Let's Go Washington, the backers of the 2024 initiatives, is looking for signatures again.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Let's Go Washington is back in the initiative game.
The organization, founded by Brian Heywood, sponsored several initiatives in 2024 changing state law.
Heywood announced Monday signatures are being gathered to submit two initiatives to the 2026 state Legislature or potentially voters. The initiatives relate to parental rights and trans youth athletes.
Heywood's organization achieved significant victories last year when voters supported initiatives restricting natural gas use and overturning state laws limiting police pursuits. The state Legislature also passed Let's Go Washington-backed measures banning income taxes and guaranteeing parental rights to access school records. The success came after Heywood invested more than $5 million of his own money into seven initiatives.
"Someone has to stand up and fight back. And what I think I've done is given the voice. I've given voice to 1.2 million people who signed at least one of our initiatives," Heywood said.
However, the organization faced a setback earlier this year when Gov. Bob Ferguson signed legislation overhauling the "parents bill of rights" initiative.
"It stripped all the parts about parental notification or parental access to information," Heywood said.
In response, Let's Go Washington is now gathering signatures for two new campaigns. The first seeks to overturn Ferguson's recent law, restoring their original parental rights initiative. The second would require physicians to assign genders to youth athletes during physicals, prohibiting those considered males from competing against females.
"Allowing biological males to compete in girls sports is a blatant, a flagrant violation of Title IX, I would argue, and also extremely unfair to girls who've worked really hard to get in a position to be top athletes," Heywood said.
Despite failing to pass initiatives targeting the state's climate law, long-term care savings program, and capital gains tax in 2024, Heywood remains optimistic about his organization's impact.
"Four out of seven, I'm pretty, pretty happy with what we did, and we're not done," he said.
If the organization can collect enough signatures by the end of the year, the issues would be submitted to the state Legislature. Lawmakers could either pass the initiatives or let voters decide in November 2026.
Experts say the decision marks the first time such techniques are allowed as evidence in a New York court — and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A New York judge on Wednesday allowed DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques into the forthcoming murder trial of Long Island’s suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei made the decision Wednesday but didn't explain the ruling at a brief hearing in Riverhead court in the case against Rex Heuermann.
He set another court date of Sept. 23, noting the defense has notified the court that it intends to file another motion in the case, before adjourning.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said simply “we won.” He was expected to address reporters later.
The 61-year-old Manhattan architect has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993.
Most of the women were sex workers whose remains were discovered along an isolated parkway not far from Gilgo Beach and Heuermann’s home in Massapequa.
Experts say the decision marks the first time such techniques are allowed as evidence in a New York court — and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide.
Mazzei’s decision pertained to DNA analysis generated by Astrea Forensics, a California lab known for using new techniques to analyze old, highly degraded DNA samples.
Prosecutors say Astrea’s whole genome sequencing analysis, combined with other evidence, overwhelmingly implicates Heuermann as the killer in the brutal deaths that have haunted the New York City suburb for years.
But Heuermann’s lawyers argued the lab’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs recovered from the burial sites match their client’s DNA.
They complained the statistical analysis Astrea conducted was improperly based on the 1,000 Genomes Project, an open-source database containing the full DNA sequence of some 2,500 people worldwide.
Prosecutors dismissed the critique as “misguided” and a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the lab’s methods.
They also noted that a separate DNA analysis, completed by another crime lab using traditional methods long accepted in New York courts, also convincingly link hairs found on some victims to either Heuermann or members of his family.
Heuermann was arrested more than two years ago but has yet to be given a trial date as he remains in custody in Riverhead.
Whole genome sequencing allows scientists to map out the entire genetic sequence, or genome, of a person using the slimmest of DNA material.
While it is relatively rare in criminal forensics, the technique has been used in a wide range of scientific and medical breakthroughs for years, including the mapping of the Neanderthal genome that earned a Nobel Prize in 2022.
Prosecutors and experts say whole genome sequencing has the potential to allow researchers to generate a DNA profile of a suspect in instances where long accepted DNA techniques fall short, such as when a sample is very old or highly degraded, as is the case with the hair fragments found on the Gilgo Beach victims.
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