The New Year is starting with a fresh warning for those who work with animals in Texas. The state’s Parks and Wildlife Department is asking hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts to watch out for animals that may be impacted by dangerous “maneater” parasites from flies that lay eggs in open wounds, nostrils, eyes and mouths.
The advisory, posted by the department on Dec. 30, was issued for outdoor enthusiasts in South Texas after the New World Screwworm was recently found in a cow in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas.
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the New World Screwworm has been making its way further north through the Americas.
“As a protective measure, animal health officials ask those along the southern Texas border to monitor wildlife, livestock and pets for clinical signs of NWS and immediately report potential cases,” the department said.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the New World Screwworm “is a devastating pest.”
“When NWS fly larvae (maggots) burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious, often deadly damage to the animal,” the USDA says. “NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds, and in rare cases, people.”
The Texas parks department says the maggots will lay eggs in “open wounds or orifices of live tissue such as nostrils, eyes or mouth.” Such an infestation is known as New World screwworm myiasis.
“These eggs hatch into dangerous parasitic larvae, and the maggots burrow or screw into flesh with sharp mouth hooks. Wounds can become larger, and an infestation can often cause serious, deadly damage or death to the infected animal.”
The scientific name for the parasite, Cochliomyia hominivorax, is roughly translated to “maneater,” according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
“It is an appropriate name,” the agency added, saying that the screwworm was once prevalent in the U.S., with 230,000 cases reported just in 1935. But then scientists developed a way to release sterilized male blow flies, and since female blow flies only mate once, the agency says it “effectively removed that female and her potential offspring from the population.”
It’s believed that the elimination of the New World Screwworm has saved U.S. agriculture workers nearly $900 million in lost livestock annually, the agency said.
New World Screwworms are endemic in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and countries in South America. The USDA says that cases of the parasite, however, are also spreading north to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.
“Although USDA eradicated NWS from the United States in 1966 using sterile insect technique, there is a constant risk of re-introduction into the United States,” the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service says. “To prevent the northward movement of this pest from South America to NWS-free areas in Central and North America, APHIS collaborates with Panama to maintain a barrier zone in eastern Panama.”
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says that female New World Screwworm flies are “drawn to the odor of a wound or natural opening on a live, warm-blooded animal.” There, just one fly can lay up to 300 eggs at a time, and she may lay up to 3,000 eggs during her lifetime.
After eggs hatch, they become larvae or maggots that burrow into an opening to feed. Once they feed, they drop to the ground, burrow into the soil and emerge as adult flies. The adult flies can travel long distances, the department says, “and the movement of infested livestock or wildlife can increase the rate of spread.”
Signs of NWS Myiasis include irritated or depressed behavior, loss of appetite, head shaking, the smell of decaying flesh, the presence of maggots in wounds and isolation from other animals or people.
To prevent an infestation, Texas officials say to clean and cover all wounds when spending time outdoors, especially in NWS-affected areas, and to apply insect repellant to outdoor clothing.
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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, which once again has had the NFL reject its pitch to perform a live reading of this newsletter as the Super Bowl halftime show.
The United States, and its news, failed to improve this week. Congress did fund the government but is already stuck ahead of the next spending deadline. Tulsi Gabbard remains at large. And while it’s not entirely about politics—though it’s not not about politics—we couldn’t resist a few words about the gutting of the local newspaper.
Blah, blah, life is sad—well, not anymore, because we’re kicking off 2026 primary season with Texas Week! Everybody grab two handfuls of sizzlin’ Texas chili (??) and git to reading.
1.
James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett
Entering the thick of primary season.
We are less than a month from the start of 2026 primary season, as Texas voters go to the polls on March 3. This is welcome news to the Surge. Early primary coverage feels so distant with its talk of endorsements, “war chests,” and other lifeless stats. Now we can cover proper knife fights down the stretch.
The prime drama of the week came in Texas’ competitive Senate Democratic primary between state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, of Dallas. It started when Morgan Thompson, a Texas TikTok personality, said that Talarico had told her privately “that he signed up to run against a mediocre Black man, not a formidable and intelligent Black woman.” The Black man in question is former Rep. Colin Allred, who ended his Senate campaign last year and switched to a House race. Allred then posted his own video response in which he endorsed Crockett and trashed Talarico, telling him, “If you want to compliment a Black woman, just do it. Just do it. Don’t do it while also tearing down a Black man.” For his part, Talarico said Thompson had offered a “mischaracterization” of his remark, and that he described only Allred’s “method of campaigning as mediocre.” (Not a particularly controversial observation there.)
National Republicans, who would prefer to run against the more polarizing, partisan figure in Crockett, have greatly enjoyed this all. It’s been a welcome distraction from their own Texas problems.
2.
John Cornyn
How much do Republicans need to worry, here?
Our view of the Texas Senate race has been that it gets way too much attention for a contest that Republicans are probably going to win by 5 to 7 points. It’s not among the top pickup opportunities that national Democrats are targeting. Democrats haven’t won statewide there since 1994, and they seriously backslid in the state in 2024. It’s expensive to run in. There’s always a lot of temptation, every cycle, for Democrats to believe that this time could be different. It never materializes.
All of which is to say: It’s temptation time again! The national atmosphere is lousy for Republicans, the gains they made among Hispanic voters in 2024 to fortify their Texas standing are evaporating, Texas Republicans just got dusted in a special election in what they thought was a safe-red district, and, most importantly, they have candidate problems of their own. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who would likely win reelection to his seat if he made it to November’s general, is in dreadful primary shape. After $50 million in advertising has been spent on his behalf, it’s still not clear that he’d make it to a runoff in his primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Even if he did make the runoff against Paxton, he’d likely be at a disadvantage. If Paxton, another partisan, polarizing figure laden with personal and professional baggage, becomes Republicans’ nominee, Democrats will feel the Texas temptation like never before.
3.
Tulsi Gabbard
Things aren’t getting less weird.
We regret to say that at the rate she’s going, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is at risk of replacing Lindsey Graham as the Surge’s go-to “Here’s what they were up to this week” entry. Not a good sign for America. We’ve learned of late that Gabbard, who had been out of the public eye for a while, has been running her own investigation into the results of the 2020 election and sniffing around old ballots and voting machines. She was on the scene at an FBI raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election center last week and, as we learned a few days ago, apparently called the president from Atlanta and put him on speakerphone with the agents who conducted the raid. None of this is within the DNI’s purview, all of it is wildly inappropriate at best, any of it would be a major scandal that Congress oversees immediately in a functioning government.
There is more. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that there’s a whistleblower complaint about Gabbard “that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress,” and that it’s “said to be locked in a safe.” A redacted version of the complaint, then, was finally made available to a select group of lawmakers later in the week, with executive privilege claims getting in the way of the good stuff. We shall see. Elsewhere in Gabland: It was reported that Gabbard “obtained” voting machines from Puerto Rico to play around with them and look for security vulnerabilities. OK!
4.
Jeff Bezos
A lot of people’s fault. But mostly his.
The Washington Post eliminated about a third of its staff and hundreds of journalism jobs this week in the worst single-day massacre of expertise and talent we’ve ever seen—even in an industry that’s been contracting all century. The Post nixed its sports and books coverage, axed much of its arts coverage, and gutted its international and metro desks. It is now narrowly focused on District of Columbia news and politics, making it less a swaggering international newspaper than a publication whose purview matches Politico’s.
The Post has gone through highs and lows going back decades. Yet the acute mismanagement of the past couple of years by its owner, Jeff Bezos, after he’d lost any apparent interest in owning a newspaper, is staggering. Seeking to protect his business before the government ahead of a potential Trump win in 2024, Bezos barred the editorial board from making an endorsement in the presidential race, costing the paper hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Individual mega-billionaires are under no obligation to use their largesse to subsidize public institutions like the Post forever. (A gentleman, though, might backfill at least the hole he personally created by interfering with the editorial board.) They’re not obligated to do so when it collides with their other business interests. We do think they’re obligated, however, to find someone who is willing to carry the task forward. Rather than destroy a public institution because it’s become a hassle in various ways, sell it to someone who gives a shit.
5.
Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries
ICE negotiations are going about as well as you’d expect.
Senate Democrats got what they wanted in the government funding battle that ensued following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Rather than extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security through September, it would be extended for two weeks while Democrats and Republicans negotiated some new restraints over immigration enforcement. The Senate passed this rejiggered deal late last week, and the House muscled it through on Tuesday.
It is now Saturday, and the sum total of negotiating progress that has been made is nothing. Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries put out a list of 10 demands—among them no masks for DHS officers, no roving DHS patrols, no racial profiling—which was met coolly by Republicans. “Democrats’ newest proposal is a ridiculous Christmas list of demands for the press,” Alabama’s Katie Britt, Senate Republicans’ lead DHS appropriator, said. “They continue to play politics to their radical base at the expense of the safety of Americans.” Democrats, meanwhile, say they are being serious—and it’s the Republicans who aren’t! Et cetera, et cetera, and so on and so forth. The conversation has moved largely toward what the next short-term DHS funding patch will look like, because a bigger deal to rein in immigration authorities does not appear to be in the ballpark of imminent.
6.
John Thune
Can the GOP’s dream voting law squeeze through the Senate?
A marked push from the most conservative factions in the House and Senate to pass a major voter verification and ID bill has kicked off, but it’s hitting the same old wall: the Senate filibuster. The bill in question was, at first, the SAVE Act, legislation that would require showing “documentary proof of United States Citizenship” in order to register to vote. Now there’s a new version—the SAVE America Act—that tacks on a requirement for presenting photo ID at polling places. Senate Democrats are fully hostile to the legislation, with Schumer calling it “Jim Crow 2.0” and saying it’s about “federalizing voter suppression.”
In order to appease certain House conservatives who were threatening to hold up the government funding bill this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would at least have a conversation with his senators about how to proceed on the SAVE Act and its successors. One idea that’s come up, as it often does during desperate times, is to force the minority to stage a “talking filibuster” to stall it, and wait for them to exhaust their parliamentary options. Those never happen, and for good reason: It could eat up weeks or months of valuable Senate floor time and force Senate Republicans to be on or near the Senate floor for most of that time. This is one of those discussions we’d expect to naturally dissipate on its own once it becomes clear how unpalatable all of the options are. But depending on how involved Trump gets, Thune could have to withstand a lot of pressure.
7.
Jeanine Pirro
Preach!
The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia finally said something cool this week, then got in trouble for it. “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Jeanine Pirro said in an appearance on her old stomping grounds at Fox News. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.” This didn’t sit well with gun-rights groups, who were already displeased with the administration for the way it talked about how Alex Pretti, who was carrying lawfully, shouldn’t have brought his gun with him to protest immigration officers in Minnesota. Elected Republicans, too, criticized her, with Florida Rep. Greg Steube, for example, telling Pirro, “Come and Take it!”
As Steube said in his own post, though, he’s licensed in both Florida and D.C. to carry. No one, regrettably, is going to take away Greg Steube’s gun. “Let me be clear: I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment,” Pirro said in a follow-up social media post. “Washington, D.C. law requires handguns be licensed in the District with the Metropolitan Police Department to be carried into our community. We are focused on individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns and will continue building on that momentum to keep our communities safe.” That’s just a simple explanation of D.C. law that it’s her job to enforce. So she’ll probably have to keep apologizing.
Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to [email protected]. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.
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