The Trump administration is coming under fire for its response to the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea and has so far been documented in more than two dozen states.

Public health officials still have not identified the source of the outbreak, which typically spreads via contaminated produce.

In an interview with Axios published Saturday, David Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggested that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not been on top of tracking the outbreak the same way it has been in the past.

“Right now it’s individual state health departments that are having to speak up,” remarked Freedman, “because the CDC is really not following it on a day-to-day basis.”

Omer Awan, vice chair and associate program director for the diagnostic radiology residency at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told PBS in an interview published Monday that infections will likely only grow if the government doesn’t track down the source of the outbreak quickly.

“Because we haven’t pinned it down, that means that these cases are likely to disseminate,” said Awan. “People are still eating the contaminated food that’s leading to so many cases.”

Awan added that mass firings at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the leadership of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were hindering CDC’s ability to track the disease.

“The HHS and the federal government laid off a lot of CDC employees,” said Awan. “Many of them were the very employees that would track these particular outbreaks. And the other is that, from July of 2025 last year, the CDC has no longer required reporting cyclosporiasis. It’s become optional to report this to the CDC’s Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network.”

Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, pointed to the CDC decision to stop monitoring the cyclospora parasite as an example of the Trump administration putting Americans “in another shitty situation after laying waste to our public health infrastructure and gutting emergency preparedness.”

“Because RFK Jr.'s CDC turned a blind eye to dangerous foodborne pathogens,” Woodhouse added, “this outbreak spread quickly and states are now scrambling to do their own detective work on what’s causing it. The catastrophic cuts Trump and RFK Jr. made to disease surveillance and research keep coming back to haunt us, yet they want to cut even deeper to make up for their tax breaks for billionaires.”

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that both federal and state officials have launched an investigation into whether fast food chain Taco Bell “played a role” in the cyclosporiasis outbreak.

According to the Post’s sources, some people who got sick from the disease said they had eaten at Taco Bell shortly becoming symptomatic, although others who were infected by the parasite said they had not eaten at the fast food chain before growing ill.

“Public health officials have said this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in more than 30 states,” reported the Post, “means more information and more patients to help identify shared foods, shopping habits and restaurant visits among those sickened to help determine the source.”

Progressive activist and media figure Justin Kanew sounded an alarm Tuesday after a Democratic district attorney shared a "horrifying" account of law enforcement training in the GOP-controlled state of Tennessee.

On Saturday, an op-ed written by Democratic District Attorney Steven Mulroy of Memphis was published in USA Today detailing his experience attending a “weeklong use-of-force training for law enforcement by Force Science, a private company hired by many law enforcement agencies across the country.”

Mulroy didn't mince words in the op-ed, branding the course a pipeline for "police trained to kill.”

“The prosecutions of the officers accused of killing Floyd and Garner were ‘witch hunts,’” Mulroy wrote, describing the use-of-force training course.

“The choke hold used to kill Garner had nothing to do with his death, despite medical examiners' conclusions that called that into question. Indeed, the instructors said concerns about choke holds were overblown. If a suspect says ‘I can’t breathe’ repeatedly, that means he can breathe – otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to say anything.”

Instead of shock, Mulroy’s op-ed was met with outrage from his fellow district attorneys in Tennessee, with six Republican district attorneys – and two registered independents – condemning him for writing it.

“With his reckless words, it is General Mulroy who has failed in his responsibility,” the district attorneys wrote in a joint statement.

In a video published on Tuesday, Kanew expressed utter shock at both the revelations unearthed in Mulroy’s op-ed and the reaction to it. He also warned that such training was "guaranteeing more people are going to die” and questioned why the story hadn’t gotten national attention.

“How is this not national news? I’m baffled! Nobody’s talking about this, so I’m going to keep talking about this because it’s horrifying,” Kanew said.

“To make matters worse, the reaction to his op-ed was not horror by fellow DAs and police saying, ‘that’s wrong,’ it was to go after him for saying this! It’s bold for him to write that, especially in Memphis. This DA writes this, and the other DAs don’t say, ‘oh my god, you’re right,’ they say, ‘how could you say such a thing?’”