In the News

Dear Neighbors: Advocates from cities surrounding Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are shifting their attention to the next chapter in the battle over plans for a major increase in aircraft traffic at SEA. This follows an intense winter in Olympia. Representatives of the airport cities, working with state Sen. Tina Orwall, failed to win passage of legislation designed in part to replace failed noise ...

A bill that would revise Washington’s Wrongly Convicted Persons Act and streamline the compensation process for individuals who have been exonerated recently passed the House Committee on Appropriations. Senate Bill 5520, introduced by Sen. Tina Orwall, would remove legal barriers that advocates say have forced many exonerees into lengthy and costly litigation even after their innocence has been established in ...

The third deadline in as many weeks came Tuesday in the Washington Legislature. It meant the end of the road for numerous bills, including priorities on issues like homelessness, child welfare, gun safety and juvenile detention. It also signals a turning point in the Legislature’s work, as lawmakers move back to House and Senate committee meetings on bills passed in the ...

Washington Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would allow the Department of Health to fine private detention facilities if access is denied for a routine health inspection. "The bill before you is not about immigration laws; it's about people, it's about human rights," Sen. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, said at a public hearing for SB 6286 on Jan 28. The bill would ...

The federal immigration detention center in Tacoma has come under fire in recent years following reports of neglect and suicide. Now, Washington Democratic lawmakers are making the case for the state to be able to fine the center in the event that the Department of Health isn’t allowed in for an inspection. State Sen. Tina Orwall, a Des Moines Democrat, is ...

Washington lawmakers are looking at requiring assisted living facilities to be certified to take care of people with dementia. Senate Bill 5337, sponsored by Sen. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, would require the Department of Social and Health Services to create, manage and enforce a certification process for licensed assisted living facilities.

When the 988 crisis hotline launched in 2022, it was a bid to give people across the country a single easy-to-remember phone number, like 911, that they could call if they were suicidal or needed mental health help. Since then, the national line has received more than 14.5 million calls. More than 246,000 of those are from Washington.

The Metropolitan King County Council unanimously chose state Rep. Tina Orwall to be the newest state senator in South King County, replacing Sen. Karen Keiser who is retiring in the middle of her term. Orwall will make the jump from state representative to state senator, representing the 33rd District, which covers Burien, SeaTac, Des Moines and Kent.

Before sexually explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift circulated on the internet in late January, Issaquah High School students already had fallen victim to nude photos digitally altered by artificial intelligence. During Caroline Mullet’s first homecoming dance in September 2023, a ninth-grade boy photographed her female friends and used AI to make the students appear nude. He then sent ...

Washington state has effectively eliminated its extensive backlog of untested sexual assault evidence kits. Officials announced Thursday that more than 10,000 backlogged kits have now been cleared from evidence rooms across the state and submitted for testing.