WA Rep Jayapal: 'Elon Musk Should Have to Pay For This': Trump Admin Says It Needs $1 Billion to Combat Screwworm

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https://www.commondreams.org/

‘Elon Musk Should Have to Pay For This’: Trump Admin Says It Needs $1 Billion to Combat Screwworm

“Trump and Musk’s DOGE ‘saved’ $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “Now, there’s an outbreak infecting our beef and the administration is spending $1 billion.”

STEPHEN PRAGER
Jun 16, 2026

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In addition to the $15 million cut to monitoring the spread of the bugs from Panama, the Houston Chronicle reported that DOGE paused plans for a facility in Mexico that the Biden administration had authorized in 2024 as part of a $165 million emergency package to fight screwworm.

Amid mass layoffs at the USDA, it reported that funding for the facility—which was supposed to produce between 60-100 million sterile flies per week—was not announced until May 2025. While the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) still says fly production at the facility is expected to begin “as early as summer 2026,” it is still listed as “under construction.”

Kevin Shea, who served as administrator of APHIS under the Obama administration and retired from the agency in January 2025, told the Chronicle that efforts to contain the screwworm were put on hold at the start of Trump’s second term. “This administration came in so skeptical of the career people, they didn’t really want to listen,” he said. “The hold up in the money going to Mexico for the sterile fly facility was most likely caught up in the whole DOGE thing. It probably looked like some sort of foreign aid.”

Journalist Christopher Collins wrote in the Texas Observer on Tuesday that, additionally, “deep staffing cuts” to APHIS, which lost nearly 1,900 employees during Trump’s first year back in office, eliminated “the first line of defense against incoming parasites,” who are responsible for “inspecting the cattle awaiting import from Mexico to ensure no screwworms are hitching a ride.”

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