The United States eradicated the New World Screwworm in 1966 and successfully eliminated a small outbreak from the Florida Keys in 2017 by mass producing sterile, male flies because female screwworms only mate once.
Although we refer to this flesh eating parasite as a worm, is not a worm at all, but a species of blowfly native to the southern U.S. The flies are attracted to rotting, unkept wounds. Females can lay 200 to 300 eggs, which grow into larvae that look like screws and have special mouth hooks to tear into an animal’s flesh and burrow deeper. But like pretty much everything that Trump and his (mis)administration touches, our costly efforts to eradicate this MAGAt has turned to 💩 💩 💩.
Currently, the USDA confirmed two additional cases of screwworm in Texas — one in a calf in La Salle County and another in a dog in Andrews County — bringing the total cases to four. But, the woman who told us we could have a $3 dollar dinner by eating a piece of chicken, a “piece” of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing,” now claims the U.S. food supply is “not at risk” from the return of the flesh-eating screwworm parasite to Texas.
“This is not a virus, it’s not a disease, it’s just a little pest, a larva that lands in a calf’s wound, for example, and it can be treated,” Rollins said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“We have boots on the ground … we’ll be able to beat this back, but we’re going to do everything we can, investing over a billion dollars to push this pest back into Mexico, then to eradicate, as we did about 50 years ago,” she later added.
Of course all that didn’t stop this out of touch strega from blaming the Biden-Harris administration. Not once did they mention anything about the agency getting DOGEd:
the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency gutted the United States Agency for International Development, which included a program dedicated to preventing the spread of the parasite across the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a report from Agri-Pulse published in March 2025, which cited a list of cut programs sent to Congress.
The screwworm prevention program was part of roughly 5,300 grants and programs cut from USAID. The program also monitored outbreaks of avian flu in Asia, according to the report.