Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) sparked widespread mockery Monday after both appeared on Newsmax to blame former President Joe Biden for the screwworm emergency now threatening Texas cattle — despite the Trump administration's own cuts to the very monitoring programs designed to stop the parasite.
Rollins, who oversees the federal response to the first confirmed U.S. screwworm infestation in decades, pointed the finger squarely at her predecessor. "I do think it's important to note that under the last administration, with the massive movement under the open borders policy, the cartels, et cetera, border security — that's when it began to make its way back up toward America," she said, adding that when she took office in February 2025, "obviously not much had been done to push back."
Marshall, a Kansas Republican who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, went further. "This is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for," he said, claiming migrants who crossed the southern border "brought this screwworm with them."
Critics were swift.
"The Trump Admin cut funding for screwworm detection and fired 25% of staff responsible for tracking the disease," Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) wrote on X. "I'm embarrassed for the Secretary that her only answer is to blame the administration that left office a year and a half ago."
Progressive activist and former congressional candidate Melanie D'Arrigo was more blunt: "Your reminder that Trump gutted the agencies and programs that would have prevented the screwworm outbreak."
Political commentator Ron Filipkowski noted the pattern: "Of course, screwworm now showing up in the US in June 2026 is also the fault of Joe Biden, just like everything else continues to be Joe Biden's fault during the Trump presidency."
The mockery had a sharp edge. In 2025, the Trump administration terminated USAID-funded programs operated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that monitored and helped contain screwworm in Central America. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) also cut roughly 15,000 USDA employees — about 15% of the agency's workforce.
There's also a timeline problem with the blame on Biden. The Biden administration closed ports of entry to cattle from Mexico in November 2024. It was the Trump administration that reopened them in February 2025 — only to shut them down again in May 2025.
Journalist Juliet Jeske, who runs the Decoding Fox News podcast, put it simply, asking on X: "Did Biden build a time machine?"