Why Your Ribeye Now Costs $22, Thanks to DOGE
Trump and Musk fired the people keeping a flesh-eating parasite out of the cattle herd. Beef prices are up 16% and climbing.
By David Shuster
If the Trump White House had a mascot, it would be the screwworm. The parasite is a vulgar creature that makes everything it touches worse.
The screwworm lays its eggs in the wounds of living animals, and the resulting larvae proceeds to consume flesh with the diligence and appetite of Donald Trump’s approach to Big Macs.
For 60 years, the loathsome and expensive screwworm was largely controlled. Then the Trump 2nd term geniuses arrived.
Trump administration 2.0, with the help of Elon Musk, promised a revolution in government efficiency.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) we were told, would eliminate waste. In turn, Musk’s DOGE fired hundreds of thousands of government workers.
Some of those workers had the responsibility of monitoring and containing screwworm outbreaks in Central America. The reason for their work was obvious to anyone capable of connecting cause and effect. The cheapest place to stop a parasite is before it reaches your border. The cheapest outbreak is the one that never occurs.
But under the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative, screwworm monitoring was cut. Not after the threat had vanished. Not because experts declared the mission accomplished. It was cut while the threat remained active and, astonishingly, just days before the Trump administration lifted restrictions on cattle imports from Mexico.
Agricultural officials warned against it. Ranchers warned against it. Livestock experts warned against it.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says that he and other state officials spent months sounding alarms as screwworm infections moved steadily northward through Mexico.
They might as well have been shouting at an unconscious or napping Trump.
And even when Trump is awake, our government has little use for expertise. People who actually understand a problem are viewed as obstacles to the glorious simplicity of cutting budgets.
Why listen to veterinarians when there are Elon Musk spreadsheets? Why heed inspectors when there are press releases? Why concern oneself with biology when Trump has already fallen in love with ideology?
The screwworm, unfortunately, proved stubbornly indifferent to branding strategies.
Now the consequences are arriving precisely as predicted. Cases in the U.S. are soaring. Cattle restrictions are tightening. Ranchers are facing greater risks. Beef supplies are diminishing. And consumers are paying more. Prices have risen 16% in just the past year. A two pound ribeye steak now costs $22.
And what magnificent savings did Trump and Musk achieve? The public has never been told. Because the Trump apostles of austerity never linger to calculate the costs that emerge after their celebrated cuts. They count the dollars saved today and ignore the extra millions spent tomorrow.
This is not efficiency. It is vandalism masquerading as management.
Real efficiency requires understanding what a system actually does. It requires distinguishing between bureaucracy that exists merely to perpetuate itself and institutions that perform essential work.
A program preventing a flesh-eating parasite from reaching the North American cattle industry is not ornamental. It is not a luxury. It is not some decadent indulgence dreamed up by idle civil servants. It is one of the basic maintenance functions of a modern agricultural filled economy.
Yet modern politics, under Trump, has often rewarded theatrical gestures rather than competent administration. The politician who quietly funds disease surveillance receives no applause. The politician (usually a republican) who abolishes it receives headlines, interviews, and social media celebrations for “cutting waste.” Months later, when the predictable consequences emerge, everyone acts mystified.
The entire affair reveals a deeper truth about the governing philosophy behind DOGE. It rests on the childish Trump assumption that government can be understood as a collection of expenses rather than a collection of responsibilities. Under this theory, every line item appears suspicious, every expert appears expendable, and every safeguard appears unnecessary—until the moment it fails.
Then reality enters the room or the ranch.
Reality is entering now.
The irony is exquisite. The DOGE initiative, supposedly devoted to lowering costs, has now helped raise them. A project advertised as a crusade against waste is now forcing taxpayers to spend more. A Trump movement that promised managerial brilliance has only succeeded in demonstrating why experienced agricultural professionals were worried in the first place.
The screwworm itself deserves no blame. It is merely behaving according to its nature.
The same cannot be said of Trump and his sycophants who were warned repeatedly, ignored those warnings, dismantled preventive safeguards, and now watch the consequences unfold with expressions of bewilderment.
The worm, at least, has the excuse of being a parasite.
There is no excuse for Trump, Musk, and their team of imbeciles.
Cliff’s Note: This is exactly the kind of reporting nobody else connects the dots on—David Shuster just traced a flesh-eating parasite and your $22 ribeye straight back to Trump and Musk firing the people who kept it out.
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—Cliff
Basically, the administration Screwed Us.
Dr. Angie Rasmussen and I discussed this about a week ago on a back and forth thread.
There is not a single person in this administration from a leadership perspective that knows what the fuck they are doing. Plain and simple.
The billion dollars it's going to cost to try to get this under control should be charged directly to Elmo. He'll still have over $999B in wealth. He broke it, he buys it.