Independent journalist Nick Sortor has handed Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District) an ultimatum: tell voters where you've been, or he'll do it for you.

Talarico, the Democrat Party's nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, went two weeks without an in-person campaign event in Texas, with the general election less than a month away. His campaign claimed he was recovering from the flu, but that explanation didn't hold up.

Now Sortor and Rhein Amacher have put a clock on it. The pair publicly gave Talarico until 1 p.m. E.T. to explain his absence from the trail, and they say they'll release the details themselves if he doesn't.

Talarico’s disappearing act prompted repeated calls for the campaign to provide "proof of life." Talarico has diabetes, which can complicate the flu, but the campaign never disclosed any such complication during his absence. The campaign also turned down Fox 7 Austin reporter Rudy Koski when the station offered a Zoom interview framed as a proof-of-life request, adding to the suspicion. After that, Talarico finally surfaced, turning up at the Austin City Limits (ACL) festival grounds in Austin to chat and pose for pictures with festival-goers for a mere 15 minutes while not taking any questions. That's a curious way to put two weeks of speculation to bed.

Last week, GOP strategist Caroline Wren said sources in Texas had given her a different story.

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"I'm hearing that he checked himself into a mental institution, that he had a full-blown mental breakdown sometime around, I guess, September 29th or September 30th," Wren said.

She wasn't alone. Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt reported hearing the same thing.

"My sources are telling me Talarico is in a mental health facility," Pratt wrote on X. "His campaign has stopped actively planning events in the vital homestretch of the campaign."

On Saturday, after Talarico's reemergence at ACL, Wren shared screenshots from a flight tracker app, arguing they backed up the story about the mental health facility.

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"What are the chances that a private plane took off from Austin and flew to tiny Hamilton airport in Ohio which is 20 mins from the Lindner Center, a private inpatient mental health treatment facility, and then turned around and flew back to Austin landing yesterday morning at 10:24am right before James Talarico magically reappears at the Austin City Limits music festival that afternoon?" Wren wrote on X. "Lindner Center also happens to be the same facility that Talarico's good friend and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo spent 7 weeks in when she had a mental breakdown 3 years ago… So many coincidences!"

In addition to that connection to the center, Wren also pointed out that the Lindner Center of Hope promotes drag queens on its social media.

Pratt followed up on Saturday, explaining that the Talarico campaign's handling of its candidate’s disappearance raises troubling questions because campaigns manage perceptions very carefully.

“Every word. Every image. Every debate quip. Everything, down to the color of the font you choose, is calculated to invoke a specific feeling, and most of the time, it's easy to decipher what the campaign is trying to convey with these choices, and that is the goal,” he explained in a post on X. “So if you find yourself confused by something happening in a campaign, and you're thinking ‘why would they do that?’…like…'how the hell could they think going radio silent for 2 weeks is a good idea in the closing weeks of a campaign?’ They don't think it's a good idea. It's because the alternative is so much worse. If you think going radio silent and getting TORCHED online for over a week in the closing month of a $400M campaign is bad...just imagine how bad the real story was.”

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So far, nobody has confirmed any of this. A flight path is circumstantial, the sources are anonymous, and the campaign's official answer is still the flu. Talarico could end the guessing game in about 30 seconds, but so far he's chosen to let other people fill in the blanks.

It's not clear how Sortor knows where Talarico really was, or if he’s got fresh evidence that is not circumstantial and that confirms the story, but we’ll be monitoring this development.