From the Gaza Flotilla to a Chamber Banishment

Rep. Ellen Read on the interview the New Hampshire statehouse didn't want you to hear. Exclusively on the Gracie Gato Podcast.

In September 2025, Representative Ellen Read sailed from Catania, Sicily aboard a boat called the King Julian. She was one of roughly seventy civilians on a ten-ship fleet bound for Gaza — the Thousand Madleens to Gaza Flotilla, organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The voyage was a civil intervention: an international effort to challenge Israel's blockade and deliver humanitarian supplies to civilians under siege.

Rep. Read was the only American elected official on the water. She was, in fact, the first American elected official in the seventeen-year history of the movement to participate in any of its voyages. Her fellow parliamentarians came from Belgium, Denmark, the European Union, Ireland, France, and Spain. She returned to New Hampshire on November 3, 2025.

Five months and fourteen days later, she became the first representative in New Hampshire history to be formally banished by the Speaker of the House from the chamber, the gallery, and her own legislative office anteroom on non-session days.

Her offense, as cited by House leadership, was a single word — an expletive, spoken in a public hallway. She had been watching sexual assault survivors be given three minutes apiece to testify on her bill — HB 1633, legislation that would require hospitals and law enforcement to hand survivors a palm card listing the rights they already have under New Hampshire law — while the lone opposing organization received twenty minutes, plus a second turn at the end. The bill died in committee that afternoon. It had passed the NH House three times. The most recent vote was 340 to 1.

In this exclusive Gracie Gato Podcast interview, recorded within hours of the vote, Rep. Read speaks on the record for the first time about the banishment, the bill that was killed, the misinformation campaign that killed it, her own disclosure as a sexual assault survivor, and the flotilla that preceded all of it — the voyage she believes is inseparable from everything that followed.

A right kept secret is not a right. That is her line. This is her story. You will not hear it anywhere else.

What we discuss

The banishment, in her own words. What the Speaker's order actually says. What it bars her from doing. Why she believes the hallway expletive is not the real reason.

Inside the Senate hearing. The twenty-minute opposition versus the three-minute survivors. The false claim — spread to senators before the vote — that HB 1633 was about letting survivors take rape kits home from the hospital. It isn't. It never was.

A right kept secret. Rep. Read's disclosure: walking out of a New Hampshire emergency room after her own assault, never told she had a right to evidence collection. The exact gap her bill was written to close.

Sicily, the King Julian, and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Why she went. What the fleet was carrying. Why no other American elected official had done it in seventeen years. And whether being on that boat made her, at home, the kind of woman the statehouse wanted silent.

Power hates principles. The pattern: what gets a woman in New Hampshire civic life called erratic, unhinged, inappropriate, hysterical — and what it costs her to keep going anyway.

Who is Rep. Ellen Read?

New Hampshire State Representative for Rockingham District 10 — Newmarket and Newfields. Democrat. First elected November 8, 2016. Founder of the New Hampshire House Progressive Caucus. Deputy Ranking Member of the House Committee on Housing. State Lead for the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. State Director for the National Foundation of Women Legislators. Nationally recognized for her work on democracy reform, women's issues, and animal welfare.

And — as of 2025 — the first American elected official in the seventeen-year history of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement to participate in a humanitarian voyage to break the blockade.

Listen now.

The episode is live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack, Overcast, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Speakeasy so you don't miss what comes next — because this story isn't over.

For the press

This interview is available for licensed republication, embed, and co-reporting by credentialed newsrooms. Credentialed press rates available. Credit: Gracie Gato / NHCEA Inc. To request the full media kit — including the interview, sourcing documents, and a verified timeline — email gracie.gato81@gmail.com with the subject line Media Kit request — Ellen Read exclusive.

About this show

The Gracie Gato Podcast is independent political accountability journalism from New Hampshire, hosted by Gracie Gato and published by NHCEA Inc. — the New Hampshire Coalition for Ethics and Accountability (EIN 88-1014268). Free to all listeners. Paid subscribers keep the lights on, keep the journalism independent, and keep the statehouse nervous.

Bitch, please.