Proof from the states: the right wing attempt to repeal the 20th century

Three young coal miners with headlamps stand inside a dark mine tunnel alongside a mule. — Child laborers and a mule in a mine in Gary, W. Va. in September 1908 (Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, provided by Library of Congress via Wikimedia)

Abortion bounties, brass knuckles, chemtrail studies and a bill to bring back the gas chamber. All of it introduced this session.

Republicans are trying to make a case at their convention in Dallas this week that they’re responsible stewards of the government, while their opponents are extremist ideologues. However, a review of legislation introduced across all 50 states indicates that they are the ones with an extremism problem. From banning no fault divorce to studying chemtrails, the Republican Party has gone off the rails.

In the table below, you can find 1,182 separate bills proposed by Republicans across every state except Delaware and Nevada. They have a single theme: they want to repeal the 20th century.

In case you don’t want to scroll through all of them, here are just some of the issues these bills address:

Your body and your family

Anti-reproductive rights bills go beyond just bans on abortions (Alaska HB 357). They often include bans on abortifacients and IVF (Arkansas HB 1554), and they can offer bounties on women who’ve sought reproductive care (Louisiana HB 575) and even charge them with murder (Georgia HB 122).
Gay rights would face a massive setback as well. While anti-trans laws get most of the publicity (Texas HB 3817), they’d also ban displays of the Pride flag (Iowa HF 694), bring back conversion therapy (Michigan HB 4752) and even ask the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (South Dakota HCR 6012).
Speaking of marriage, they also want to end no-fault divorce (Indiana HB 1684).

Your health care

There are plenty of bills that would eliminate vaccine requirements (Maine LD 727), as well as outright banning some vaccines (Tennessee HB 1852).
In their stead, they’d replace vaccines with quack medicine. Hydroxychloroquine (South Carolina HB 3916), ivermectin (Wyoming HB 13) and chiropractors (North Carolina HB 702) seem to be their priorities.
Oh, and right-wingers are also making it so doctors can refuse treating anyone they don’t agree with (Colorado HB 1255).

Your kids’ schools

Instead of improving schools, they want to infuse them with culture war by banning books, forcing students to watch pro-life propaganda (Virginia HB 2440), eliminating sex ed (Oklahoma SB 1737), targeting LGBTQ+ youth (Texas HB 4710) and making it easier to bully students (Minnesota SF 3042).
And in general, they want to defund those schools by eliminating funding for full day kindergarten (New Hampshire HB 319) and positions like school nurses (Oklahoma SB 1634) and counselors (Oklahoma SB 1739) targeted in particular. They want to encourage giving public funds to private schools through vouchers as well (California SCA 1). Or even eliminating compulsory education altogether (Idaho HJR 1).

Find your state

1,182 bills and counting. On a computer, use the search and filter controls above the table. On a phone, scroll or download the full list.

1,182 bills and counting

The full tracker is searchable and filterable by state, chamber, and issue. It works best on a larger screen or in its own tab.

Open the full tracker

Source: LegiScan and state legislature websites. Summaries are our characterizations. Last updated Sept. 8, 2026.

Your safety

They want to eliminate even the most basic, common sense gun safety laws. These include eliminating roadblocks to teens getting them (West Virginia HB 5372), letting people take guns on planes (Illinois HB 1474) or to football games (South Carolina HB 5163), getting rid of red flag laws (Massachusetts HD 3593) and making it legal to point a gun at someone in more instances (Oklahoma HB 2818).
There’s a general undercurrent of bloodlust that also has them wanting to legalize brass knuckles (New Hampshire HB 207) and bring back the gas chamber (Ohio HB 36).
That bloodlust is aimed at animals too, with proposals to legalize cockfighting (Oklahoma SB 1111), including against robots (Oklahoma HB 1326).

What you eat, drink and breathe

They also want your drinking water to have more stuff in it (Washington SB 5896): PFAS (Wisconsin AB 130), pesticides (Connecticut HB 5913), even lead (Alabama HB 330)!
I’ve noted before that right-wingers are pro-diarrhea but even I was shocked when I saw just how many bills they introduced that would make it easier to sell unpasteurized milk (Pennsylvania HB 1201).

What you pay

A number of states want to give the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran more leverage over the U.S. by making it harder to have an electric car (Florida HB 37), including by banning them from parking garages (New Hampshire HB 182).
On top of that, they want to make it a lot harder to build renewable energy, with burdensome red tape (Maryland HB 742), taxes (Kansas SB 534), and outright bans on them (Rhode Island HB 7177), all to protect the people making you pay more at the pump.
Instead of addressing housing costs, they want to make it easier to jack up rent (New York A 7705) and harder to build more houses (Connecticut HB 5114).
You also have some blatant giveaways to donors, especially involving the cryptocurrency industry (North Dakota HB 1184). But plenty of other right-wing players (AI data centers (Idaho HB 609), gun range owners (Arkansas HB 1007), lobbyists (Iowa HCR 4), rich people in general (Hawaii HB 283)) get handouts.
Republicans have attempted a pro-worker rebrand of late, but the bills they introduced have shown they want to gut employment protections (Florida HB 1601), promote child labor (Missouri HB 1245), limit unions (Maine LD 187) and keep wages low (Washington SB 5339).

Your vote and your government

Anti-democracy bills restrict voters’ abilities to pass laws and constitutional amendments through statewide votes, often by increasing the thresholds to nearly impossible percentages (Oregon HJR 21) or require they win a majority of gerrymandered congressional districts as well (Missouri HJR 16).
They also want to eliminate the direct election of U.S. senators (Montana SJR 22)
I don’t know if you remember the causes of the Civil War, but some states want the ability to ignore federal laws (Kentucky SJR 26). And this is with right-wingers controlling the presidency, Congress and the courts!
Speaking of the Civil War, they also really want to protect memorials to people who committed treason (Mississippi HB 1487).
And there’s this weird undercurrent of interstate aggression, with a number of proposals to seize adjacent territory (Iowa SB 354) and water (New Jersey SB 4670) or secede from their states (New Mexico HJR10).

The fringe file

Conspiracy theorists get a better hearing than most constituents. Republicans really want to investigate chemtrails (Vermont HB 217) and institute bans on fluoridation (Nebraska LB 121), implanting microchips (Tennessee HB 1877) and 5G cell phone towers (New York S 7106).
They also want to go back to the gold standard (Utah HB 195), as if fiat currency hasn’t led to unprecedented growth and prosperity since the end of World War II.
And there’s a cult of personality developing around Donald Trump, as many lawmakers want to name things after him (Arizona SCM 1001) (including mountains! (West Virginia HCR 33)), devote holidays to him (Oklahoma SB 1105) and classify opposition to him as a mental illness (Minnesota SF 2589).

There’s so much more that I can’t even cover it all. But a simple pattern emerges: They want to reverse the progress that humanity made over the last century. I thought we’d eliminated preventable disease, child labor, patent medicine, unsafe food and Gilded Age corruption. But the Republican Party increasingly rejects modernity and wants to return to something resembling a state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish and short.

My simple request to Republicans over the coming week is show me receipts. You’re going to say Democrats support all sorts of crazy stuff. Well, give us examples of them actually trying to turn those crazy ideas into laws. Because right now, the scoreboard is 1,182 to 0.