On screwworm invasion, Roger Marshall’s more embarrassing than usual | Opinion
Faced with a threat to the U.S. beef industry, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall has leapt into action to do what he does best — blame Joe Biden and Hispanics.
Never mind that his heroes, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, probably bear more responsibility because they defunded an animal-health program that was preventing the threat.
I don’t have time to write a column every time Roger Marshall goes on right-wing TV and says something dumb, but his appearance this week on the propaganda network Newsmax pretty much demands response.
A member of the Senate Agricultural Committee, Marshall was invited on the air to spout some Republican party-line rhetoric about the screwworm fly, a nasty little parasite that has resurfaced in Texas cattle and goats 60 years after it was eradicated from our borders.
“We’ve been through this before,” Marshall said. “We eradicated the screwworm in 1966 and we’ll talk about this, but this is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for, 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.”
First off, who’s “We”? Marshall was 6 years old in 1966. The White House was held by Lyndon Johnson and Congress was controlled by the Democrats.
But setting that aside, the probability that this problem was caused by migrants trekking northward from Central America is somewhere between vanishingly small and nonexistent.
People who are actually informed on this subject attribute the re-introduction of the screwworm fly primarily to organized crime and smuggling of illicit cattle from Central America to Mexico and northward.
The parasite’s life cycle argues strongly against humans carrying the disease to the southern U.S.
The female fly lays its eggs on open wounds or sores. The eggs hatch into maggots that burrow deep into the host animal’s flesh, cartilage, even bone. After 5-7 days, they leave the host and drop to the ground, where they gestate another 10 days or so before emerging as adult flies.
The festering open wounds caused by screwworms are horrifyingly painful and marked by the presence of pustulant discharge and the stench of decaying flesh. It’s impossible for a human to ignore.
The only recent human case in the U.S. was in Maryland last year, far from the southern border and involving a traveler who had just flown back from visiting El Salvador (for the record, migrants and refugees don’t have airplanes, so you can count them out).
Pets with untreated screwworm become incapacitated in a couple of days and die within a week or two, meaning it’s practically impossible that they’re walking alongside migrant owners on the weeks-long, 1,500 mile journey from Central America to south Texas.
Maybe Marshall doesn’t know that, or maybe he just thinks we’re not smart enough to figure that out. Either way it’s not a good look.
But as usual, randomly blaming Latin-American migrants is the go-to distraction from the Trump Administration to cover up mishandling of a situation from the start. In this case, it was ill-advised cuts by Trump’s now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency.
To quote Congressman Jim McGovern: “Trump & Elon Musk got rid of the USAID program that helped contain screwworms to Central America. Now, thanks to them, our beef is being infected with parasites. We’re all paying the price for this insane, far-right radical extremism.”
Or Congressman Darren Soto: “This screwworm epidemic may have been avoided if DOGE folks actually communicated with our ranchers. Instead, a team of wholly unqualified interns recklessly cut the screwworm prevention program. Now ranchers will suffer and beef prices will continue to rise.”
Confirming exactly how much DOGE cut from screwworm protection is practically impossible at this point.
While Trump administration officials struggle at eradicating screwflies, they’re experts at eradicating records of their mistakes.
The website www.doge.gov, where the administration once proudly ballyhooed the supposed savings by Musk and his musketeers, is now a blank page.
It’s a pretty sorry state of affairs in Kansas when congressmen from Massachusetts (McGovern) and Florida (Soto) are more credible than our own “Doc” Marshall on matters of veterinary and human medical concern.
But here we are.
This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 4:57 AM with the headline "On screwworm invasion, Roger Marshall’s more embarrassing than usual | Opinion."
