Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has issued a subpoena compelling former top federal health official Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify before Congress, escalating a yearslong clash over the origins of COVID-19 and the government’s pandemic response. Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the subpoena became necessary after Fauci declined to appear voluntarily—despite previously agreeing to testify. “Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us that he will not voluntarily testify,” Paul said on X. “Therefore, today I have issued a subpoena requiring him to testify before the Committee.” Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is expected to appear before the panel in July. Showdown Over Pandemic Accountability The subpoena marks a major escalation in the ongoing battle between Fauci and Republican lawmakers, who have pressed for answers about federal funding for virus research and early handling of COVID-19. Paul said he reached his “breaking point” after months of negotiations and delays. “He agreed, then he said he wouldn’t,” Paul said, adding that the committee had been seeking information for months. The Kentucky senator has indicated he plans to question Fauci on a range of issues, including: federal funding connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whether gain-of-function research was supported with U.S. taxpayer dollars, and Fauci’s prior testimony to Congress. “There are 120 secret U.S.-funded biolabs in 30 countries,” Paul wrote on X. “Anyone who tried to expose these foreign gain-of-function labs was threatened and silenced by the Biden administration and Fauci. This level of secrecy and intimidation should concern every American.” New Documents Fuel Controversy The subpoena follows the recent release of declassified materials by former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which she said raise serious questions about Fauci’s role in shaping the government’s understanding of the virus. During the pandemic, suspicion about the origin of the virus, as well as the government’s involvement in it, arose among lawmakers, the scientific community, critics, and political figures in the United States. However, those same critics claimed their voices were suppressed through intimidation, legal repercussions, or censorship. While those claims were long denied by Fauci, the administration of former President Joe Biden, and other public figures, the new documents released by Gabbard accuse Fauci of directing “millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins.” Paul also accused Fauci of lying to Congress while under oath in 2024.Now, the documents have led to intensified calls from Republican lawmakers for further investigation and public testimony. Broader Debate Over COVID Origin The question of how COVID-19 began remains unresolved, with U.S. intelligence agencies divided between competing theories, including a natural origin and a possible lab-related incident. According to Paul, under Fauci’s discretion, the National Institutes of Health directed millions of taxpayer dollars and colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to develop artificial labs to manufacture an epidemic virus. Fauci has contradicted the claims numerous times, consistently saying early evidence pointed toward a natural origin of COVID-19, while critics have argued that alternative theories were downplayed during the pandemic. He also sparred with Paul over whether what he was funding qualified as “gain-of-function” research. The upcoming testimony could bring those competing narratives into direct confrontation under oath. Pardon Adds Legal Layer Complicating matters is a preemptive pardon issued by former President Joe Biden in January 2025 to Fauci, along with several other public officials. Biden said at the time the pardons were intended to protect public servants from politically motivated prosecutions and “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment” of wrongdoing. However, Paul has verbally challenged the pardon, claiming that “Biden’s pardon of Fauci is unconstitutionally vague, covers 10 years of potential crimes, and was signed by autopen without Biden’s direct authorization.” “You can’t pardon someone for crimes never specified. This should be challenged in court.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Pro-life doctors are urging the Food and Drug Administration to reinstate abortion pill guardrails stripped during the Biden administration. Four years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion rates are higher than ever because these safeguards are no longer in place. It’s not just babies dying from abortions; mothers’ lives are at risk from the FDA-approved abortion pill mifepristone. In a letter obtained by The Daily Signal, four doctors, representing tens of thousands of pro-life medical professionals from across the country, urge Acting Commissioner of the FDA Kyle Diamantas to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement once needed to get a prescription for the abortion pill. During COVID, the Biden administration stripped this requirement, leading to a “public health crisis.” 2026.06 FDA medical organizations letterDownload New data shows that serious complication rates are far higher than previously disclosed on FDA labeling. Life-threatening complications include hemorrhage, sepsis, and incomplete abortions requiring surgical intervention. “We are grateful to see a full safety review has been launched, and simultaneously with this review being conducted, ask that the in-person dispensing requirement be immediately reinstated,” reads the letter. “With your ascendence into the role of Acting Commissioner of the FDA, we urge you to protect American women and undo the FDA’s previous devastating actions.” Diamantas has received support from pro-life groups. Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins told The Daily Signal that Diamantas promised he will be the “most pro-life FDA commissioner that the FDA has ever had.” Within hours of his recent FDA appointment, he called Live Action President Lila Rose and told her “reviewing the abortion pill is a top priority for him and the administration,” Rose said on X. He was appointed over a month ago but has made little news on the promise. The letter continues, asking Diamantas to require doctors report all “adverse events” of mifepristone, include a comprehensive evaluation of real-world safety data in the safety review of the drug, ensure the safety review is unbiased, and require ultrasounds to confirm gestational age. BREAKING: OB/GYN and CEO of AAPLOG Dr. Christina Francis goes undercover for the first time to see all the medical risks associated with ordering abortion pills. The results shocked even us. No oversight. No verification. No medical professionals seemingly involved.… pic.twitter.com/gxT3ac3ZeA— AAPLOG (@aaplog) March 11, 2026 Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), recently released an exposé video revealing the medical risks of ordering abortion pills online and the medical risks that follow. She says that they “found no medical oversight whatsoever.” According to the letter, signed by Francis; Dr. Greg Burke, the vice president of the Catholic Medical Association; Dr. Mike Chupp, CEO of the Christian Medical and Dental Association; and Dr. Mike Artigues, president of the American College of Pediatricians, mifepristone is a life-threatening drug that often causes serious complications. Did you know the abortion pill can be reversed?Catherine's husband poisoned her using mail-order abortion pills, but abortion pill reversal saved her baby's life.@aaplog's @DrFrancis4Life explains how."Progesterone has been used by obstetricians for over five decades…… pic.twitter.com/zfg6oOHl7H— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) June 23, 2026 Between 2017 and 2023, more than 860,000 adverse events came after 45 days of using mifepristone. Of the adverse events, more than 10% experienced severe complications, including infection, hemorrhage, surgical intervention, or undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. Based on their research, and the lack of safety reviews conducted on mifepristone, the risks surrounding the “safer than Tylenol” drug are 22 times higher than previously disclosed. “Such blatant disregard for the health and safety of women and willful ignorance of what is occurring in emergency departments across the country undermines informed consent and public trust,” reads the letter. “Claims that mifepristone is ‘safer than Tylenol’ are not only scientifically unfounded but also violate FDA guidelines on comparative safety claims.”

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to give every American a property right in their own face and voice. The same vote handed anyone who holds that right a fast, cheap way to make online content disappear. That happened when the committee advanced the NO FAKES Act of 2026 on a voice vote and sent it to the full Senate. This a federal system for deleting speech on request, backed by fines large enough that platforms will delete first and ask questions never. A “right holder” tells a platform that some video, image, or audio clip is an “unauthorized digital replica” of a real person, and the platform is left with two options. It can pull the content fast, or it can gamble on a fine of up to $750,000 per work if a court later rules the replica was unauthorized. For a company fielding millions of uploads a day, the math isn’t close, so the content comes down. Pulling a clip once isn’t the end of the platform’s obligation. After it processes a single notice, the bill requires it to block every future upload that matches the same “digital fingerprint,” a cryptographic hash of the flagged file. The platform has to keep deleting, automatically, with no person checking why. A clip tagged as an unauthorized replica stays dead even when the next person posting it has a solid defense. The bill insists it imposes no duty to monitor. Screening every upload against a stored hash is that duty, whatever the bill calls it. The defenses do exist, at least on paper. News, sports, documentary, biography, commentary, criticism, scholarship, satire, and parody all get written exemptions. The catch, though, is timing. A takedown lands before anyone weighs whether your clip qualifies as any of them, so you get your speech back only by fighting for it, and the bill prices that fight on purpose. Contesting a takedown means filing a counter-notification and the bill spells out what that costs you. The document has to carry “a physical signature, witnessed or attested to in person by a licensed notary public.” You also agree to be sued in federal court and to accept service of process. Anonymous speech has carried First Amendment protection since the Founders passed around unsigned pamphlets. This bill doesn’t repeal that protection but it makes you walk into a notary’s office and put your real name on the record before you can argue your post was lawful. Then there’s Section (f), the part that turns a takedown into an unmasking. A right holder can ask a court clerk, not a judge, to issue a subpoena identifying whoever posted the flagged material. The clerk “shall expeditiously issue and sign” it once the paperwork is in order. No judge weighs whether the underlying claim holds up and no hearing happens. Send the notice, file the form, and the platform has to hand over whatever it knows about who you are. The accusation alone pries your identity loose. Labeling the work honestly gives you nothing either. The bill says it “shall not be a defense” that you marked the content as AI-generated or flagged it as unauthorized. Admitting the fakery up front buys no cover. The power to send these notices reaches well past the person depicted. A right holder includes heirs, executors, licensees, and the record labels that hold exclusive contracts with an artist. The right survives death, passes to your estate, and runs as long as 70 years after you’re gone. An estate, or a label, gets most of a century of control over how a dead performer’s voice and face may be shown. The takedown notice becomes an inheritance. The committee passed the bill without a single no vote and several members made clear they weren’t comfortable. Senators Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Eric Schmitt flagged First Amendment problems and voted yes regardless. “The legislation as drafted now raises some potentially significant concerns regarding free speech,” Lee said. “We do need to ensure that in protecting content creators’ rights, we don’t inadvertently chill free speech or undermine long-standing First Amendment principles.” Cruz reached for a concrete example, pointing to Spencer Pratt’s recent run for mayor of Los Angeles, where the reality star ran attack ads built on AI-generated images of Mayor Karen Bass. Cruz said he wanted to protect “satire, which is an important part of speech,” and described Pratt’s videos as “hysterical, and I think are a good example of what should be protected and not fall within a bill like this.” Voting for the bill while naming the speech it threatens is a strange way to defend that speech. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who led a bipartisan group of fifteen, framed the bill as overdue. “I’ve always said that America needs one set of rules for AI, and NO FAKES is a critical component of that rulebook,” Blackburn said. The bill borrows from Tennessee’s 2024 ELVIS Act, which built a similar voice-and-likeness right with a provision protecting record labels’ contracts. SAG-AFTRA gathered more than 16,000 signatures for it. The RIAA, the Motion Picture Association, OpenAI, and Google-owned YouTube lined up behind it too. The Trump administration signaled approval in a March policy document on AI that recommended this exact kind of likeness protection. When the entertainment lobby, the AI companies, and the White House all want the same takedown regime, the people most likely to get silenced are the ones with no lobbyist in the room. The bill now heads to the Senate floor with the coalition intact and the unmasking subpoena, the notarized counter-notice, and the automatic fingerprint blocking still in the text. The floor can strip those out. Until it does, the system deletes on accusation and charges you for the right to speak again. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post NO FAKES Act Clears Senate Committee: Delete First, Ask Never appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a $55.9 billion budget in the last week, with a tax on publishers of the kind the Supreme Court has been striking down for close to ninety years. The state will now bill companies according to the size of the audience they reach. Planted in 1,600 pages of spending law sits a “social media platform fee,” a monthly charge pegged to “the number of Illinois users from whom the social media platform collects data within a month.” Illinois will charge platforms for hosting speech and, the bigger the audience, the bigger the bill. We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.  Pritzker expects the levy to bring in roughly $200 million. He told reporters he feels “much more confident about the social media platform fee” surviving court than the budget’s other contested levies on digital ads, crypto, and prediction markets. Lawmakers aren’t even counting on revenue from those. That confidence is misplaced and the governor supplied the reason himself. Defending the tax, Pritzker said it “requires companies to pay for the mental health and educational degradation they’ve caused.” By the governor’s own account, the state is charging platforms for the effects of the speech they carry. When a government picks out one class of speakers and bills them for what their speech does to the public, it has created a lever over expression. Taxing publishers because they are publishers is one of the oldest tools a state has used against the press, going back to the 1765 Stamp Act on pamphlets and newspapers that helped light the fuse for the Revolution. The Supreme Court has knocked down the modern descendants again and again, voiding a Louisiana levy on large-circulation papers in Grosjean, a Minnesota ink-and-paper tax in Minneapolis Star, and an Arkansas scheme in Ragland that taxed some publications while exempting others. In 2024’s Moody v. NetChoice, the justices confirmed that platforms curating user content are doing First Amendment-protected work. A state can tax income, it can tax profits, but it cannot build a tax that targets speakers for their speech. Who gets caught in this depends on how loosely you read “social media platform,” and Illinois reads it very loosely. The charge scales with users, so it bites hardest on services that carry big audiences on thin margins. Then there’s the question the law never answers. What counts as a “user”? Reddit and similar sites work fine without an account, which leaves it unclear whether a reader counts at all. Chicago already ran this experiment. The city imposed its own per-user social media tax, and NetChoice sued in March to block it. The state copied the structure and changed the scale. The same constitutional defects came along for the ride. Pritzker wanted the tax to be read as a bill for harm. He may have drafted the plaintiffs’ opening brief instead. A government that can charge you for the effects of what you publish has already decided it gets to weigh what you publish, and from there it is a short walk to deciding some publishers owe more than others. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Pritzker’s Social Media Tax: A $200 Million Bet Against the First Amendment appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Oil Is Flowing Out of the Gulf. Everything Else Is Up in the Air

Scrubbed: Talarico Boldly Memory-Holes Trans Advocacy, 'Progressive Ideas'

A new study shows that the answer is CHA_S.

Death by red giant may not be the way our planet goes kaput, but it still won't be a nice time to live on the surface.

It was progressive buzzword bingo night on PBS during Monday’s Amanpour and Company as host Bianna Golodryga welcomed environmental activist and director Josh Fox to promote his new HBO documentary. According to Fox, it is fascist to oppose the mass admittance of “climate refugees” into the U.S. and the developed world should pay reparations for colonialism, which is also to blame for climate change. Unfortunately for PBS, a lot of what Fox said was simply wrong. Golodryga set Fox up by wondering, “You go to South America, you go to Brazil, you go to Europe and Italy, where your family originally hails from. But you start the piece with a family who was impacted by the Paradise fires in California. They were displaced in 2018. Why open with their story, and what did you learn from them?”   Director Josh Fox stopped by PBS to promote his new climate change documentary and play some Liberal Buzzword Bingo, "What's home going to be on a planet that is ravaged by climate change? With, you know, a third of the planet on the move, what does the future look like? How do… pic.twitter.com/OG5YYIwSUt — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) June 23, 2026   Fox lamented that, “American cities are being destroyed by climate change faster than they can be rebuilt. There is very little stability in the future when we think about climate change. So, the American dream is burning at people's feet. And that was one of the first interviews that I did. And I wanted to redefine what it meant to be a climate refugee, to be a climate survivor. A lot of people don't think of those Californian Americans with children who have lost everything as climate refugees. But we have to redefine everyone.” He added, “I mean, right now we're talking about some estimates saying one out of every three people will lose their homes due to climate change, which means that either we're going to be on the move ourselves or we're going to be tasked with welcoming those who are.” That’s not quite accurate. Some studies claim that many Americans are at risk, which is very different than saying they will definitely lose their homes. Of course, when you redefine every wildfire, hurricane, flood, and other natural disaster as being the result of climate change, it is easy to get an eyebrow-raising number. Nevertheless, Fox continued, “So, the question became, where is home? What's home going to be on a planet that is ravaged by climate change? With, you know, a third of the planet on the move, what does the future look like? How do we start to redefine what it is to be human?” Answering his own question, he claimed: And certainly, the response of these fascist governments is to wall people out or to incarcerate them, to abuse them, to detain them, to torture them. And that can't be the answer for billions of people. So, when we look to the future, we have to ask, what future do we want, a future of that kind of hatred and violence or a future of generosity and sharing and togetherness and collaboration, which can often be the answer to a crisis, right?... And we have to start to think about what will we do to counteract this, to stem this tide of hatred that is coming at migrants. I mean, there's an age-old relationship between fascists and the hatred of immigrants.” He further asserted, “I wanted to do with this film is show the stories of people who are normally portrayed as being wrestled to the ground by ICE. We don't hear those stories. We don't see those stories. But these are the people in this film. Any one of us could be subject to those conditions. And, you know, our human reaction has to be to come together and work together or else the future is madness. So, that's what this film is about.” Later, Fox turned his ire on the West more broadly, “And certainly, when we think about the broader global picture, right, it's the countries of the Global South who are not responsible for climate change, right? They're not burning a lot of coal, oil, or gas. They are the victims of centuries of colonialism and empire. And it is the Global North which is doing all the damage to the climate.”   Later, Fox endorses climate reparations, although he doesn't use that word, "And certainly, when we think about the broader global picture, right, it's the countries of the Global South who are not responsible for climate change, right? They're not burning a lot of coal, oil, or… pic.twitter.com/r7AB09AKBD — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) June 23, 2026   That is simply not true. There is no correlation between a countries CO2 emissions and it being in “the Global North” or “Global South.” The Middle East is considered the Global South, and they produce all sorts of oil. Furthermore, developing countries aren’t going to refuse to power their economies just so Fox can feel good about himself. Then there are China and India, two large CO2 emitters that are also considered part of the Global South. Using a euphemistic term for reparations, Fox added, “So, a big question in this film and what we advocate in the film is for a loss and damage fund, for responsibility coming from the Global North, which certainly would mean to welcome the victims of this crisis, you know, rather than treat them inhumanely. But it was so important to me to find those human moments as a documentarian that are cinema, that are telling that human story.” It is not credible to claim that the reason why people are in the U.S. illegally is because they are escaping climate change. PBS can’t simply use buzzwords like “fascist,” “colonialism,” and “climate refugees” as a substitute for substance. Here is a transcript for the June 22 show: PBS Amanpour and Company 6/22/2026 BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And in filming this piece, you travel around the world. You go to South America, you go to Brazil, you go to Europe and Italy, where your family originally hails from. But you start the piece with a family who was impacted by the Paradise fires in California. They were displaced in 2018. Why open with their story, and what did you learn from them? JOSH FOX: Well, there's a very, very long arc of this movie across six or seven years. Of course, we had to take a break during COVID. But, you know, a lot of Americans are losing their homes. American cities are being destroyed by climate change faster than they can be rebuilt. There is very little stability in the future when we think about climate change. So, the American dream is burning at people's feet. And that was one of the first interviews that I did. And I wanted to redefine what it meant to be a climate refugee, to be a climate survivor. A lot of people don't think of those Californian Americans with children who have lost everything as climate refugees. But we have to redefine everyone. I mean, right now we're talking about some estimates saying one out of every three people will lose their homes due to climate change, which means that either we're going to be on the move ourselves or we're going to be tasked with welcoming those who are. So, in terms of the fires in California, I mean, the hurricanes in the South, certainly the things that we're seeing in the Northeast in terms of incredible climate impacts, there is no geographical answer to where will I be safe? So, the question became, where is home? What's home going to be on a planet that is ravaged by climate change? With, you know, a third of the planet on the move, what does the future look like? How do we start to redefine what it is to be human? And certainly, the response of these fascist governments is to wall people out or to incarcerate them, to abuse them, to detain them, to torture them. And that can't be the answer for billions of people. So, when we look to the future, we have to ask, what future do we want, a future of that kind of hatred and violence or a future of generosity and sharing and togetherness and collaboration, which can often be the answer to a crisis, right? The climate crisis is here. It's here now. This movie is documenting it all across the world, whether it's fires or floods or famine or extreme weather or landslides. These impacts are happening to us now. They're happening in real time, and people are being displaced everywhere across the planet, whether that's Australia or that's Europe or it's the United States. And we have to start to think about what will we do to counteract this, to stem this tide of hatred that is coming at migrants. I mean, there's an age-old relationship between fascists and the hatred of immigrants. GOLODRYGA: Yeah. FOX: And, you know, what I wanted to do with this film is show the stories of people who are normally portrayed as being wrestled to the ground by ICE. We don't hear those stories. We don't see those stories. But these are the people in this film. Any one of us could be subject to those conditions. And, you know, our human reaction has to be to come together and work together or else the future is madness. So, that's what this film is about. … FOX: And certainly, when we think about the broader global picture, right, it's the countries of the Global South who are not responsible for climate change, right? They're not burning a lot of coal, oil, or gas. They are the victims of centuries of colonialism and empire. And it is the Global North which is doing all the damage to the climate. So, a big question in this film and what we advocate in the film is for a loss and damage fund, for responsibility coming from the Global North, which certainly would mean to welcome the victims of this crisis, you know, rather than treat them inhumanely. But it was so important to me to find those human moments as a documentarian that are cinema, that are telling that human story.

It is fortunate that the 12th Congressional District of New York has among the highest number of mental health professionals per capita in the USA. Their services will be sorely needed as revealed by New Yorker editorial staffer Naaman Zhou on Monday in "The NY-12 Primary Is Awash with Money but Short on Belief." Short on belief? After reading what Zhou has to say about two of the better known congressional candidates, the eternally TDS George Conway and social media goofball Jack Kennedy Schlossberg, it is more than obvious that the race is also short on mental health. First Zhou attended what sounds like a therapy session with Conway who appears to be completely obsessed by You-Know-Who 24/7. I recently went to a dive bar on the Upper West Side to attend a happy-hour event with Conway, the former Republican. Staffers handed out bright-blue drink tickets as the candidate, wearing a blue business shirt tucked into jeans, walked in with his dog, a corgi named Clyde. Conway is sixty-two and has brought a kind of sniper’s focus to the race: he has vowed to serve only one term, impeach Trump, and then retire. Conway tried to come up with an issue other than Trump but quickly relapsed back to obsessing about his personal White Whale. When asked about the most important issue facing New York City today, he said, “Affordability,” yet this, too, was connected to Trump. “How do you spend a billion dollars on a ballroom?” Conway asked. “It’s insane. We spent all this money to refurbish this 747 he got from Qatar.” However, as far gone as Conway appears in mental stability he seems to have strong competition in the lack of sanity department from JFK's grandson, Jack Kennedy Schlossberg whose bloated narcissism could be more inflated than Conway's TDS: Schlossberg was the hardest candidate to get a hold of. Perhaps in a nod to the demographics of the district, the candidate, who is thirty-three, has said that he has “the soul of an eighty-five-year-old man, who loves to read and listen to music and hang out with his parents.” In a speech at an assisted-living facility in March, Schlossberg summed up his campaign as being about “past, present, and future.” In the past, he said, people “believed in the federal government, and Congress was competent.” He was the future. His main strength, Schlossberg argues, is not his family but his wit. Before launching his bid for Congress, he made popular social-media videos that were edgy, attention-grabbing, and deeply ironic, with a somewhat himbo persona. (On the way to one campaign event, I looked at my phone to see that Schlossberg had tweeted, with no apparent context, “Men are becoming less physically attractive according to recent studies . . . Do you agree ?”) He has framed this as a form of pro-Democratic political communication, seizing the airwaves from Republicans and Trump. Late in the campaign, I spoke with Schlossberg for a few minutes before he kicked off a rally at Terminal 5, a cavernous venue in Hell’s Kitchen. He told me that he was perhaps unique in the ability to distill information with humor. “In a way,” he said, “other people can’t do both of those things.” I asked him, did he mean the other people in the primary? He told me, “In the whole world.” (He later clarified that he was only being “half serious.”) Apparently Schlossberg thinks so highly of himself that he expects the nomination to be handed to him on a silver platter without even having to work much for it as Zhou explains about an event that the other candidates including Schlossberg planned to attend: A few weeks before Election Day, I was invited by the Schlossberg team to join him as he campaigned at a local park on Roosevelt Island, the easternmost point of the district. It was Roosevelt Island Day—an annual celebration of the island—and around me children screamed and jumped in a bounce house shaped like the Roosevelt Island tram. A little while later... Schlossberg, a campaign staffer told me eventually, had been held up and wasn’t going to make it. The good news is that George Conway, along with other candidates, were able to make it to the event with Conway gleefully engaging in his favorite obsession: One stall at the festival, run by a local Democratic club, featured an “Impeach-O-Wheel”—a gag pinwheel with the faces of Trump officials who should be impeached. A volunteer at the stall told me that Conway had stood at the table and spun it “twenty to thirty times.” Mental health cleanup in NY CD-12! Thank you, Naaman Zhou, for shining a light on the insanity whether you meant to or not.