Bellevue’s Growth and Low Crime Rate are Drawing more Companies East

While Seattle has long been the commercial and cultural hub of Western Washington, Bellevue has quietly been outpacing its counterpart in recent years. Fortune 500 companies and tech giants are increasingly drawn to Bellevue’s clean streets, lower crime rates, and expanding transit access via the East Link Extension. Major names like Robinhood, TikTok, and OpenAI have all chosen Bellevue as a base for new offices and regional growth.

Since 2021, the city’s office footprint has grown by nearly 3.9 million square feet, surpassing Seattle’s 2.6 million square-foot increase during the same period. The shift reflects a broader trend. As Seattle grapples with rising business taxes, safety concerns, and a persistent homelessness crisis, many companies are looking across Lake Washington for stability.

Amazon’s 2019 decision to shift thousands of employees to Bellevue followed Seattle’s proposal for a $275-per-person head tax on large companies. Though the plan was ultimately repealed, it marked a turning point. From almost no presence a decade ago, Amazon now employs more than 14,000 workers in Bellevue, a number projected to surpass 25,000 in the coming years.

It’s Time to Audit the Death Bureaucracy

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/3789116/time-to-audit-death-bureaucracy

A deeply disturbing investigative report in UnHerd 

last week uncovered rampant violations of physician-assisted suicide practices in states with the oldest and largest programs. The 11 states that have legalized assisted suicide require clinicians to submit compliance forms shortly after the “patient’s” death. But the chaotic assisted-suicide bureaucracy rarely follows regulations, and clinicians put people to death with little to no oversight.

Between 2009 and 2023, 515 compliance forms and 293 “written request” documents were missing in the state of Washington. In all, one-third of the state’s assisted suicides were improperly reported. In Colorado, which passed its End of Life Options Act in 2016, almost 1,800 compliance forms are missing. And in New Mexico, where annual compliance reporting is also required by law, there has not been a single report issued since assisted suicide was enacted in 2021. For years, the state’s website suggested that a report was “coming soon,” but state officials quietly removed that promise from its website this summer....

Disturbingly, there have been no suspensions or revocations of clinician licenses connected with these irregularities.

Safety Regulations

Dear Seattle Neighbors,

This week I met with our colleagues in the Mayor’s office to learn more about how the city is working to enforce the new safety regulations for after-hours venues operating between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m. 

As the District 2 community is all-too-aware, these after-hours lounges have been magnets for gun violence, including the double-murder in March of this year at Capri Lounge; an unregulated venue that formerly operated in Rainier Beach.  

Newly passed laws create the regulatory structure needed to set and enforce rules to help make these environments less conducive to gun violence. This year, the City passed two key pieces of legislation to address violence at after-hours venues: ...

Teen Girl Faces Probe for ‘Misgendering’ Male Basketball Player

Frances Staudt is a sophomore in the Tumwater School District. During warmups she realized that a player on the opposing team happened to be a boy.

She alerted her coach and was told there was nothing they could do because state polices ban gender identity-based discrimination.

Frances withdrew from the game and was forced to watch from the sidelines. Watch my interview with Frances and her mother below.

“I should not have to give up everything that me and other girls have worked for just to let a boy play,” Frances told me. “And it is unsafe. Boys and girls are different on many levels of reasons, and they’re created differently. And so it’s an unsafe advantage. And that is not right.”