Joe Biden’s border policy was a disaster. We all knew it and many of us were critical of the past president’s position on immigration. Yes, both sides make mistakes. But Biden’s failures continue.
There is a dangerous, flesh-eating parasite invading our country, causing chaos, costing consumers, and impacting American lives. And, apparently Joe Biden is to blame for that, too.
In a CNBC appearance on Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins discussed the reappearance of the New World screwworm, decades after it had been eradicated, and she was quick to invoke a Biden reference, assigning responsibility to Joe Biden for allowing the screwworm‘s return to American soil.
“Under the last administration with the massive movement under the open borders policy, the cartels, etc., border security, that’s when [the screwworm] began to make its way back up toward America, hitting Mexico in early 2023, moving its way up through Mexico in 2024,” Rollins said.
Not to be outdone, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, piled on, “This is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for. Millions of people came out of Central America. They brought this screwworm with them; it was on their pets and maybe on their flesh, as well.” Really?
So, what is this thing and why do we care? The New World screwworm is a parasite whose larvae burrow into the flesh of livestock, wildlife, pets, and occasionally humans. If it gets into the U.S. beef supply, infected cattle will need to be destroyed, current and future farm revenues will be impacted, and meat prices will explode.
So, get me Joe Biden on the phone. Why did he welcome immigrants that were carrying screwworms with them? I’m sure screwworms would never have crossed the border on their own. Hello, Joe?
But wait; Sleepy Joe isn’t president now and hasn’t been for a year and a half. Dozy Don is president now. When does it become Donald Trump’s America? When does the guy who is in his sixth year in office actually take responsibility for ANYTHING?
Gas prices go up? Blame Biden. School shooting? Joe’s fault. It rains too much? Well, that’s no one’s fault because climate change is a hoax. A flesh-eating parasite appears in Texas, in Donald Trump’s second (or sixth) year in office? Blame Joe B.
It’s genius. You never have to solve a problem if you can simply point at the guy in Delaware, and exclaim, “He did it!” And 30 percent of Americans fall for it.
However, when the New World screwworm was wiped out decades ago, it was defeated through science, not politics. And, since then, the United States and neighboring countries maintained an elaborate monitoring and eradication effort. Scientists bred millions of sterile male flies and released them into affected regions. Female screwworms that mated with sterile males produced no offspring. The population collapsed. Science triumphed and turned back the worm.
For some perspective, let’s return to 2025, when the people who are now pointing fingers and demanding answers, were insisting that government programs were wasteful, bureaucratic, and/or woke.
Enter Elon Mush and his chainsaw. Remember that? It seems like 5-10 years ago, but it was early last year when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency became famous for claiming to cut trillions, although most studies peg the actual savings at less than one percent of that goal.
Regardless, scientific expertise was shown the door. Science can’t compete with a chainsaw when it comes to catchy memes. And this administration loves catchy memes.
While we can’t say that government cuts were fully responsible for the return of the worm, we do know that monitoring was cut back, resources were reduced, and attention was distracted. We’ll never know for sure, but government workers who had been just sitting around drinking coffee and inventing regulations were no longer there.
Except that wasn’t all they were doing. Some government employees actually do things. Some government programs were effective. For example, USAID programs were frozen on Trump’s first day in office last year, and all operations ceased by July 1. Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health estimated late last year that the shutdown had already led to “hundreds of thousands of deaths” from infectious diseases and malnutrition. But dollars were saved.
And before the chainsaw, some government scientists had been making sure that flesh-eating parasites don’t reestablish themselves in our country.
So, while it’s always easy to point the finger at Joe Biden, maybe it’s time to take some accountability (a seemingly foreign concept today). DOGE cuts may have saved a little budget money while generating even greater costs, with new crises that Trump and Musk will be blamed for throughout the next Democratic president’s term. And the cycle continues.
We could compare the chainsaw approach of DOGE to the dismissing of an entire fire department because there hasn’t been a major blaze lately. “All these firefighters are just sitting around, doing nothing!” Then, when the town catches fire, the people who defunded the firefighters demand to know why nobody put out the fire.
Some governmental agencies are not wasteful. Some federal employees are not evil. Some scientific programs are not conspiracies. And sometimes the bureaucrat studying screwworms may be more important than the politician playing politics.
The task for Americans is to figure out which parasites are actually causing the bigger problem.
Curt MacRae is a resident of Coldwater, MI and publishes opinion columns regularly.
To be notified by email when a column is published, or to offer feedback: rantsbymac@gmail.com
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