No, DOGE Didn't Cause the Screwworm Threat — But It May Have Made Things Worse

The claim circulating online is that DOGE budget cuts brought flesh-eating screwworms to America's doorstep. The truth is more complicated — and the distinction matters. The screwworm threat is real, but DOGE didn't create it.

In May 2025, the USDA suspended live cattle imports from Mexico after detecting New World Screwworm cases moving northward through Mexico toward the U.S. border. According to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), this was a genuine biosecurity emergency requiring immediate action. The Trump administration's response — suspending imports — was a precautionary move, not an admission of failure.

The screwworm's spread was a pre-existing biological trend. NPR and the New York Times both reported that the parasite had been advancing through Central America and Mexico for some time, driven by geography and ecology — not government policy. Reuters confirmed the suspension was a precaution against an ongoing spread, not a crisis that DOGE triggered.

Here's where the concern about DOGE becomes legitimate. Politico and USDA staffing records show that DOGE-related cuts did reduce personnel at APHIS, the very agency responsible for monitoring animal disease threats and running the sterile fly eradication program that keeps screwworms out of the U.S. Agricultural scientists raised real alarms that a leaner USDA is less equipped to contain a threat like this. That's a fair criticism — it just isn't the same as saying DOGE caused the threat.

The strongest version of the claim — that DOGE weakened America's defenses against a known biological risk — has genuine evidence behind it. But "weakened our response capacity" got compressed into "caused the crisis," which isn't accurate and muddies an otherwise important debate about what government agencies actually do.

This kind of story spreads fast because it connects a viscerally frightening image (parasites eating livestock alive) to a politically charged controversy. When the emotional stakes are high, nuance gets lost. Watch for headlines that skip from "budget cuts" to "caused" without explaining the steps in between — that gap is usually where the distortion lives.