June 09, 2026 01:03 PM UTC

Trump And DOGE Have Screwwormed America

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• by: Colorado Pols

As KKTV Colorado Springs reports, Colorado state agricultural officials are on alert after a potentially devastating exotic parasite affecting livestock was detected in United States for the first time in decades:

Governor Jared Polis announced a new “Response Plan” to protect Colorado’s cattle industry from the New World Screwworm (NWS).

Screwworms are parasitic fly larvae that feed on living tissue. The response plan comes after the NWS fly reached south Texas last week…

Officials said the plan also includes the Department of Agriculture working to ensure animals coming from infested zones do not pose a risk to Colorado’s livestock. This may include an emergency order to ensure livestock meet all health requirements before leaving an impacted area.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture will work with other state and local partners, officials said, including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, to address potential impacts on livestock, human and wildlife health.

Forbes reports as cases of cattle infected with the new world screwworm spread in south Texas that federal resources devoted to keeping the pest out of the United States were cut last year as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mass layoffs–layoffs that have proven disastrously shortsighted well before this latest failure:

The return of screwworm comes after the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, launched by the Trump administration, last year cut funding for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America.

The funding was axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).

Agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders raised alarm about the cuts at the time and, for the last several months, pleaded with the government to step in as they monitored screwworm infections moving north through Mexico—but they were ignored, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told NBC News. [Pols emphasis]

Today, as livestock producers rush to take precautions, the Trump administration is doing what it always does in these situations–preposterously blaming the Biden administration. TNR:

“Under the last administration with the massive movement under the open borders policy that the cartels, etcetera, border security, that’s when it began to make its way back up toward America, hitting Mexico in early 2023, moving its way up through Mexico in 2024,” Agriculture Secretary Rollins said Monday morning on CNBC, claiming that Biden’s immigration policy was the direct cause of the screwworm reinfestation.

“This is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for,” Senator Roger Marshall told NewsMax. “That when millions of people came out of Central America, they brought this screwworm with them. It was on their pets, maybe on their flesh as well.”

Almost a year and a half into Trump’s second administration, continuing to blame the Biden administration is as laughable as it is sadly predictable. The return of the new work screwworm to the United States has an obvious traceable origin to policy decisions made by the Trump administration–decisions they were loudly warned would have this exact outcome while they were being made. Now the cost of remediation and prevention of this infestation across states and government agencies, to say nothing of the higher costs consumers could face for already-overpriced beef products, could easily dwarf the “savings” achieved by DOGEing these programs.

We haven’t seen any comment as of yet from Rep. Gabe Evans, an unflappable cheerleader for DOGE and whose district contains significant cattle operations. Obviously, we’d be very sad if one of the three cows Evans owns but doesn’t take care of were to become infected with a parasite that funding cuts Evans supported allowed into the country. We hope Evans would be sad too, but it’s not like he sees his cows much.

To you who love your cows, hold them close–and bandage their open sores.