Republicans Introduce Nearly 20 Bills Based on Debunked Conspiracy

Republicans across the country are working hard to pass bills banning something that the fringe corners of the internet told them to be afraid of: weather modification.

Weather modification refers to geoengineering processes such as solar radiation modification and cloud-seeding that are used to counter the effects of global warming and drought, respectively. These processes have been woven into right-wing conspiracy theories that the government is able to control the weather, and MAGA lawmakers—fearful that the Democrats could rule the heavens and summon a deluge to wipe them out—have started to take action.

Republican lawmakers in nearly 20 states have introduced legislation to prevent weather modification. Some of the laws allude to “chemtrails,” a conspiracy theory that planes aren’t leaving “contrails” of condensation in the atmosphere but are spreading chemicals on an unsuspecting public. In two states, Florida and Tennessee, those bills have passed and been signed into law.

In July, right-wing concerns about weather modification reached a new fever pitch.

Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin announced an effort to “compile everything we know about contrails and geoengineering” and release it to the public.

Days later, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tim Burchett introduced the Clear Skies Act, a bill that would levy steep penalties for anyone who “knowingly conducts weather modification,” including geoengineering, cloud seeding, solar radiation modification, and the release of aerosol to “influence temperature, precipitation, or the intensity of sunlight.”

After Hurricane Helene struck the southeast United States in October, Greene boosted the right-wing conspiracy theory that the Biden administration had used weather manipulation to target Republican areas ahead of the U.S. general election. “Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote in a post on X at the time. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

The theory of weather control is not only outrageously anti-science but based on an explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theory—though that’s something Greene has never shied away from in the past. In fact, she added to the conspiracy theory with her now-infamous “Jewish space lasers” comment.

Greene isn’t actually worried about manmade impact on the environment; after all, she’s got no problems with fossil fuels. Rather, she’s latched onto conspiracy theories about how weather can be controlled by those in power. Meanwhile, Greene said she saw a kind of “funny hypocrisy” from the environmentalists who oppose pollution but not weather manipulation.

In interviews, Greene and Burchett said that the impetus for their legislation was concerns of constituents. Burchett admitted that the issue “was in the realm of the conspiracy theorists” but had “taken on a little bit more mainstream.”

“You have one group that says it’s real, and the other group says, ‘You’re a lunatic,’ that it doesn’t exist,” he said.

“If it doesn’t exist,” Burchett added, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

While weather modification does exist, it can’t be weaponized as Greene has implied. Several states have programs for cloud seeding—a decades-old technology that helps to induce rain—including California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and North Dakota.

As the horrors induced by Israel in Gaza elicit increasing international outcry, French President Emmanual Macron announced last week that France will recognize the state of Palestine. The U.K. on Tuesday decided it will also recognize Palestinian statehood, unless Israel takes certain steps to improve conditions in Gaza.

France’s decision has been criticized by U.S. officials. But it’s what international law demands, said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday: “Statehood for the Palestinians is a right, not a reward.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has a more hysterical take.

Huckabee told Fox News Tuesday that the “very foolish” move would embolden Hamas (an extremely arguable assumption) and therefore “be like letting the Nazis have a victory after World War II.”

The former Arkansas governor and Fox News host is a frequent purveyor of outrageous Nazi analogies.

Recently, he’s trotted out such comparisons most often in relation to Hamas. In May, he made the mind-boggling suggestion that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack was in ways worse than the Holocaust, telling NPR that “Israel had people murdered in the most vicious, horrible way that we’ve seen, and—I wanted to say, since the Holocaust, but, in all candor, as awful as the crimes were in the Holocaust, they weren’t worse, and, in some cases, they weren’t as malicious.”

Huckabee’s penchant for frivolous Nazi comparisons goes back years. In 2015, he likened Obama’s Iran nuclear deal to “marching the Israelis to the door of the oven.” Search earlier still, and you’ll find out that plenty more has brought Nazism to Huckabee’s mind—be it abortions, gay marriage, or gun control.

The current leaders of the FBI have “no idea what they’re doing,” according to outgoing employees.

The federal investigative agency is undergoing a “radical deprofessionalization,” with a growing emphasis on ideological loyalty to the Trump administration over a responsibility to serve the public, reported The Atlantic Tuesday. No longer is competence a key priority for new recruits.

Michael Feinberg, who left the bureau in June after 15 years, claimed he was denied a promotion after he decided to maintain ties with his former colleague Peter Strzok. Strzok was fired from the FBI during Donald Trump’s first term for sending text messages that allegedly disparaged the MAGA leader, landing him on FBI Director Kash Patel’s notorious enemies list.

Moving up in the agency, according to Feinberg, was practically a done deal. Feinberg, who had been serving as the acting assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Norfolk field office, was already preparing to move to the FBI’s headquarters in Washington in anticipation of the promotion. But the newly installed Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans put a pin on that on May 31. Over a series of phone calls, Evans revealed that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had left Feinberg with two options: get demoted or resign, he recalled in a personal essay published earlier this month to LawFare. Feinberg chose the latter—five years before he was eligible for retirement and a pension.

“Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session,” Feinberg wrote. “I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.”

Feinberg is not the typecast, anti-Trump type so loathed by MAGA circles. He graduated from Northwestern Law School in 2004, where he was the vice president of the school’s Federalist Society chapter. He considers himself a conservative, aligning with the political theory of philosopher Edmund Burke, according to The Atlantic. He joined the FBI in 2009 to help “protect both United States interests in the world and the rule of law on the domestic front,” he told the magazine.

“They get a kick out of playing dress-up and acting tough,” Feinberg told The Atlantic. “But they actually have no idea what they’re doing.”

It looks like the White House official social media is being used as unofficial advertising space for the Trump family’s newest golf course.

To close out his four-day taxpayer-funded trip to Scotland, the president attended the grand opening ceremony of the Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen, alongside his sons Eric and Don Jr.

The White House’s official X account shared a link Tuesday to live coverage of the event, similarly to how it might share information about a presidential press conference or Cabinet meeting.

“We started with a beautiful piece of land, but we’ve made it much more beautiful,” Donald Trump said of the golf course built on top of dunes on Scotland’s eastern coast.

“We’ll play it very quickly, and then I got back to D.C. and we put out fires all over the world. We stopped a war. But we’ve stopped about five wars, so that’s much more important than playing golf,” Trump said, referring to Monday’s tentative ceasefire agreement between Cambodia and Thailand, made amid pressure from the United States.

The White House X account also shared a post directly from Trump International, Scotland, showing the president arriving Monday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“We welcome President Trump and his family as they return to their cherished Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire to open the New Course,” the post read. “The President hosted the Prime Minister and special guests at MacLeod House this evening prior to tomorrow’s grand opening ceremony.”

Trump has sidestepped precedent by refusing to sever ties to companies and other financial assets, instead vesting control of his assets to a family-managed trust. This allows the president’s supporters to pay directly into his family’s coffers by booking their vacations and retreats at any of his family’s many resorts, private clubs, and hotels.

Standing between his two sons Tuesday, Trump cut the red ribbon, though the new course doesn’t actually open for another two weeks, according to the website.

Debt creditors are on the prowl for federal officials.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt owes $326,370.50 in the aftermath of her failed 2022 congressional campaign, according to a new disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Her campaign committee, Karoline for Congress, didn’t raise any money during April, May, or June of this year, failing to pay off a dime of her mountainous debt, according to the disclosure. The majority of the debt is the result of accepting illegal campaign contributions that exceeded federal limits, the bulk of which she has not yet returned, reported OpenSecrets.

The campaign committee reported in June that it had spent the illicit funds a long time ago and currently had no cash on hand.

Some of the individuals owed refunds include former New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson, as well as the late New Hampshire Senate Majority Leader Robert Clegg Jr. Karoline for Congress also owes more than $46,000 to Missouri-based consultant Axiom Strategies, $41,000 to Missouri-based polling firm Remington Research Group, and nearly $13,000 to Washington-based fundraising firm Fundraising Inc. Other donors, however, did scrape by before the committee stopped dishing out refunds. They, conveniently, included Leavitt’s parents, according to NOTUS.

The committee is currently under audit by the FEC. The excessive donations went unreported for years, but in January, the group amended 17 prior campaign finance reports—each one it had ever made—to account for the unlawful discrepancy, NOTUS reported at the time.

An unidentified source close to Leavitt told OpenSecrets that Leavitt doesn’t personally owe anyone money, and underscored that Karoline for Congress is “working with the FEC through the audit and that process is ongoing, hence the outstanding ‘debt.’”

End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned PAC, sued Karoline for Congress over the illegal donations in November 2022, but little has changed since then. The FEC has lacked the minimum four commissioners necessary to initiate investigations since May. Donald Trump has the sole authority to nominate the commissioners—who must then be confirmed by the Senate—but so far the president has not nominated a single individual to the regulatory agency, despite recommendations from congressional leaders.

“Cases like this send a clear message: If you break campaign finance laws, nothing will happen to you,” End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller told OpenSecrets. “It’s open season for corrupt leaders who want to game the system and get away with it.”