June 29 Roundup: Issues that impact washington families

Being a parent is nonstop hard work, which makes following all the news happening in the city, state, and U.S. decision-making circles challenging. Here are highlights of Washington state political news for families from last week (June 23-29) and a hint at what’s up this week. I hope you will consider taking action – reaching out to those who represent you and your family in Congress and state offices — on the issues that impact families in our state.

OSPI makes a great move for young kids

Let’s start with some good news, something to give us a little hope for the future and a little pride in our state.

I’m talking about Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal’s decision last week to fund the Imagination Library of Washington.

In case you don’t know what that is, the state’s Imagination Library is the local arm of a magical program created by country music superstar and literacy advocate Dolly Parton to ensure that families worldwide have children’s books and other reading materials at home, even if they can’t afford to buy them.

The library mails a high-quality, age-appropriate book to all children registered to receive them. (Click here to enroll your child). Each book is addressed to the child. Parents simply register their child. There is never a charge to a family. While Washington kids have been receiving books since 2005, the state legislature expanded access to the library to all Washington kids from birth to age 5, creating a partnership between the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF).

Currently the program serves 120,000 children and operates in each of Washington’s 39 counties. Half of book costs are paid by program partners like United Way, The Seattle Reign FC, and The Puyallup Tribe of Indians. Until this year, the other half was funded by the state budget.

(Image: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Washington)

As lawmakers grappled with a $12 billion 2025-27 biennium budget shortfall this year, funding for early learning programs, including the Imagination Library, were cut. Reykdal plans to request funds for the library during the next legislative session, but says he’s not willing to let the program go until then:

“Washington’s youngest children cannot afford to have their opportunities for early learning cut to this extent,” Reykdal said in a statement. “The Imagination Library of Washington risks losing their effective statewide infrastructure if funding generated from the statewide match is halted for even one year. Through limited discretionary funds, my agency will keep this program funded for one more year with the goal being to obtain permanent funding from the legislature next session.”

Take action! Enroll your child in the Imagination Library of Washington. It’s easy and free. The library provides books in both English and Spanish.

Here we go again. No, Virginia, vaccines do not cause autism

We saw this coming, of course. We saw it as soon as U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy fired everyone on the national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with his vaccine-suspecting supporters. Among the new members is Lyn Redwood, a longtime vaccine misinformation spewer.

(For a good article on why this new panel is bad for America, check out “Why Vaccine Experts Are Worried About Changes at the C.D.C.”from The New York Times.)

Last week the committee convened, and on day one it voted to no longer recommend annual flu shots that contain the preservative thimerosal.

You remember thimerosal? It was the vaccine ingredient blamed for autism and a host of other neurological issues back in the 2000s—blame that has been thoroughly debunked by years of research. The truth is that thimerosal has been used in vaccines for nearly 100 years and has been found to be safe in trial after trial.

I am a mother of an autistic person, and while I know this would fall on Kennedy’s deaf ears, let me shout it from the rafters to any parent of a child recently diagnosed with autism: I have gone down the rabbit hole of why. I have read study after study. There is no link between autism and vaccination, with or without thimerosal. That theory was and continues to be a bunch of hooey.

The committee’s vote should concern all of us for this simple reason: Up to now, this federal advisory group has made decisions based on strong scientific evidence.

Last Wednesday, it did not.

With Kennedy at the helm, a lot of parents have told me they don’t know what government sources to trust on the issue of vaccine safety. So here are a few solid sources:

The World Health Organization offers a global perspective on vaccine effectiveness, safety monitoring, and disease elimination strategies.
Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) crafts clear, practical materials for both providers and the public that are well–sourced and frequently updated.
Vaccine Education Center (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) translates complex vaccine science into accessible information, including addressing vaccine mechanisms, myths, and risks. chop.edu/vaccine‑education
Public Health—Seattle and King County provides up-to-date information and guidance, including school requirements, outbreak alerts, and clinic access.

Trump administration joins fight against WA’s new child abuse reporting law

Seattle’s Catholic Archbishop Paul Etienne and other religious leaders are suing Washington over the state’s newly updated mandatory reporting law which, as of July 27, adds clergy members to the state’s list of people who must report suspected child abuse to law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

In the lawsuit, the clergy are arguing that the new law goes against the First Amendment. They say the law will force priests to break sacred vows and is tantamount to religious discrimination.

And now theTrump administration is joining the fight. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a suit against Washington over what it called “its new anti-Catholic law.” The federal case says the law is unconstitutional also along First Amendment religious freedom lines and would result in priests facing excommunication from the Church for reporting what is shared in the confessional. That case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown and the prosecuting attorney in each of Washington’s 39 counties are named as defendants.

Ferguson didn’t comment on the federal case, but according to a report in the Washington State Standard, Ferguson, a Catholic, said he was “disappointed my Church is filing a federal lawsuit to protect individuals who abuse kids.”

Sad, stupid move of the week: Federal plug pulled on LGBTQ+ suicide prevention service

Will his desire to hurt people who are hurting ever stop? Last week, President Donald Trump put hundreds of thousands of hurting people at even greater risk of killing themselves. How? He pulled the federal funding plug on The Trevor Project, which provides specialized support to LGBTQ+ callers to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

According to the administration, LGBTQ+ don’t need special care. Just one more arrow aimed at the rights and health of LGBTQ+ kids and adults. Earlier this year, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called The Trevor Project “a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents.”

The Trevor Project has vowed to continue to support LGBTQ+ considering suicide, despite the administration’s cutoff. “I want every LGBTQ+ young person to know that you are worthy, you are loved and you belong — despite this heartbreaking news,” Jaymes Black, its CEO, said in a statement. “The Trevor Project’s crisis counselors are here for you 24/7, just as we always have been.”

Although they don’t track calls by location, Trevor Project does provide detailed survey data on LGBTQ+ youth in Washington. In 2024, a survey of 625 LGBTQ+ young people (ages 13–24) in Washington found:

37% had seriously considered suicide in the past year
49% had anxiety
52% had depression
Nearly half of callers from Washington wanted mental health care but couldn’t access it.

Take action: Connect your struggling LGBTQ+ child with the support they need. Connect them with the Trevor Project.

Birthright citizenship fight: Supreme Court decision strengthens Trump’s powers

Washington is one of several states that filed a joint lawsuit to stop President Donald Trump’s executive order to stop states from giving U.S. citizenship to children born of undocumented immigrants. With a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, however, conferring such “birthright citizenship” would end in the 28 states not currently involved in challenging the order.

That’s because the court decision limits nationwide injunctions against executive orders—that is, the ability of federal judges to temporarily pause Trump’s executive orders while a legal case unfolds. The 6-to-3 decision was a major win for Trump.

The case filed by Washington state and others in January argues that the 14th Amendment bestows citizenship on every child born on U.S. soil. A Seattle judge hearing the case blocked Trump’s order nationwide in January, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Judges in Maryland and Massachusetts agreed. In their decision last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the judges had exceeded their authority.

In a statement, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown called the Supreme Court decision “disappointing.”

“But importantly, this morning’s order does not dispute the issue we handily won in the trial court — that President Trump’s attempt to strip birthright citizenship is unlawful and wrong,” Brown said. “In the case led by Washington state, the trial judge already ruled that nationwide relief is necessary to protect Washington and its co-plaintiffs from the harms from the executive order.”

If Trump’s order prevails, up to 4,000 babies born in Washington would lose their right to citizenship each year. That includes babies born to undocumented parents as well as babies born to mothers in the country legally but temporarily.

“We continue to believe that President Trump’s unconstitutional and cruel order must be stopped across the country to guarantee protection for Washington and its residents,” Brown said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a sharp dissent to the ruling:

The Trump administration “asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” Sotomayor wrote. “Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit. Shamefully, this Court plays along.” Read more in The Seattle Times.