The Scarlett H

Maryland Republican once proposed tattooing people with HIV. Thanks to a judge appointed by Clinton, he is leading in the race for a Congress seat.

This article was updated on November 9, 2022.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlett Letter, a woman in puritan New England who births a child out of wedlock faces prosecution. She is sentenced to prison, and has to wear a scarlett “A” on her clothing and stand on a public scaffold for three hours a day.

Neil Parrott, a far-right, extremist Republican state representative from Western Maryland…