During the first few weeks of 2025, state legislatures in 39 states have gaveled into session, and state lawmakers have already introduced more than 46,000 bills. Republican state lawmakers in several states have introduced bills based on an assortment of conspiracy theories, including proposing legislation that would ban “chemtrails” and prohibit fluoridation programs in public water systems.
Last year, GOP lawmakers in several states introduced bills that would ban weather modification activities, and the language of the bill echoes language used by conspiracy theorists to describe so-called “chemtrails.”
Conspiracy theorists claim condensation trails or vapor trails left in the sky from aircraft flying at high altitudes are actually some form of chemical or biological agents, which are being purposely released into the atmosphere for nefarious purposes including weather modification, phycological operations, or even population control.
Ahead of the 2025 legislative sessions, GOP state lawmakers in Florida and Texas have already pre-filed identical bills that would ban “weather modification activities.” In the past few weeks, GOP state lawmakers have introduced similar bills in Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
Arizona GOP state Rep. Lisa Fink introduced HB 2056, would prohibit anyone from engaging in “geoengineering” and requires the director of the state’s department of water resources to “actively encourage the public to monitor, document and report any instances of geoengineering in this state.”
Geoengineering, which is a legitimate area of scientific research and study into various types of technologies that could be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, is used by conspiracy theorist as a euphemism for what they claim is the purposeful creation of “chemtrails.”
The term “geoengineering” has appeared in at least six bills introduced by GOP state lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
Rep. Fink, who prior to being elect was the president of the right-wing Protect Arizona Children Coalition and has reportedly “worked closely with the Gilbert-based hate-group Family Watch International, has also introduced other bills related to other right-wing culture war issues, including a bill that would create exceptions for vaccination requirements, impose restrictions on the usage of food stamps, and prohibits state agencies from using terms related to gender identity.
Connecticut GOP state Sen. Robert Sampson introduced SB 67, which would “require the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to post on its Internet web site any chemicals that are disbursed in the air by the federal government,” including “stratospheric aerosol injections, solar radiation modification experimentations and other weather engineering activities.”
Sen. Sampson, who was the only vote against a bill that absolved people convicted of witchcraft during the colonial era because he the bill claimed painted “America as a bad place with a bad history,” has also introduced bills that would eliminate the requirement that employers provide paid sick leave in the event of a public health emergency, prohibit state or local school boards from requiring teachers or students use specific pronouns, and expand the exemptions for vaccination requirements for public schools.
Indiana GOP state Sen. Scott Alexander introduced SB 364, which would prohibit any “person who has the intent of affecting the intensity of sunlight, temperature, or weather from discharging a chemical or apparatus into the atmosphere.”
GOP state Rep. Lorissa Sweet introduced HB 1355, a companion bill to SB 364 that includes identical language.
Kentucky GOP state Sen. Steve Rawlings introduced SB 62, which would prohibits geoengineering, which the bill defines as including “solar radiation modification, weather modification, stratospheric aerosol injection, and other forms of atmospheric polluting intervention.”
Last year, Sen. Rawlings filed a bill that would have prohibited anyone from engaging in “any form of geoengineering activities.” When a supporter asked him “reinstate the chemtrails bill,” Rawlings replied that “it’s on the agenda!” Rawlings, who claimed that the Capitol Riot “could have been a setup,” has also introduce a join resolution claiming the state has “sovereign right to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.”
GOP state Rep. John Hodgson introduced HB 22, a companion bill to SB 62 that includes identical language. HB 22 has four additional Republican cosponsors: Rep. Emily Callaway, Rep. Josh Calloway, Rep. T.J. Roberts, and Rep. Timmy Truett.
Rep. Hodgson has promoted conspiracy theories about weather modification on social media, including in post on Twitter/X in which he claimed that the “CIA was talking then about injecting chemicals into the upper atmosphere to cool the earth,” and that “this arrogant lunacy illegal over the skies” of Kentucky.
Mississippi GOP state Sen. Angela Burks Hill introduced SB 2005, which would “prohibiting all instances of geoengineering” in the state, and defines geoengineering as the “intentional injection, release or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather or the intensity of the sunlight.”
North Dakota GOP state Sen. Todd Beard introduced SB 2106, which would prohibit “performance of weather modification in the state,” and defines weather modification as the “control, alteration, and amelioration of weather elements, including human-caused changes in the natural precipitation process” and the “alteration of other weather phenomena.”
Oklahoma GOP state Sen. Kendal Sacchieri has introduced SB 430, which would prohibit the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of sunlight.”
South Carolina GOP state Sen. Rex Rice has introduced SB 110, which would prohibit the “intentional injection, release, dispersion, or other emission, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, apparatus, or other air contaminants within the borders of this state with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited.”
GOP state Rep. Gil Gatch has introduced HB 3083, a companion bill to SB 110 that includes identical language. HB 3083 has three additional Republican cosponsors: Rep. Brian Lawson, Rep. Cody Mitchell, and Rep. Thomas Pope.
The language in these bills often appears similar to model legislation created and promoted by fringe conspiracy theorists, and connected to group which operates a website that claims to advocate for “shutting down pollution-generating atmospheric modification schemes”: Zero Geoengineering— which highlighted and promoted the bills introduce in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Arkansas GOP state Sen. Clint Penzo introduced SB 2, which would “repeal the statewide fluoridation program” and “remove the mandate for water systems to maintain fluoride content.” Penzo also introduced SB 4, which would permit customers of a public water systems to hold an “election of the qualified electors of the public water system to determine whether or not the public water system shall fluoridate the water.”
SB 2 and SB 4 each have three additional cosponsors: Sen. Bryan King, Rep. Matt Duffield, and Rep. Aaron Pilkington. Rep. Pilkington said that it may be necessary to “reevaluate” water fluoridation, and that “there is a new amount of skepticism when it comes to public health than in the past.”
Kentucky GOP state Rep. Mark Hart has introduced HB 16, which would make water fluoridation programs “optional,” and the decision to institute water fluoridation programs “shall solely be decided by the governing body of a water system.”
Rep. Hart previously posted on Facebook that he “started receiving research and studying this issue in 2017,” and claimed that “research has increased and the results are even more conclusive of the dangers of fluoride in our drinking water.”
Utah GOP state Rep. Stephanie Gricius has introduced HB 81, would prohibit anyone from adding fluoride in “public water system” and would prohibit local governments from enacting or enforcing an “ordinance that requires or permits the addition of fluoride to water in, or water that will be introduced into, a public water system.”
Gricius has claimed that “nothing about this bill is anti-fluoride,” and said that the bill is “only about changing the delivery mechanism,” and added that “when you are putting a substance in the water to medicate people, you are taking away their choice of weighting that risk for themselves.”
