Borenstein, who helped design California’s system, called it “beyond controversy” that Washington’s carbon pricing contributed to the jump. GasBuddy’s Patrick deHaan noted Washington prices rose while Oregon’s stayed more than 45 cents lower.

This is the same agency that once promised the CCA would add only about five cents a gallon, then quietly scrubbed the claim when prices soared. The same Democrats who sold the policy as painless and now blame everything except their own law.

Governor Ferguson leans on the war in Iran and President Trump while refusing to pause the carbon tax that is demonstrably hitting drivers. Ecology’s talking points aren’t a misunderstanding. They’re a deliberate effort to protect the Climate Commitment Act from accountability.

When a state agency fabricates a narrative that contradicts its own data, the public has every reason to stop trusting the official story. Washington families are paying the price for progressive climate policy — and the government is lying about it. Read more at Seattle Red.

The Washington Attorney General’s Office has released the official public investment impact disclosure for Initiative 645 — the measure that would repeal the state’s new 9.9% income tax — and critics are calling it a textbook scare tactic.

The ballot language claims the measure “would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education… and human services (primarily healthcare).” But as Washington Policy Center’s Ryan Frost points out, the income tax doesn’t dedicate a single dollar to those programs. Nearly all of the revenue is scheduled to go into the general fund, where lawmakers can spend it however they choose. The only specific allocation is a small 5% slice for early learning that doesn’t even begin until 2029.

The tax itself doesn’t take effect until 2028, and no revenue is collected until 2029. No school district, college, or hospital currently depends on money that doesn’t exist yet. Claiming that repealing it would “cut” existing services is factually false.

Let’s Go Washington founder Brian Heywood put it bluntly: “You cannot cut money that does not yet exist.” The AG is required by law to provide a true and impartial description that doesn’t create prejudice. Instead, the office is using the same generic “decrease funding” language applied to any general-fund measure — language designed to frighten voters into protecting a tax they already oppose by large margins.

This is the same Attorney General’s Office that previously helped Democrats craft the tax and insert a necessity clause to block a referendum. Now it’s writing the ballot language that will appear next to the question of whether to repeal it.

Voters deserve straight talk about what I-645 actually does: repeal an unconstitutional income tax that hasn’t collected a dime. They don’t deserve scare tactics designed to protect Olympia’s latest revenue grab. Read more at Center Square.

GOP House candidate Jerrod Sessler is under fire from the left after pointing out a basic economic reality: FEMA’s disaster-funding structure can create perverse incentives around wildfires on the Colville Reservation.

Speaking at a candidate forum, Sessler noted that tribes do not pay the same taxes that fund firefighting yet receive large FEMA checks after major fires — including a reported $30 million payout from a previous blaze. He argued the system incentivizes poor land management and fire-related payouts rather than prevention.

Predictably, progressive critics twisted the comments into an accusation that tribes are deliberately starting fires. Sessler has repeatedly clarified he is not accusing anyone of arson. He is criticizing the federal incentive structure itself and calling for major FEMA reforms, including decentralizing disaster response and giving more authority and funding responsibility to the states.

This is a classic progressive media pattern: treat any discussion of government waste, perverse incentives, or unequal tax burdens as off-limits if it involves a favored group. The actual policy question — whether FEMA’s current model encourages better wildfire prevention or simply rewards larger disasters — gets buried under the outrage.

Sessler is one of several Republicans seeking the open 4th Congressional District seat after Rep. Dan Newhouse’s retirement. Read more at Seattle Red.

Washington Democrats are treating their campaign to block ICE from accessing driver and license-plate data as a moral victory. Governor Bob Ferguson boasts that the state has denied federal agencies access more than 108,000 times since last November, framing it as protection against a “cruel” Trump administration immigration agenda.

The motivation is clear: prioritize sanctuary-style policies and resist federal immigration enforcement at almost any cost. Ferguson’s office has canceled ICE and Homeland Security access to state driver records and restricted Customs and Border Protection queries through national data-sharing systems. The explicit goal is to make it harder for federal officers to identify and arrest people for immigration violations.

That political priority comes at a cost to public safety. By design, the state is limiting tools that law-enforcement agencies use for targeted enforcement. While officials say they still want to cooperate on issues like trafficking and weapons, the overriding focus is on obstructing immigration-related work. Researchers note that federal agencies can still obtain some data by switching to different Originating Agency Identifiers, but the larger problem is the intentional decision to treat immigration enforcement itself as the enemy.

This is progressive governance in action: elevate resistance to federal immigration law above consistent public-safety cooperation, then celebrate the obstruction as leadership. Washingtonians are left with a state government more interested in shielding people from ICE than in supporting the full range of lawful enforcement that keeps communities safe. Read more at KUOW.

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