Washington Democrats are once again discovering that throwing billions at bloated government agencies doesn’t magically create competence. New records show a whistleblower directly warned DCYF Secretary Tana Senn last year about “major theft” happening inside the state-run Echo Glen juvenile facility — and alleged agency staff were actively covering it up.

This is the same DCYF agency already drowning in controversy over lax security, inmate escapes, staffing shortages, and lawsuits. Now taxpayers can add alleged theft and internal coverups to the growing list of dysfunction.

According to the whistleblower’s messages, Senn personally met multiple times with the source and expressed interest in learning more. Yet somehow, despite these explosive allegations, the State Auditor’s Office says it never received any report of missing public funds from DCYF. Amazing how that works. Democrats constantly lecture taxpayers about “investing in services,” but when allegations of corruption surface inside their own agencies, suddenly nobody seems eager to document anything officially.

Echo Glen itself sounds less like a secure juvenile facility and more like another Olympia social experiment spiraling out of control. The facility has faced chronic staffing shortages, high turnover, overtime exhaustion, assaults, and escapes — all while operating for years without even a perimeter fence. Because apparently basic security was just too much to ask from the same crowd that never met a spending increase they didn’t love.

And when reporters at The Center Square tried to question DCYF about the whistleblower records, agency communications officials reportedly stopped responding altogether. Shocking. The party that claims to worship “transparency” suddenly goes quiet the moment public records expose another embarrassing mess inside one of its agencies.

At this point, Washington voters are watching the same Democrat playbook on repeat: expand government, spend more money, lower standards, deny accountability, and act stunned when the system collapses under corruption and incompetence. Read more at Center Square.

Nothing says “trust us” like Democrats hiding an income tax behind legal loopholes and hoping nobody reads the fine print.

Let’s Go Washington says it collected a staggering 92,780 signatures in just the first week of its campaign to repeal Washington Democrats’ new 9.9% income tax on high earners — a pace that reportedly shocked even the campaign itself.

The initiative, backed by founder Brian Heywood, targets the income tax signed into law by Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson earlier this year. And if the early numbers are any indication, voters are not exactly thrilled with Olympia’s latest attempt to crack open the door to a statewide income tax.

According to Heywood, voters increasingly believe Democrats “rammed this through” despite serious constitutional concerns and after years of promising Washington would never have an income tax. Apparently the “only taxing millionaires” sales pitch is landing about as well as every other time Democrats claimed a tax hike would magically stay limited forever.

The first-week numbers are especially embarrassing for Olympia Democrats because they already tried to make it harder for voters to fight back. Lawmakers inserted a “necessity clause” into the legislation specifically to block a referendum challenge, forcing opponents into the far more difficult initiative process with a much higher signature threshold. Critics say it was a classic Olympia maneuver: if voters might reject your policy, just change the rules first.

Even with those roadblocks, the repeal effort is moving at a record pace. For comparison, Let’s Go Washington’s previous initiative campaign against the state’s natural gas restrictions collected about 65,000 signatures in its first week. This new income tax repeal effort blew past that by more than 40%.

The broader problem for Democrats is that many Washington voters simply no longer trust Olympia to spend taxpayer money responsibly. After years of ballooning budgets, endless new taxes and fees, and persistent failures on homelessness, crime, public safety, and basic government accountability, lawmakers are now asking voters to believe this income tax will somehow be different.

That sales pitch appears to be going over exactly as well as you’d expect. Read more at Seattle Red.

We here at Shift WA are mourning alongside the Longview community and praying for the families still waiting for answers.

The devastating chemical tank rupture at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant in Longview has now claimed at least two lives, injured multiple workers and first responders, and left several people still unaccounted for as recovery crews continue searching through dangerous conditions.

This tragedy has deeply shaken the Longview community, where mill workers are more than employees — they are neighbors, friends, parents, and generations of hardworking families who helped build the region.

As rescue teams continue risking their own safety to stabilize the site and search for victims, our hearts are with every family anxiously waiting for news about a loved one tonight. We are also praying for the injured workers, the brave first responders on scene, and the entire Longview community as they face what local leaders are calling one of the worst industrial disasters in the city’s history.

In moments like this, politics fades away. Washington communities always come together in times of heartbreak, and Longview deserves all the support, prayers, and strength we can offer in the difficult days ahead.