🧵 In August 2025, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen wrote an email explaining the real goal of the "millionaire's tax":

"I would like to force the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider its caselaw that considers income to be property."

Not "fund schools." Force the court. Pedersen's bill included a "necessity clause" that blocked voters from challenging it via referendum.

They knew voters would reject it, voters have rejected income taxes 10 times, so they made sure you couldn't vote on it.

Then they sent it to court.

🧵 There’s a company in Sedro-Woolley, WA — a small town most people drive through on the way somewhere else — that built the hull for the boat that won the America’s Cup.

Not Boeing. Not Amazon. A family business in a county better known for tulips than technology.

That’s Washington. That’s what I keep coming back to. This state has a specific gift for taking ideas that seem impossible and making them real.

The wide-body jet that shrank the world. The OS that put a computer in every home. The bookstore that became the infrastructure for global commerce. The coffee shop that became a language a billion people share.

None of those had to happen here. They happened here.

🧵 Something unusual is happening in Washington State that most voters don't know about yet. Five of nine seats on the Supreme Court are on the ballot this November. Washington Supreme Court justices almost never lose. Only one incumbent has been voted out in 30 years. But this year is different. Two of the five seats are held by appointees who have never won a statewide election and have no judicial experience.

Washington's AG office was involved in crafting the millionaire income tax — in secret, with the bill's sponsors — five months before it was introduced. Then defended it in court. Records obtained via public records request show the coordination started in October 2025. Here's what they show. 🧵
October 14, 2025. A senior Ferguson policy advisor emails the Attorney General's office requesting a legal analysis of a "high-earners income tax." The Governor's own counsel, Kristin Beneski, is on the same email. Subject line: "Attorney client privilege." SB 6346 won't be introduced for three more months.

A King County employee oversaw $800K in grant payments to five of their own family members. Red flags went unnoticed for years. When a colleague flagged potential fraud, he was fired four days later.
If this happened at a public company, people would be going to prison.
🧵

https://twitter.com/seattletimes/status/2048581352576963070

Routing payments to family members through a grant program = wire fraud + honest services fraud under federal law. Each payment is a separate count. Coordination with family members adds conspiracy charges.

At a public company, that’s years in federal prison.

Washington’s “millionaire tax” was designed from the start to end up before the Supreme Court.

Documents prove it. 🧵 In December 2025, Sen. Pedersen emailed the state’s top lawyer with a draft of SB 6346.
His ask: “thoughts and comments about what will give us the best shot to have Culliton overruled.”

Not: is this legal. What will give us the best shot.

The AG’s office reviewed the bill — as a litigation strategy partner.

There isn’t enough dialog about WA here. So let’s take a minute and look at a little college town north of Seattle called Bellingham.

🧵 Bellingham School District has spent between 6.6% and 7.3% of its general fund on central administration every year for at least the past decade — more than double the Washington state average of 3.1%.