In the News

Washington State highways and bridges are in need of a serious refresh. That’s according to a WSDOT official who told the Washington State Transportation Commission this month: “We are in the early stages of critical failure due to lack of funding.” - Troy Suing, Director, Capital Program Development and Management, Washington State Department of Transportation

In a colorful classroom at Edmonds College’s Head Start preschool in Lynnwood, kids finish breakfast and sit in a circle, watching their teacher expectantly. Today’s lesson is about working animals. The 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds excitedly call out jobs animals can have, beaming as their teacher encourages their ideas. Photos of students with their families cover the wall in one corner of the room. For the kids, this preschool is a place to make friends and learn. For their families, it’s ...

OLYMPIA—Washington State’s Work Zone Speed Camera Program, that launched in April 2025, has issued 7,599 infractions for speeding in highway work zones, with another 3,968 currently being processed, during its first 90 days the Washington State Patrol announced on Wednesday, July 30.

SACRAMENTO, California — Blue-state lawmakers are increasingly turning to tech giants for cash to save struggling newsrooms, fearful that President Donald Trump’s policies could crush already reeling local news outlets.

Democrats in five blue states — Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington — have been pushing to make tech companies pay outlets in exchange for displaying news content, arguing newsrooms should be reimbursed for advertising revenues lost to aggregation ...

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson has signed a bill making Washington the twelfth state in the country to restrict the use of animals in traveling circuses, exhibits and other shows. Washington State Senate Bill 5065 was signed into law on April 22 and will take effect in late July 2025. It prohibits the use of elephants, bears, wild cats and nonhuman primates in traveling shows.

The Washington state Senate on Monday approved legislation to require a new state permit to buy guns. The debate over House Bill 1163 has been one of the most contentious this legislative session. Conservatives and gun owners think it puts an unconstitutional barrier to the right to bear arms. Democrats see it as one more step the state can take to reduce gun violence, after banning bump stocks and prohibiting sales of high-capacity magazines and many semi-automatic firearms.

In a time of deep political division, it sometimes feels like bipartisanship is an impossibility or an old-fashioned notion. We’re here to tell you that not all hope is lost. That cooperation does exist, is still the goal and yields good results. We face a billion-dollar problem in our state’s transportation budget this year. When we started the legislative session in January, we were determined to find a bipartisan solution — as we usually do with transportation budgets — to ...