In November, Lucas Hartwell, a high school senior in Grand Blanc, Mich., noticed something strange about his school district’s newest board member. Amy Facchinello’s Twitter feed was full of apocalyptic images and skulls made of smoke. There were cryptic calls for fellow “patriots” and “digital soldiers” to join an uprising, and vows that nothing could “stop what is coming.” In the posts she shared, the COVID-19 pandemic was cast as a dark plot engineered by Bill Gates, while George Floyd’s killing was “exposed as deep state psyop.” Facchinello, elected that month, was now one of seven people in charge of shaping Hartwell’s education. After a few hours of research, Hartwell had a name for her bizarre ideas: QAnon.