Florida politicians indulge conspiracy theorists with nonsense ‘chemtrails’ bill | Opinion
Florida is poised to elevate anti-government paranoia about imaginary “chemtrails” in the sky to new levels of silliness.
There’s a wing of conspiracy theorists who imagine that “they” – some vague amorphous operatives in the federal government – are intentionally trying to poison parts of the country by trailing clouds of toxic substances from aircraft.
And to make this even more nutty, the people sounding the alarm are being organized by Marla Maples, a former wife of President Donald Trump.
For decades, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. AIr Force have repeatedly and emphatically tried to to dispel the baseless claims of a secret government campaign to poison the American people from the sky.
You used to have to be an AM-radio-listening insomniac tuned to Art Bell’s overnight broadcast from the Mojave Desert to get clued into this plot.
Then Alex Jones, the InfoWars crackpot, jumped onboard by claiming the United States uses “weather weapons” to generate killer storms to eliminate Republican voters. Jones blamed the prevalence of tornadoes in Oklahoma on government manipulation, not actual atmospheric conditions.
Confounded by contrails conspiracies
More recently, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene added a dollop of anti-Semitism to the mix by theorizing that “Jewish space lasers” may be involved in creating forest fires.
Breathing life into chemtrails conspiracies comes from the actual production of condensation trails, or “contrails”, from jet engines.
When the hot water vapor coming from a jet engine hits the very-cold air at high altitudes, it crystallizes and leaves a white, cloud-like trail in the sky behind it.
With more than 45,000 commercial airline flights in the U.S. every day, these contrails are a common sight and the impetus behind these irrational weather-manipulation and “solar dimming” claims.
One of the leading voices of disinformation on chemtrails is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the just confirmed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“We are going to stop these crimes,” Kennedy wrote about chemtrails last August.
Disinformation reached a fever pitch in October after Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered the Southeastern United States, particularly in parts of Florida and North Carolina.
Tens of millions of social media posts propagated claims that the storms were preceded by an unusual number of “chemtrails” in the sky and that the hurricanes were an attempt by the Biden Administration to wipe out Republican voters in key states a month before the election.
“Treason Alert: The Biden-Harris Admin Have Been in Control of Hurricanes Helene and Milton Using Pentagon Weather Weapons,” the InfoWars headline read.
Maples, Trump ex-wife, dropping some disinformation to the mix
This disinformation campaign is being orchestrated, in part, by the Global Wellness Forum, a group co-founded by Maples, Trump’s lone America-First wife choice. The group is also helping to spread fear about live-saving vaccinations.
Global Wellness Forum members flooded Florida lawmakers with more than 18,000 emails to do something about the imaginary “chemtrails” poisoning the state.
And that has produced a piece of legislation for the upcoming session that takes this nonsense to new levels.
The bill, which passed on a party-line vote in its first stop in the Florida Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, was presented by its sponsor, Florida Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Republican lawmaker from Miami.
“I’m consistently getting complaints from the central part of Florida with regards to strange activities, aircrafts,” Garcia told her colleagues. “The terms they use is that they are dispersing chemicals that create condensation that make their skies grayer.
“They aren’t as blue as they should be.”
Garcia kept saying she just wanted to address “the concerns”, even while admitting that she found no records in the past 10 years of cloud seeding in Florida.
“Everybody is entitled to an explanation,” she said. “Ironically, the concerns are there. The complaints are there.”
The bill, without addressing the kind of money and staffing increases this new chemtrail goose chase would entail, involves three state agencies to handle “the concerns” of the conspiracy theorists.
The bill establishes a hotline number set up to handle incoming calls from Floridians to report what is actually the normal trail of crystalized water vapor from airline engines.
Here’s how it would work: Florida Man looks up, sees contrail, then calls the hotline that connects to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
“The dern gub’mint is trying to poison me again!” the caller might say.
That scrambles the DEP to alert the Florida Department of Health to race to the scene to do samples of the air quality under the path of the contrail.
And that puts the Florida Department of Emergency Services on notice to “step in to mitigate,” as Garcia put it.
The bill comes with a $100,000 fine for potential violators so that “they know that we mean business,” Garcia said.
Who is “they”? Who knows. Maples, who showed up at the hearing to speak, put it this way: “They’re looking to see who’s behind it.”
Looking to see “who’s behind” nothing is going to be a fun spectator sport here in Florida if this bill becomes law.
Bill sponsor benefitted from real election fraud conspiracy
In the meantime, I can’t resist the pure Florida-ness of this by saying that Garcia, the Florida lawmaker helping to propagate this untethered conspiracy nonsense, is actually the beneficiary of an actual Florida conspiracy.
Not a conspiracy theory, a conspiracy fact. And an actual crime that sent the chief conspirator to a real guilty verdict followed by a jail sentence.
Garcia was first elected in 2020 to her Miami seat in an election against the Democratic incumbent Jose Rodriguez. Garcia won by just 32 votes.
She achieved her victory with the help of party operative Frank Artiles, who paid $50,000 in illegal secret payments to Alex Rodriguez, a down-on-his-luck auto-parts dealer from Boca Raton.
The paid-off Rodriguez, who shared the same last name as the Democrat, had no intention to seek the seat, prosecutors found. He was just a name on the ballot to create confusion for voters over who was the real candidate Rodriguez.
In the end, the voter-fraud scheme steered 6,382 votes to the ghost-candidate Rodriguez, far more than the 32 votes that was Garcia’s margin of victory.
Artiles was convicted of voter fraud and jailed. Alex Rodriguez pleaded guilty and got probation in exchange for testifying against Artiles.
Garcia got her seat in the Florida Senate, and despite calls for her to step down due to the election fraud, Garcia said she had no knowledge of the plot to help her and wouldn’t give up her seat.
“I am not the focal point for this,” she said.
And now, this actual beneficiary of a down-to-earth real conspiracy is the leading voice in a fake one based in thin air.
I don’t know about you, but I have “concerns.”
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida politicians indulge conspiracy theorists with nonsense ‘chemtrails’ bill | Opinion
