Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate

Walk into a room where seemingly half the people present are running for office and the other half are advocates committed to holding them accountable after they’ve been elected, and you get a very particular kind of energy. That was last Saturday night at NPI’s eighteenth Spring Fundraising Gala in Bellevue. The banqueting room was buzzing and filled with a sense of purpose.

There’s a particular genre of museum exhibit that lingers with you longer than expected. Its the kind that presents fragments of letters, recorded testimony, and official documents, inviting visitors to sit with the voices of people who lived through catastrophe. Not spectacle, not heroics, but the slow accumulation of decisions that built systems of violence. The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History by Laurence Rees feels like walking through one of those galleries.

Rees’ recently published work outlines recurring warning signs that preceded the Nazi seizure of power: the spread of conspiracy theories, the cultivation of an “us versus them” mentality, the creation of scapegoats, and the steady erosion of democratic norms.

Kaylee Kuehn, a Sequim educator and community advocate, has launched a campaign for State House Position 2 in Washington’s 24th Legislative District, which includes Clallam County, Jefferson County, and northern Grays Harbor County. Her campaign centers on affordability, education, and what she describes as pragmatic governance, entering a race likely to focus on cost of living, healthcare access, and the long-term sustainability of rural communities on the Olympic Peninsula.

I joined the No Kings protest in Fort Worth, Texas on March 28th, 2026. While final attendance numbers are still being verified, this downtown Cowtown gathering was one of more than 3,300 rallies reported across the United States.

The week’s major votes included House passage of legislation to give DHS and ICE more money (which doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate) and the Senate’s rejection of amendments to Republicans’ Voter Elimination Act due a Democratic filibuster.

Link light rail is operational across Lake Washington! After decades of debate, votes on statewide and regional ballot measures, repeated rounds of public outreach, trailblazing engineering, and the fallout from a global financial crisis and worldwide pandemic, Sound Transit finally completed the last of its Phase II projects today with the grand opening of the 2 Line’s Crosslake Connection.

Tens of thousands of Washingtonians flooded Cal Anderson Park and marched to Seattle Center for the third No Kings rally today on a mostly sunny Saturday afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, demonstrating that the movement to defend America from authoritarianism remains committed to the cause of keeping the Republic.

Kritzer, a Redmond City Councilmember who has served for several years as one of seven at-large local legislators in NPI’s hometown, is running for Position #2 in the Washington State House of Representatives.

The week’s major votes included House passage of multiple Republican messaging bills on immigration and the Senate’s rejection of a motion to discharge a resolution to end Trump’s unconstitutional war of choice with Iran from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.