Thom Hartmann
July 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
The National Weather Service logo is displayed at the National Hurricane Center. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
In Oklahoma, a domestic militia calling itself “Veterans on Patrol” is systematically targeting weather radars. Their leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, claims the military is controlling the weather through Doppler radar systems and that these machines are part of a divine affront — a “weather weapon” — that is “mocking God Himself.”
He’s encouraging his followers to sabotage these radars under an operation he calls “Leaning Tower.” This isn’t just fringe paranoia: it’s part of a growing anti-reality insurgency that threatens our democracy itself.
Let’s be blunt: this is insanity. Not just in its content, but in its consequences. And yet, it’s not isolated. It’s one of many conspiracy-fueled campaigns that now animate parts of American life, often backed by violence or intimidation. From QAnon to flat-earth nonsense to vaccine “skeptics” now within the Food and Drug Administration, we’re watching a dangerous erosion of truth, a collapse of shared facts, and an outright assault on the institutions that protect life and liberty.
What’s happening here isn’t just about weather radars: it’s about reality itself.
When people are told not to believe their own eyes, not to trust scientists, doctors, journalists, or even the National Weather Service, society begins to crack. And the people exploiting those cracks — including some of the Trump administration’s most senior officials (see: Bob Kennedy and Stephen Miller, among others) — know exactly what they’re doing.
Veterans on Patrol isn’t just anti-science or anti-government; it’s anti-democracy. It joins a growing list of extremist groups peddling lies and hatred: anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, misogynist, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim. It wraps its destruction in the flag and cloaks its violence in religion. And when Meyer boasts about being responsible for “a lot more than” taking down a radar, we’d be fools not to take him seriously. Oklahoma, after all, remembers Timothy McVeigh.
This latest attack rendered a critical radar system “instantly obsolete,” according to meteorologist David Payne. That radar was designed to save lives, particularly in tornado-prone Oklahoma. When it’s destroyed, people will die. Period. This is not free speech: this is domestic terrorism.
But here’s the deeper issue: this attack is only a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the deliberate poisoning of the American mind with fantasy and fear by a network and system of media and social media owned by anti-democracy rightwing billionaires and filled with Russian trolls. And when truth dies, democracy soon follows.
Because democracy — as Thomas Jefferson so accurately pointed out (“Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government”) — depends on an educated public operating on the basis of shared truths and actual facts.
You can’t have a functioning republic if half the country believes extreme weather is a “liberal weapon” and the other half knows it’s the result of an atmosphere warmed by fossil fuel emissions. You can’t govern when reality itself is disputed. And you certainly can’t maintain civil peace when people are being radicalized into acts of violence based on complete and utter delusion.
The fossil-fuel-billionaire-funded radical right’s war on truth isn’t new, but it’s accelerating. When lies are repeated often enough, they become gospel to those who want to believe them.
Right-wing media outlets, extremist influencers, and opportunistic Republicans have learned — as Josef Goebbels famously preached — that a lie can be more powerful than the truth when it aligns with grievance, fear, and identity and is repeated often enough.
The problem isn’t just gullibility. It’s that these lies are weaponized. And when they take hold, facts become negotiable, science becomes suspect, and even saving people from storms becomes controversial.
Just look at how the “mainstream media” consistently omits from their reporting on Trump’s tariffs that they’re a clear violation of the Constitution and was explicitly called that in an unanimous decision by the US Trade Court, as Robert Hubbell points out so eloquently.
Or when the media ignores the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 14th amendment violations of ICE’s random, masked, warrantless arrests and incarceration of brown-skinned people, including those with Green Cards at the “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp, along with those with full, court-ordered permission to be here in America.
What does this mean for democracy?A shattered consensus on truth makes informed voting impossible. If voters can’t agree on basic facts — like whether the atmosphere is heating up or whether a vaccine works — how can they make rational decisions at the ballot box?
The weaponization of delusion breeds violence. Just like the January 6th attack on our Capitol, these radar attacks are fueled by conspiracy and rage. They don’t just damage property, they destabilize the rule of law.
When truth is optional, tyranny becomes inevitable. Autocrats thrive in the fog of misinformation. The more confused and divided a people are, the easier they are to control, thus the daily Trump Reality Show.
Public trust collapses. Scientists, educators, journalists, and public servants all become suspect. That vacuum gets filled by cult leaders, armed militias, and political demagogues.
Democracy becomes unrecognizable. Without a shared sense of reality, debate becomes pointless, compromise becomes impossible, and elections become battlegrounds instead of ways to determine a rational direction for our shared future.
So what do we do?
We fight back with truth. Unapologetically. Loudly. Persistently.
We stand up for science. For journalism. For civic education. For basic decency.
We hold platforms accountable that spread lies, tweak their algorithms secretly to promote anti-democracy messages, and reject the persistent “mainstream media” cowardice of both-sidesism. There aren’t “two sides” to facts. There is reality and there are lies.
We support platforms, networks, media, newsletters, programs, writers, speakers, politicians, and movements that promote the truth and push back against the creeping fascism that is rapidly overtaking our nation.
So we must loudly and persistently call this out for what it is: an attempt — which has so far been successful at destroying democracy in nations like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey — to engage in social and political sabotage. It’s radicalism, a form of domestic terrorism whose target is democracy itself.
And it’s time to say: enough.
Because without truth, we don’t just lose the weather forecast.
We lose our nation.
Militia fueled by bizarre conspiracy theory brings down weather radars
Sarah K. Burris
July 9, 2025
Courtesy Tucson Police Department
A militia known as the "Veterans on Patrol" aims to dismantle weather radars, and KWTV News 9 has discovered that it's part of a larger conspiracy theory surrounding weather manipulation.
Amid false conspiracies about the floods in Texas being part of a kind of cloud seeding attack, organization founder Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer confirmed to News 9 that they were "absolutely" working to target Oklahoma radars.
The comments come "days after an individual vandalized News 9’s weather radar," the report said.
A sign they found posted near one Oklahoma weather radar claims that Doppler radars are being targeted "by victims of U.S. military weather experimentation." The militia calls it "Operation Leaning Tower."
The Southern Poverty Law Center classified VoP as an “anti-government militia,” which also promotes "anti-immigrant ideas," as well as "anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon falsehoods."
"They can embed their technology and civilian infrastructure in every home and every household utilizing the phones and their network towers to not only control the weather, modify the weather, but they can [target] individuals,” Meyer, a Christian Nationalist, told News9.
Last year, Meyer was part of an effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene for posing as an aid worker to encourage locals to tear down cell towers and attack the military.
"When the military plays God with the weather, they're mocking our Heavenly Father by calling one of his most favorite instruments a 'weather weapon,'" Meyer added.
When asked whether VoP is responsible for bringing down the News 9 weather radar, Meyer responded, "Veterans On Patrol is responsible for a lot more than that."
News 9’s Chief Meteorologist David Payne fact-checked the claims, explaining that weather radars have no weaponry.
“We have one of the most powerful live radars in Oklahoma, and one of the most powerful live radars in the country, but we cannot do any weather modification at all,” he said.
When those radars are damaged, “We cannot track severe weather. We cannot track tornadoes, and it basically becomes instantly obsolete," he added.
Payne said he wished that he could use radars like that to help save lives.
“I wish we could turn it on and say, 'oh, let's make that tornado go away,' but our weather radar and all of the weather radars in the U.S. are built strictly to inform and warn the public, and to keep the public safe -- and that's exactly why we have our live radar," Payne said.
Oklahoma is no stranger to domestic terrorism. In 1995, anti-government terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It killed 168 people and injured 680 others.
Read the full report here.
July 9, 2025
RAW STORY
Courtesy Tucson Police Department
A militia known as the "Veterans on Patrol" aims to dismantle weather radars, and KWTV News 9 has discovered that it's part of a larger conspiracy theory surrounding weather manipulation.
Amid false conspiracies about the floods in Texas being part of a kind of cloud seeding attack, organization founder Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer confirmed to News 9 that they were "absolutely" working to target Oklahoma radars.
The comments come "days after an individual vandalized News 9’s weather radar," the report said.
A sign they found posted near one Oklahoma weather radar claims that Doppler radars are being targeted "by victims of U.S. military weather experimentation." The militia calls it "Operation Leaning Tower."
The Southern Poverty Law Center classified VoP as an “anti-government militia,” which also promotes "anti-immigrant ideas," as well as "anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon falsehoods."
"They can embed their technology and civilian infrastructure in every home and every household utilizing the phones and their network towers to not only control the weather, modify the weather, but they can [target] individuals,” Meyer, a Christian Nationalist, told News9.
Last year, Meyer was part of an effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene for posing as an aid worker to encourage locals to tear down cell towers and attack the military.
"When the military plays God with the weather, they're mocking our Heavenly Father by calling one of his most favorite instruments a 'weather weapon,'" Meyer added.
When asked whether VoP is responsible for bringing down the News 9 weather radar, Meyer responded, "Veterans On Patrol is responsible for a lot more than that."
News 9’s Chief Meteorologist David Payne fact-checked the claims, explaining that weather radars have no weaponry.
“We have one of the most powerful live radars in Oklahoma, and one of the most powerful live radars in the country, but we cannot do any weather modification at all,” he said.
When those radars are damaged, “We cannot track severe weather. We cannot track tornadoes, and it basically becomes instantly obsolete," he added.
Payne said he wished that he could use radars like that to help save lives.
“I wish we could turn it on and say, 'oh, let's make that tornado go away,' but our weather radar and all of the weather radars in the U.S. are built strictly to inform and warn the public, and to keep the public safe -- and that's exactly why we have our live radar," Payne said.
Oklahoma is no stranger to domestic terrorism. In 1995, anti-government terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It killed 168 people and injured 680 others.
Read the full report here.
Meteorologists rush to social media to stop far-right conspiracies about floods
Sarah K. Burris
July 9, 2025
RAW STORY
People stand near debris following flash flooding, in Kerrville, Texas, U.S. July 5, 2025. REUTERS/Marco Bello
Far-right conspiracy theories are percolating through social media after the floods in Texas on July 4, and now as flooding also plagues New Mexico. It prompted several local meteorologists to issue their own fact-checks and explain some of the myths around cloud seeding.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that rumors about the "deep state" are spreading amid the weather disasters.
"Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy 'deep state' is acting against President Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government," the report said.
The report cited Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent poster in the far-right manosphere. On July 5, he posted several screen captures of documents, demanding, “I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”
One document was about a “precipitation enhancement” company, Rainmaker, that he thinks caused the flood. The post has had over three million views.
That same claim spread among other like-minded people across X, reaching MAGA world leaders like retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who formerly served as President Donald Trump's national security advisor. He asked, "Anyone able to answer this?"
Self-described content creator Randy Sevy tied it to former President Bill Clinton with a photo of him and Augustus Doricko, the young tech CEO and founder of Rainmaker, a cloud seeding company, "backed by Peter Thiel-linked investors."
A YouTuber with 347,000 subscribers posted his own video boasting to know "the truth about weather manipulation." It has had over 202,000 views.
Meanwhile, meteorologist Matt Jones of KSLA News 12 posted his own lesson addressing "the ridiculous comments I've been seeing on social media lately."
"Is cloud seeding responsible for the recent flash floods? NO. The process of cloud seeding is not capable of producing the type of intense rainfall that would lead to flash flooding," he wrote with an explainer about cloud seeding.
WTVT FOX 13's chief meteorologist, Paul Dellegatto, posted several screen captures of reports on cloud seeding, saying, "Apparently, CLOUD SEEDING is the now the cause of all major weather events! Texas floods? Cloud seeding! Hurricane Milton? Cloud seeding! Snow in the Florida panhandle? Cloud seeding!"
ABC13’s chief meteorologist Travis Herzog, out of Houston, has posted two explainers addressing the "viral videos" claiming cloud seeding was the culprit of the floods.
"Were cloud seeding operations conducted on the storms that produced the Texas floods? No," he wrote. "In fact, Texas regulations prohibit cloud seeding on storms that could produce severe weather, tornadoes, or flash floods. One of the companies singled out on social media for cloud seeding conducted its last operation on Wednesday, July 2nd."
He explained that "only an existing cloud can be seeded, and once that cloud has been seeded, it rains itself out. Furthermore, the cloud seeding took place southeast of San Antonio, roughly 150 miles away from Kerr County."
In another post, he noted that "Tropical Storm Barry is primarily responsible for this flood event, with an assist from upper level moisture peeled off from what was once Hurricane Flossie in the Pacific..."
As for New Mexico, the National Weather Service "monsoon awareness" page from 2018 explains that the state is affected by the North American Monsoon System (NAMS) each summer between June 15 and Sept. 30th.
Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. has reiterated during several press conferences over the past few days that a relief fund has been established through the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country for those seeking ways to help.
Sarah K. Burris
July 9, 2025
RAW STORY
People stand near debris following flash flooding, in Kerrville, Texas, U.S. July 5, 2025. REUTERS/Marco Bello
Far-right conspiracy theories are percolating through social media after the floods in Texas on July 4, and now as flooding also plagues New Mexico. It prompted several local meteorologists to issue their own fact-checks and explain some of the myths around cloud seeding.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that rumors about the "deep state" are spreading amid the weather disasters.
"Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy 'deep state' is acting against President Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government," the report said.
The report cited Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent poster in the far-right manosphere. On July 5, he posted several screen captures of documents, demanding, “I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”
One document was about a “precipitation enhancement” company, Rainmaker, that he thinks caused the flood. The post has had over three million views.
That same claim spread among other like-minded people across X, reaching MAGA world leaders like retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who formerly served as President Donald Trump's national security advisor. He asked, "Anyone able to answer this?"
Self-described content creator Randy Sevy tied it to former President Bill Clinton with a photo of him and Augustus Doricko, the young tech CEO and founder of Rainmaker, a cloud seeding company, "backed by Peter Thiel-linked investors."
A YouTuber with 347,000 subscribers posted his own video boasting to know "the truth about weather manipulation." It has had over 202,000 views.
Meanwhile, meteorologist Matt Jones of KSLA News 12 posted his own lesson addressing "the ridiculous comments I've been seeing on social media lately."
"Is cloud seeding responsible for the recent flash floods? NO. The process of cloud seeding is not capable of producing the type of intense rainfall that would lead to flash flooding," he wrote with an explainer about cloud seeding.
WTVT FOX 13's chief meteorologist, Paul Dellegatto, posted several screen captures of reports on cloud seeding, saying, "Apparently, CLOUD SEEDING is the now the cause of all major weather events! Texas floods? Cloud seeding! Hurricane Milton? Cloud seeding! Snow in the Florida panhandle? Cloud seeding!"
ABC13’s chief meteorologist Travis Herzog, out of Houston, has posted two explainers addressing the "viral videos" claiming cloud seeding was the culprit of the floods.
"Were cloud seeding operations conducted on the storms that produced the Texas floods? No," he wrote. "In fact, Texas regulations prohibit cloud seeding on storms that could produce severe weather, tornadoes, or flash floods. One of the companies singled out on social media for cloud seeding conducted its last operation on Wednesday, July 2nd."
He explained that "only an existing cloud can be seeded, and once that cloud has been seeded, it rains itself out. Furthermore, the cloud seeding took place southeast of San Antonio, roughly 150 miles away from Kerr County."
In another post, he noted that "Tropical Storm Barry is primarily responsible for this flood event, with an assist from upper level moisture peeled off from what was once Hurricane Flossie in the Pacific..."
As for New Mexico, the National Weather Service "monsoon awareness" page from 2018 explains that the state is affected by the North American Monsoon System (NAMS) each summer between June 15 and Sept. 30th.
Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. has reiterated during several press conferences over the past few days that a relief fund has been established through the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country for those seeking ways to help.
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