The leader of Washington state public schools says the state should not join a federal tax credit program that would fund K-12 education. Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal views the tax credit as a way to expand school choice options without closing funding gaps for public schools. “Washington cannot in good faith participate,” Reykdal,…
After a sickout crippled Washington’s ferry system last week, Gov. Bob Ferguson ordered a new evaluation of its engineers’ salaries ahead of wage negotiations with union workers next summer. Negotiators for Ferguson refused to offer a wage increase to members of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association in months of talks on a new two-year collective…
The Trump administration’s order to allow import of Russian diesel violates a 2022 law banning Russian energy imports while the country’s war with Ukraine is ongoing, according to a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. Following an Oct. 9 call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets…
In 2007, Idaho lawmakers passed a law to make English the state’s official language. That law, which is still on the books, requires English to be used as “the sole language of government.” But it lists many exceptions to its requirement that government documents be in English, such as for law enforcement or for “public…
Seismic surveys, well drilling, ice road construction and other wintertime oil exploration activities on federal lands on the western North Slope will no longer be subject to case-by-case environmental evaluation, under a new rule the Trump administration announced on Thursday. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued the rule for exploration activities in the National…
It took Christa Pike nearly a week to regain consciousness after the Tennessee Department of Corrections failed to kill her with two doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital, a drug used to put animals to death and to execute humans by lethal injection in Tennessee and other states. She was confused and angry. She couldn’t eat…
An enclave of Washington’s wealthy provided a backdrop Thursday for a saucy debate on the merits and dangers of a ballot measure to erase the state’s controversial new income tax on millionaires. Brian Heywood, the hedge fund manager behind Initiative 645, and House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, argued onstage at the Meydenbauer Center in…
Aiming to make up for lost revenue from federal benefit cuts, a coalition of powerful Oregon advocacy groups announced Thursday that they will launch a signature-gathering campaign for the November 2028 election to approve a wealth tax on some of the state’s richest households while cutting taxes for low-income residents. The left-leaning Fight For Our…
Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and John Braun, the top Republican in the Washington state Senate who is challenging her in a critical congressional duel, faced off on Wednesday in a televised debate, exchanging digs on the Iran war, policies of President Donald Trump, gas prices, and at each other. This match-up in the…
Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin…
