Two far-right–inspired bills fizzled in the Utah Senate on Thursday—one killed in committee, the other failing on the floor—after lawmakers balked at giving conspiracy theories a place in the code.
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SB23, from Sen. Ron Winterton, R-Roosevelt, died in the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee. The measure echoed the long-running “chemtrails” myth - that airplanes are spraying the sky with toxic chemicals. He sponsored similar legislation last year that died without a vote on the Senate floor.
SB23 would have made “solar” geoengineering—spraying certain chemicals from aircraft to reflect sunlight to combat global warming—a third-degree felony, with prison time and up to $100,000 in fines.
It also ordered the Utah Department of Transportation to set up a tip line for alleged geoengineering and forward “credible” claims to the Attorney General and required airports to report suspected incidents. Unlike last year’s version, this draft carved out Utah’s cloud‑seeding programs.
The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory claims airplanes are secretly spraying chemicals in the air to control weather, climate, or even human behavior. “Chemtrails” aren’t real; they’re actually ordinary condensation from water vapor. The theory has been thoroughly debunked, but that didn’t stop Winterton while pitching his bill.
“There are a lot of people who think that it’s not happening. We don’t need this bill,” Winterton said. “If you wanna say it’s conspiracy, but if you go online and look at what evidence they have, it’s hard to explain.”
He added he’d received “in excess of 2,000 emails, texts, and pictures” demanding action from lawmakers.
Winterton cited Dane Wingington and his website, geoengineeringwatch.org, as his main source. Wingington is a conspiracy theorist who claims that chemtrails are a government plot to destabilize weather and, by extension, society.
“Destabilize the food supply by destabilizing the rain, and you destabilize the population,” Wingington told Tucker Carlson last year—a segment that drew heavy criticism for platforming the claim.
Despite testimony from the Utah Eagle Forum and other right-wing Utahns who swore that chemtrails are an existential threat to the liberty-loving population of Utah, the committee didn’t buy it, voting the bill down 2-4.
Winterton, rebuffed for the second year in a row, warned members to brace for constituent blowback.
“Look forward to some emails and pictures,” Winterton said.
The second measure, HB85, from Rep. Lisa Shepherd, R-Provo, would bar the governor or other state executives from declaring a state of emergency “exclusively in response” to a determination by an international organization — specifically naming the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and World Health Organization.
That’s a tell: HB85 nods to the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory that surged in far-right circles during the COVID-19 pandemic. It posits a shadowy cabal of global elites is staging global crises like the pandemic to usher in a one-world government and enslave humanity.
The bill wrapped it all in the cloak of “state sovereignty,” asserting that international groups have no jurisdiction in Utah—which is already true.
A similar bill, also sponsored by Shepherd, died last year without a floor vote. This year’s version made it to the Senate but failed on final passage, 12–17. Senate President Stuart Adams, R–Layton, was among Republicans backing it.