1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The Fauci hearing was a show trial, not an oversight hearing, and you should say so publicly. Hauling an 85-year-old epidemiologist before Congress to be harangued with debunked claims about vaccines and hydroxychloroquine isn't accountability — it's a loyalty performance for a movement that has abandoned the concept of objective fact. This isn't ordinary political spin. When Trump tells 39 million Californians they experience blackouts every weekend — something every one of them can refute from their own experience — that's not a talking point. It's a test of submission. Orwell named this dynamic in his essay on the Spanish Civil War: totalitarianism wins when the Leader can declare an event never happened and followers comply. Republican members of Congress are now those followers, competing to applaud longest and question least. The real-world cost is not abstract. 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. Vaccine misinformation drove a meaningful share of those deaths. Measles is returning. Climate denial is locking us into economic backwardness while the rest of the world moves on. You have a platform and a responsibility to push back on this — not with both-sides hedging, but with the plain language the moment requires.