The 2025 session adjourned on Sunday, April 27th. In this final episode of The Speaker’s Scoop (until next January), Speaker Laurie Jinkins looks back on what she calls the most challenging session since her election to the Legislature 15 years ago. In the end, she says, the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate produced a balanced budget that centers education, housing, healthcare, mental health, public safety, jobs, and the basic needs of the people of Washington.

This week, Speaker Laurie Jinkins talks about opposite-house cutoff, five o'clock bills, conference committees, concurrences -- the hectic give and take that characterizes the final days of a legislative session.

This week, Speaker Jinkins talks about public health, including key legislation this session; notes that this is National Public Health Week; and reminisces about about her friend and mentor Mary Selecky, the giant of the state’s public-health efforts, who died this week.

This week, Speaker Jinkins talks about Opposite House cutoff, the next major turning point for the 2025 session. She also offers her thoughts on Speaker Emeritus Frank Chopp, her predecessor in the speakership, whose death two weeks ago sent shock waves through the Legislature and the state.

With a little over four weeks left to go in the session, Speaker Jinkins is thinking about the many steps that need to happen to get a final budget agreement, pass it in both chambers, and get it to the governor’s desk for signature.

This week, Speaker Laurie Jinkins is focused squarely on the Legislature's next, and biggest, task: crafting and passing an operating budget -- a moral document -- that exemplifies consistent Democratic values despite a yawning deficit.

It’s House of Origin Cutoff, an important deadline in the session, so Speaker Jinkins only had 56 seconds to chat with us.

Speaker Laurie Jinkins discusses the transition in Olympia to full-time floor action this week, and recounts her discussion with U.S. Sen. Patty Murray about the unprecedented threat posed by actions of the new federal administration.

It's great to be in the majority, and be able to pass good policies that help people thrive and move Washington forward. Democrats in the state legislature have gotten to do a lot of that over the past few years. But when there's a budget shortfall, like this year, it's also the majority that decides what gets cut from the state budget. This is not simply about numbers on a spreadsheet; it's about people and families that will be directly impacted.

In today's installment of The Speaker's Scoop, Speaker Jinkins talks about two hard deadlines legislators are facing -- policy cutoff and fiscal cutoff -- and the impact they have on the fate of bills. She also talks about every lawmaker's fear: the dead bill.