Seattle employees making the minimum wage will see a mandatory raise starting next year, making them the highest paid minimum wage workers in the country.
Starting at the beginning of 2025, all employers regardless of size will be required to pay their employees at least $20.76 an hour.
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Seattle is in King County, Washington, where Joe Biden got 75 percent of the vote in the 2020 election. King County had more than 1,000 drug overdoses involving fentanyl in 2023. These two facts are almost certainly related, but which is the cause and which the effect? Or could it be that both (a) the tendency to vote for Democrats and (b) the addiction to dangerous drugs are caused by some unknown factor? Without a careful analysis of the available data to identify that unknown background factor, is it wrong to hazard a guess that the overdosing dopeheads and Democratic voters in King County are just plain stupid?
Beyond sarcastic put-downs, it behooves those interested in public policy to take a look at what’s going on in places like Seattle, where Democrats dominate and “progressive” ideas therefore advance unhindered by any effective opposition. In the case of King County’s skyrocketing drug overdoses — which increased nearly 50 percent in just the past year — local officials have declared the problem “a public health crisis.” However, fentanyl is illegal, which means that the overdoses are also indicative of a crime problem, and progressives are against putting criminals in prison.
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On Wednesday, the city of Seattle finally reclaimed the last portions of a downtown area that had first been claimed by far-left protesters in an infamous effort to create an “autonomous zone.”
Fox News reports that the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and police department destroyed a so-called “community garden” that had been planted in Cal Anderson Park back in 2020, at the height of the nationwide race riots carried out by anarcho-communist and black nationalist agitators. The city declared that the destruction of the garden was due to concerns for public health and safety, as the site continued to draw undesirable people to the park, including homeless people and drug addicts.
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Seattle middle school students sent a group of conservative moms pro-LGBTQ nastygrams as part of a recent assignment.
The parental rights group Moms for Liberty posted pictures of the hate mail they received from the Jane Addams Middle School class on Saturday.
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Chicago is the latest major city to sue Hyundai and Kia for failing to equip their U.S. cars for more than a decade with anti-theft technology, which was exposed on social media last year and made the vehicles a target for criminals.
“Unlike the movies, hot-wiring vehicles is far harder than it appears—unless that vehicle was manufactured by Hyundai or Kia,” the lawsuit filed Thursday by the city of Chicago states.
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Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline — until it began to implode.
Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?
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Seattle Public Schools may have to close some of its schools over the next few years as the district battles budget shortages and plummeting enrollment after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Two years after Seattle slashed its police budget, local business owners say crime has skyrocketed, with police unable to deal with thefts, homelessness and open-air drug use that plague the city. Seattle and broader King County had more than 13,000 homeless people within its boundaries in 2022, more than every other similar area except Los Angeles County and New York City, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, while the Seattle Police Department (SPD) lost more than 130 officers, KOMO News reported, as homicides, shootings and motor vehicle thefts increased. Local business owners say law enforcement is failing to effectively deter the rampant drug use and theft disturbing their livelihoods.
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A former Seattle municipal employee filed a lawsuit against the City of Seattle earlier in November for allegedly creating a “racially hostile” working environment.
The plaintiff, Joshua Diemert, alleges that he was denied opportunities in his career in Seattle’s Human Services Department because of his race, forced to sit through race-based training sessions, urged to join “race-based affinity groups” and accused of benefiting from “white privilege.” Diemert seeks a declaration that Seattle’s policies and practices violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as well as damages up to $300,000.
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Riots broke out in Seattle and Portland, Oregon on Wednesday night after demonstrators clashed with police and vandalized a Democratic Party office.
People dressed in all black shattered windows and the glass door to the Oregon Democratic Party’s office in Portland, according to The New York Times, vandalizing it with spray paint and posting a video to social media, saying that their actions were in response to the inauguration of President Joe Biden. In Seattle, police said that several buildings were vandalized.
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Democratic Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is set to sign a bill that would slash police funding amid a citywide crime spike.
Durkan’s signature would cut police training and overtime funds by 18% after the city council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the budget reductions, according to Fox News. Activists within local government unsuccessfully sought a 50% slash in law enforcement funding, but the council did approve the transfer of 911 dispatchers, parking officers and mental health workers out of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Fox reported.
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Seattle, Portland, and New York City are suing President Donald Trump and his administration over legal actions that have put future federal funds on the line.
The joint lawsuit is in response to a memo issued by the Trump administration last month requesting U.S. Attorney General William Barr review a list of cities that could be considered hotbeds for civil unrest.
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Fox News reports a Seattle police officer sitting in a patrol car parked in an alley Thursday afternoon suffered minor burns after a man set the vehicle on fire and ran away, authorities said.
Police responded to the incident near the downtown area around 1.30 p.m. after receiving calls that a man was walking around with a piece of burning lumber, according to a Seattle Police spokesperson.
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