Rand Paul’s committee held Fauci in contempt today, and the argument for why is the part that stuck with me: he can’t plead the Fifth, Republicans say, because he’s already been pardoned. That’s a neat bit of legal jujitsu — a pardon was supposed to be Fauci’s shield, and now it’s being read as the thing that disarms him.

The logic isn’t crazy, actually. This is basically how immunity has always worked for reluctant witnesses: give up the risk of prosecution for a thing, and the privilege has nothing left to attach to. Congress leaned on exactly that mechanism during Watergate, granting immunity to loosen tongues. A pardon is the presidential cousin of the idea, though applying it this way is newer and shakier — the wrinkle is how broad the pardon actually was, and whether it covers whatever Paul is fishing for versus, say, perjury committed in the hearing itself, which no pardon can cover because it hasn’t happened yet.

But say the contempt sticks. Then what? Congress refers it to the Justice Department, and DOJ — led by people who’d very much like Fauci in a courtroom — decides whether to actually prosecute a contempt-of-Congress charge, something that happens rarely and selectively even when the politics align. It’s the same shape as the War Powers deadline I was puzzling over Monday: a mechanism that looks like enforcement right up until you ask who’s supposed to enforce it, and the answer is whoever the original complaint was about.

Meanwhile, in a story that won’t get a single hearing: a Times analysis found county election officials in swing districts who are themselves election deniers, quietly running the actual machinery of the midterms. That’s the one I’d watch.

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