Opinion | Mack Butler’s chemtrail crusade is pure political cosplay

The Alabama House of Representatives annually presents the “Shroud Award,” a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the most lifeless, DOA piece of legislation of the session. For 2025, House Bill 248 might as well start rehearsing its eulogy—it’s already a top contender.

In a state where people struggle to access basic health care, where schools beg for funding and where entire communities lack reliable drinking water, Rep. Mack Butler, R–Rainbow City, has identified Alabama’s true crisis:

The government might be changing the weather.

No, this isn’t the opening line of a dystopian sci-fi novel or a rejected X-Files reboot. It’s House Bill 248 — Butler’s personal crusade against “weather modification,” something he insists has been secretly happening for decades. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s got a bill to outlaw it. Because why fix real problems when you can wage war against the clouds?

HB248 would make it illegal to “release any chemical compound or device” into the atmosphere to affect temperature, precipitation or sunlight. Translation: it’s a ban on chemtrails — the long-debunked theory that the white trails behind airplanes are chemical agents being sprayed by shadowy elites to control the population, manipulate the climate or blot out the sun. Take your pick from the conspiracy buffet.

In reality, those streaks are contrails — short for condensation trails. They form when hot jet exhaust hits cold air at high altitudes. Just water vapor. Not fluoride. Not mind-control particles. Not Bill Gates in a Boeing with a weather dial.

Butler says he’s just listening to constituents who are “concerned” about it. That’s one way to put it. Another way is to say he’s drafting laws based on YouTube videos with echoey background music and titles like “EXPOSED: Weather Control Agenda 2030!!!”

And speaking of scientific credibility circling the drain — meet Robert F. Kennedy Jr., anti-vax evangelist and conspiracy influencer, who, in the second Trump administration, has somehow become secretary of Health and Human Services. That’s like putting a flat-earther in charge of NASA and hoping he doesn’t unplug the satellites.

RFK Jr. has long claimed that elites are “playing God with the atmosphere,” manipulating the skies through geoengineering and solar radiation experiments. So in this new era of conspiracy-as-governance, Butler’s bill isn’t even fringe — it’s just the Alabama outpost of the national circus.

Now here’s the twist: weather modification does exist — just not the way they think.

We’re talking about cloud seeding, a process developed in the 1940s and still used today. It involves spraying silver iodide or other particles into clouds to encourage rainfall or snowfall. It’s been used in California to fight drought and in China to clear the skies before the Olympics. It’s regulated, well-documented, and crucially, not secret. It’s also wildly inconsistent in its results and definitely not capable of steering hurricanes or mind-controlling the citizens of Gadsden.

But let’s not allow nuance to get in the way of nonsense.

Instead of expanding Medicaid or fixing rural infrastructure, Butler is spending his time legislating against imaginary chemical weather systems — because that’s what you do when you’ve run out of real ideas. This is what people do when they can’t govern: they chase ghosts and call it leadership.

There’s a term for this — political cosplay. You dress up like a freedom fighter battling “globalist weather schemes,” when in reality, you’re just reenacting internet fever dreams for a small but loud base that believes the Weather Channel is a psy-op.

Spend five minutes on the conspiracy corners of the internet, and you’ll see the same themes on repeat: claims that Bill Gates is blocking the sun to depopulate the planet; that the government is terraforming the Earth through chemtrails; that Hurricane Katrina was a beta test for climate warfare. Apparently FEMA didn’t fumble the response — it was just a soft launch.

And of course, who could forget Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiracy congresswoman from Georgia, who once claimed California wildfires may have been sparked by a “Jewish space laser.” No word yet on whether that same laser also controls the jet stream, but we’re guessing Mack Butler is looking into it.

Meanwhile, Alabama ranks near the bottom in maternal mortality, public education and health outcomes. But sure — let’s ban clouds. That’ll fix it.

If you want to govern then expand Medicaid, fund schools and repair water systems. But to fight clouds that stop the sun from shining brightly? That’s beyond even Mother Nature — but apparently not beyond Rep. Butler.

HB248 will not stop climate change — Butler doesn’t believe it exists. It won’t bring rain — because he does not understand how cloud formation works. And it won’t help a single family in Alabama — because that is not the point.

This isn’t a solution. It’s a symptom — of lawmakers that have traded serious policy for performative stunts. Butler and his ilk have replaced public service with online paranoia. A confederacy of ignoramuses who wouldn’t know a cirrus cloud from a smoke signal — but are convinced it’s probably harboring a government tracking device.

Butler will never get this bill passed, but if the sun happens to shine, don’t worry — he’ll claim victory.

And if it rains? Well, obviously, the chemtrails are back at it again.