The Amazing Juan Ciscomani, Taking Undeserved Credit for Solving a Problem He Helped Create

The New World Screwworm, photo credit TheHill.com           

It’s unfortunately normal for elected officials to jump out front and take a bow when government moves to solve a problem of which they may, in their waking moments, favor solving, but which they had little to do with this coming to fruition.

It’s unusual, though, for that same politician to have been part of the problem in the first place. But Sixth District Congressman Juan Ciscomani managed that earlier this month.

            Ciscomani rushed to “proudly” announce that the US Department of Agriculture had given our University of Arizona a $3.74 million grant to combat the spread of the New World Screwworm, that unattractive parasite pictured above that bores (like a screw) into living flesh in large animals like cattle, severely wounding them. The worm had barely been detected in the US since 1980, but more than 30 cases have been found in Texas since June, and this invasion won’t go away by itself.

            The UA’s College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences will use the grant money to increase Arizona’s ability to detect and respond to the threat. The university moved quickly: “The grant proposal grew out of a rapid collaboration led by Amy Ganguli, an extension specialist…who brought together a broad coalition of stakeholders, including the livestock industry, veterinarians, government agencies and conservation organizations. In just weeks, the team developed a proposal backed by 26 letters of support.”

            One of those letters was from Ciscomani to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, touting the grant. Since he is not known to be a life scientist, veterinarian, or actual boots on the ground government official, it can be presumed that was all he offered the effort. Nonetheless he worked hard to get himself some positive press on the issue, and some media outlets fell for it.

            But where was Ciscomani in early 2025, when the spurious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took chainsaws to federal agencies at the behest of Juan’s Supreme Leader, Donald Trump? The Agriculture Department’s Research Service, the agency’s chief scientific service, lost 31 percent of its staff, and former USDA officials said the DOGE cuts “slowed government efforts to contain the New World Screwworm.”

            The DOGE cuts happened as Republican members of Congress, including Juan Ciscomani, stood by or even applauded as health and safety guardrails that protected Americans and their food supply were bulldozed to the ground. We never heard a word about that in his crowing about the UA grant, though.

            The Unseat Ciscomani Team sent a representative to Texas to get an interview with a New World Screwworm about how its breed was able to infiltrate the US from Mexico and Central America for the first time in decades. “So long as there are ineffective legislators like Juan Ciscomani in Congress, we’ll always find a way in,” the worm told us.