April 11, 2024 11:18 AM UTC

Republican Lawmakers Scramble to Ban Chemtrails (Seriously)

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Tennessee legislature has already passed it. Lawmakers in Minnesota are pushing it now. At least five other states are kicking the tires on this policy proposal.

The latest Republican legislative craze has to do with banning so-called “chemtrails,” the water vapor trails that emerge from behind airplanes that conspiracy theorists have long believed are actually chemicals dispersed by the government to control our minds!!!

As The Tennessean reported on April 1 (no foolin’):

Tennessee legislation banning the intentional release of chemicals into the air is headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk to be signed into law.

The bill has been criticized as codifying a ban on “chem trails,” a widely debunked conspiracy theory that the federal government is spreading chemicals for nefarious reasons, though House sponsor Rep. Monty Fritts, R-Kingston, said he brought the bill due to ongoing weather and climate control practices.

HB 2063/SB 2691, which House Republicans gave final passage to Monday, bans the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion” of chemicals within Tennessee “with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited.” [Pols emphasis]…

…Fritts said he brought the bill following a 2023 White House report on solar radiation modification, which is not in practice in the U.S.

The chemtrail theory is the belief that the government is secretly adding toxic chemicals to the atmosphere from aircrafts, similar to contrails. According to a research group at Harvard University which focuses on climate science and technology, the reasoning behind the theory involves sterilization, reduction of life expectancy, mind control, and weather control.

Alas, this idea is spreading to other state legislatures, with at least seven states considering legislation to ban something that doesn’t exist. As Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College, told NBC News:

“It’s conspiratorial nonsense. The challenge here is that the whole chemtrails conspiracy has blurred and subsumed all these distinct technologies with distinct aims, which makes it challenging to disentangle.”

One of those states now considering chemtrails is Minnesota. As Christopher Ingraham writes for The Minnesota Reformer:

Republicans in the Legislature, including Senate assistant minority leader Justin Eichorn, R-Grand Rapids, have introduced legislation (HF4687/SF4630) inspired by the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory.

The bill contains a mishmash of conspiratorial pseudoscience, including references to made-up phenomena like “xenobiotic electromagnetism and fields,” with just enough parroting of actual science to give it a veneer of credibility.

It requires county sheriffs to investigate citizen complaints of “polluting atmospheric activity,” and grants the governor the authority to call up the National Guard and ground any aircraft suspected of spreading pollutants.

As Ingraham explains further via ‘X,’ supporters of this nonsense — which has little chance of going anywhere in the Minnesota legislature — have taken to using a common tactic that Republican Rep. Ken “Skin” DeGraff employs frequently in Colorado: Wrap your nonsense in big words to make it sound more important. DeGraff is probably already drooling at the idea of uttering the phrase “xenobiotic electromagnetism.”

The only reason it makes sense to expound publicly on your belief that chemtrails are really mind-control drugs is if you are trying to make the argument that you were drugged into thinking that this was a thing that a state legislative body should actually take seriously.

Fortunately, we won’t see this soon in Colorado; it’s too late for Republicans to introduce new legislation without a late-bill exemption, which is a request that House Speaker Julie McCluskie would almost certainly laugh out of the room.

But there’s always 2025. If we’ve learned anything from Republicans in the last two state legislative sessions, it’s that no idea is too stupid and no proposal too unserious to be forced into the light of day.