Photo and headline: KTEP, 4/27/2026
Michael Adkison reports:
New World screwworm larva, like the one pictured, will hatch and feed on the flesh of living animals, typically cattle Cases in humans are rare but can be fatal.
Six Texas counties in the Rio Grande Valley are the subject of state-level scrutiny — more than 1,000 miles away. Florida is restricting animal imports from the Lone Star State amid the threat of screwworm detections.
New World screwworm (NWS) is not currently in the United States, though Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said a case has been confirmed in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, 60 miles south of Texas.
As a result, Florida is targeting several "high-risk" counties in South Texas, requiring any livestock animals imported from those counties to undergo increased veterinary screenings and treatment.
Early detection, prompt reporting and treatment — backed by coordinated surveillance along the border — will be critical to keeping this treatable pest contained. Ranches are tightening calving seasons, upgrading working facilities and revisiting parasite control plans with their veterinarians. The core message to the fight against NWS: nothing replaces “eyes on animals.”
“We’ve been preparing for the possibility of screwworms emerging back in Texas for the past year,” says Jason Sawyer, East Foundation chief science officer. “We have decided to take the attitude of preparedness. We expect we’re going to have it. How can we best manage it and best mitigate and really, how do we minimize the impact while we weather the storm?”
In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for sixty years.
Writing for the majority in Callais v. Louisiana, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court was not striking down Section 2 of the VRA, but rather “properly” interpreting it as “impos[ing] liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.
Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, accused the majority of making changes that “eviscerate the law.”
