Illinois State Rep. Darren Bailey has a long list of horrible legislative accomplishments. He’s opposed a plan to allow the state’s Medicaid program to cover sex reassignment surgeries for transgender citizens. He agreed that if the contributions of LGBTQ people were included in history classes, then we should also teach heterosexual history. And when he sponsored a bill to put “In God We Trust” in every public school, he openly admitted his goal was to push religion in classrooms.

He just outdid himself.

Over the weekend, Bailey promoted anti-vaxxer propaganda to his base:

The image there says nobody has died from measles over a recent decade, but more than 100 have died in the same time span from measles vaccines.

As you might guess, it’s all nonsense. That 108 number comes from a database that counts all deaths that chronologically occur after a vaccine is given. If a child gets his shots, then drowns the next day, it’s included on the list even though the shot had nothing to do with it.

The only person who needs to be “properly educated about vaccinations” is the idiot in office who’s trying to promote the kind of bullshit that will actually lead to more deaths — all while the nation goes through the biggest outbreak of measles we’ve seen in decades.

Bailey, along with Republicans Chris Miller and Monica Bristow, also sponsored a bill, HB 342, that would “inform the patient if the vaccine contained aborted baby tissue.”

There’s literally no “aborted baby tissue” in vaccines. (And that link goes to a Catholic website.) The only way you would think that is if you uncritically believe right-wing propaganda or thought you were watching Avengers: Endgame but accidentally walked into the theater showing Unplanned. The bill thankfully wasn’t taken seriously by the Democrats in power and went nowhere.

So all Bailey can do is spread his fiction online. We’re lucky in Illinois that a handful of insane politicians don’t have enough power to do real damage. That’s not the case everywhere.

(via Capitol Fax)

