“What I am is the center of the resistance,” Brian Heywood said in an interview in early April. He is a prominent businessman and the founder of Let’s Go Washington, a direct democracy group. It creates petitions and gathers signatures to put issues on the ballot for a direct vote by Evergreen State residents.

One of the things Heywood is figuring out how to resist, this time, is a newly passed Washington state tax that Democrats in the state legislature have dubbed the millionaires tax. “In the simplest terms … [it] is a 9.9% tax on households earning over $1 million per year,” the state Senate Democrats explained in a fact sheet. It would go into effect in 2028 and be collected in 2029.