With contract negotiations nearing a critical deadline, hundreds of Washington state workers walked off the job for an hour Monday to highlight demands for wage hikes in their next two-year deal. Roughly 100 employees from an array of agencies lined Capitol Way in Olympia, most facing the domed Legislative Building where Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office…
The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 22 states sued Amazon Monday, claiming the online retail company used artificial bids to inflate costs for advertisers, bringing in tens of billions of dollars. The complaint alleges that Amazon used an “invented auction participant” to drive up prices for advertising placements and sponsored product spots on…
Washington state officials are keeping a longstanding program seen as vital to parents of children with developmental disabilities, but cutting its funding, ending weeks of unease about its future. The state Department of Social and Health Services is trimming the Parent to Parent program by 10%, but won’t eliminate it as was feared this summer.…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a win for Nevada’s regulated sports betting industry Friday when a three-judge panel ruled that sports bets accepted by Kalshi are likely not swaps as determined by the Commodity Exchange Act. The court rejected the arguments of prediction markets Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood, which asserted that federal law…
Washington Democratic state Rep. Tarra Simmons tried hard to keep fellow Democrat Daria Ilgen from running against her this year. It didn’t work. The two will face off in November’s general election after she soundly beat him in the primary. Moreover, Simmons’ aggressive efforts to deter Ilgen did not violate state ethics laws as a…
Washington marked a milestone Friday with the final structural beam placed on a new psychiatric facility on the Western State Hospital campus in Pierce County. Along with the pomp came protest. “This is really a chance to honor the hundreds and hundreds of workers who are working so hard every single day to build this…
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is appealing a federal judge’s temporary pause on a U.S. Postal Service regulation that places new restrictions on mail-in voting, according to a Friday court filing. The administration is headed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to try to halt U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining…
Washington state is settling for $180,000 with the former head of the state’s youth prison system after she alleged she was fired for raising concerns about longstanding overcrowding. Felice Upton, then assistant secretary of juvenile rehabilitation at Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families, was fired in April 2025, without explanation, after five years at…
A federal judge froze for two weeks a Trump administration regulation to restrict mail voting late Thursday, calling the U.S. Postal Service rule a violation of states’ power to administer elections. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining order reinstated a pause that she had lifted just a day earlier, following a U.S. Supreme Court procedural…
WASHINGTON — A developing trade war with Canada could bite Republicans ahead of the upcoming midterm elections as voters worry about rising prices and industries in states with competitive races could suffer. Maine’s lobster industry dodged what officials had warned could be economic havoc Thursday morning when Canada reversed its decision to tax lobster imports at…
