Why Asmongold's Kid Shooting Ban Split The Internet & Zuckerberg Just Started a War Over AI
PDS Published 08/10/2026
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This Aspen Gold situation is blown up and divided the internet after he got banned from Twitch for saying that migrant children should be shot and then proceeded to double meet his open.
Wait, AI firestorms gotten even bigger, but Facebook also just got caught shelling out money to neo-Nazis and AI slop. You also have decades of abuse getting uncovered at this prestigious art school, with the Jeffrey Epstein connection making the story even.
You've got a flesh-eating parasite spreading through Mexico with cases now reaching the United States.
We're talking about all of that and even more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news, starting with this.
When or if you have a kid, you got to make some really difficult decisions about how you're going to raise and half the time you'll have an idea, but what you're going to do, and then you're actually in the position you do something.
Right. Helicopter parent, never let him out of your sight and stick a tracker in their. Or do you hand them a key?
You tell them, hey, stay safe or least amount of open world to explore and gain experience. And or is it somewhere in between. Right.
Because there is a very similar debate going on right now about humanity's super smart, super awkward robot children, AI. Because on one side, you have Anthropic and OpenAI who argue that new models are dangerous and they should be securely contained and developed under strict.
But then on the other side, you've got Meta, Microsoft and Google who argue that the greater danger lies in restricting AI while the other kids on the block grow up much.
And by the other kids, they largely mean the Chinese AI startups that have been releasing more and more powerful models at comparatively lower costs.
Because a lot of the normie verse isn't aware. But you've got Moonshots, Kimi K3, Alibaba's Qwen 3.8 Max and DeepSeek's V4 Flash, all of which not only rivaled their top American competitors, but also have one key advantage: they're open.
And weights are the industry term for all the parameters, biases or weights that govern how an AI thinks and responds.
You can basically think of it like a board full of knobs and dials that let you tweak the model's personality. Right. How much of insert attribute do you want it to be?
That is what open weight gives you access. Right. It's a different thing than open source, which you've probably heard of. Right. Because that's where the actual source code making up the AI itself is public.
So you can even rebuild it from scratch if you wanted. The reason that you're seeing this being such an important thing is that open weight models are typically cheaper.
They give users more freedom to modify them, and they can be downloaded right to your local computer instead of running off of a data center.
And so over time, you've had both producers and consumers gravitating toward open weight models, especially after these recent cybersecurity.
We talked about on a recent show, but you had that OpenAI model going rogue, hacking into another company called Hugging Face, and actually when that happened, Hugging Face had no choice but to use a Chinese open weight model to defend itself against the.
Because closed models have restrictions on being used for cybersecurity.
And a key thing is that this is not isolated. You've got this is also other companies. AI models have gone rogue as that includes Anthropic and Meta. Hence the debate over the parenting, right?
Because while you have one side taking these reaches for the proof that AI needs to be even more tightly controlled by the companies that make, the other side, they argue that everyone should be given access to these models so they can defend themselves.
And on that side, you've got Meta, who just announced that it's making its most advanced model, Muse Park 1.2, open.
We're also working to make sure that everyone has a personal superintelligence agent that works 24 over seven on your behalf to improve your health, your relationships, your career, your finances, and more.
Does you have Zuckerberg explaining they're putting out a new AI called Muse Glamor that he says is not only open weight, but open source.
And well, apparently it won't perform as well as other leading models on metrics like coding, reasoning, and writing. The. The point is, accessibility.
But it's meant to be small enough that you can just download it and run it off your basic PC or Mac. No internet needed and have it as a personal assistant. That's there all the time.
With Zuckerberg writing in an online manifesto, everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about.
And then seemingly anticipating the obvious concern that people might have with that, he assures everyone that it'll have strong privacy and security options, so you can just trust it to handle all your personal content.
In fact, he says that it'll have a fully private mode where even Meta or any other service provider cannot see or grant access to your information.
Whether you buy that or not, whether you believe Zuck or not, that's on you.
But either way, privacy for individuals, you know, that's just one half of the equation. Another concern you're seeing is about security for the public. Right.
Because the helicopter parent critics, they warn that opening up access to these AI models for just anyone to tinker around with, it could end up getting the tools in the wrong hands.
Think people like hackers or criminals or bioterrorist.
But you've got Zuckerberg seemingly dismissing that criticism, writing the notion AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power.
Seems inherently problematic, saying rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it widely and give every person the ability to direct it.
This is the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment, where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives in the world more than ever before.
Should then also add for you that it will also empowerment of shareholders to make an obscene amount of money most likely.
By whether it be won by convincing everybody they need a 24 seven AI agent plugged into all their devices.
And or too because it's widely seen that a lot of the other companies are way ahead of them as far as AI agents.
Either way, what you saw was Zuckerberg spending a lot of this manifesto pitching the lax approach to AI development to American policymakers.
Or with them claiming that any policy that slows American model releases, even by a month, could let China race ahead.
And Trump, he seems receptive to that argument because he reportedly told AI developers this month that open-weight models don't have to undergo voluntary safety.
But of course, you know, getting the product out there quicker than your competitors is just one step, right?
People have to actually want Zuckerberg stole people that he's betting on.
There being a huge consumer market for personal AI agents, which is a pretty big because reportedly expected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure just this.
That's not only to improve its existing core products like Facebook and Instagram.
It's to roll out these brand new products and hope that they pay. And notably, after the last quarter, Meta reportedly had a free cash flow of just $784 million.
Which may sound like a lot of money that you and me.
But it's also a roughly 90% drop from the $8.5 billion reported a year. Fact, the last time that its free cash flow was this small, the company was burning money on the metaverse. Right.
And that bet obviously hasn't paid, and so you've seen these tight numbers making a lot of investors. And so seemingly, as a result, Meta stock fell 10%.
I will say the markets maybe are showing a little more confidence in Zuckerberg since he unveiled Muse, the stock climbing nearly 3% in pre-market. But where the stock is going to end a week from now, we'll see.
Could be up, could be down. And two, whether it's good for shareholders is also a completely separate question from its impact on humans.
And you really have no shortage of critics out there saying there is a reason to, and that's for a number of reasons, including the way Meta's idea of putting AI in the hands, everyone could collide with the Facebook Creator Fund to create a just sandwich.
Right.
Because we already know from reporting that AI slop farms and meme factories based in countries like India, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere, they rake in money.
By flooding the platform with high engagement, low quality and we also know that a lot of that content is political and that some of the creator fund goes to white nationalists, neo-Nazis and anti-vaxxers.
It's arguably the more you lower the barrier for anybody and everyone to use AI and whatever they want with minimal restrictions, the more we're going to see it get weaponized for political or financial.
But again, at the same time, you have others, like Zuckerberg, arguing that the technology is just as, if not more dangerous in the exclusive control of a few corporations.
And so what is the better option?
Or I guess, what is the least worst option?
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But then from that we dive into another extremely divisive and controversial, and that's because you have Asmongold, one of the biggest streamers in America, saying that migrant children should be shot.
He then got banned from Twitch, and then he made a video doubling down on his. You actually had all this start starting last week when Asmon spoke about a wave of thousands of migrants, Morocco crossing the border into a Spanish territory in northern Africa.
Right in that it sparked a ton of chaos in the area, as well as a ton of misinformation. And while discussing this, you had Asmongold defending the idea of shooting migrants who illegally cross borders like this, including.
What I would do. That's what I think they should. I think they should just fucking shoot them.
Like I've said this before, like I know that it might sound like, oh well, you shouldn't do that. Have no sympathy for for doing that.
And I would do that in a second, because it's the right thing to do in the long term. And there's always this, this is emotional blackmail, right.
Well, you can't shoot these people. They have kids with them. Well, then don't bring your kids. If you don't want to get shot, then don't bring your fucking kids.
It's really simple.
You mean you shoot adults and deport the kids, right? Well, I'd shoot whoever.
Yeah, I'd shoot whoever. I mean, if it's kids, women, men, anybody, just shoot them. They're going to stop coming over.
Because if you don't do that, they'll use children and women as shields to get themselves over, and then they'll put more women and children at risk because they know that they can use them as collateral so they can get more of themselves over.
That's the way it works. That's the way an animal thinks. And these people are animals. They're savages.
Then acknowledge that his comments might sound extreme and cold, but he claimed that a country should do whatever is necessary to protect its, and again arguing that by killing all migrants that come over, including kids, it'll stop adults from using children as so-called shields.
Then while responding to comments, he said, you say shoot kids. Yeah, yeah. No, that's, I mean, I mean, obviously that's what I say, right?
I mean, like, that's clearly like I mean, I mean that that's like I don't know why, why, why would you repeat it to me as if I didn't say.
Keep the kids, deport their families. What do you think the kids do?
The kids grow up and they resent you for sporting their families to turn the terrorists?
What you saw was that he had a decent chunk of his audience that he's cultivated supporting this. It also led to a ton of backlash.
And so people writing things like he was casually dropping genocidal rhetoric and normalizing the murder of women and, adding still got his fan base on their knees saying dumb shit like he's got a point.
No, the fuck he Psychopath with a.
And then even when you had reports breaking that Asmongold had been temporarily banned from Twitch, the criticism only grew louder.
With something that those comments that were so bad that it should be. Then on the other side of this, you saw that his ban sparked outrage for a different. One you had people saying that he shouldn't have been banned in the first.
Until you had some saying, hey, if Asmongold rhetoric landed him a ban, Hasan Piker should also be. You even had Elon Musk writing why does Twitch have this double standard?
Which then resulted in Hasan jumping in to try to defend himself, suggesting that the clips that Elon was using to justify a ban were taken out of context.
Whereas Asmongold urged people to shoot and kill migrant children, which is very. His supporters agreed with that take and Asmongold supporters agreed with their take. There was also a fair share of people that were like, yeah, ban him.
Now one of the latest people to address the controversy is Asmongold himself, because over the weekend you had him posting a video titled Why I'm, and there you had the explanation partially being tied to the ban.
As well as a health scare said that he was dealing with at the same time that he went to the E.R.
Over, though it looks like it was nothing. So then with that, he explained that the ban that he got from Twitch at last two weeks, though he plans to appeal, and though he doesn't know for certain, he suggested that these comments about migrants were what led to the.
But really the part of the video that got the most attention was when he chose to double down on that narrative.
I straight up said, I think you should shoot these people, people are saying that you couldn't do that because, well, there might be kids in the crowd. And my response to that is that you should shoot them anyway.
You should do this anyway. And it doesn't matter really what the collateral damage is.
You should defend your borders, especially when you're being invaded by such a massive force of people. I also referred to the people that use the human shields animals.
Yeah, that's that's exactly what I think. I think they're fucking animals.
If you use children as human shields, in order for you to invade a country or in order for you to do terrorist attacks, I think that you're a fucking animal and I'm not sorry for it.
To let you know that I apologize for nothing.
I meant exactly what I said, and I think that these borders should be defended with lethal force. You then also had been pointing to other situations.
Where he thinks that children potentially being used as shields should not be spared from. In a lot of gang culture, what they do is they'll use children to commit crimes because they know the children will not be sentenced in the same with an adult will do.
If these kids were being charged as adults, the entire tool that these people were using, you know, these gangs were using of having children commit crimes on their behalf, this tool would effectively be rendered ineffective.
But we don't want to do that because it makes people sad to put kids in jail.
But from my perspective, the way that I see it is that it makes me sad to see kids that were abused, that are trafficked.
And that are put into these situations. I think that I really do have the most moral and ethical position on this, because the moment that you create an incentive, you also drive a behavior.
In this video again, it highlights, depending on where you go on the internet, drastically different reactions.
Right, if you go into his comments, you'll see a ton of his fans agreeing with him, upset with Twitch, saying he did nothing wrong.
But then you hop somewhere else on the internet, and there's no shortage of people saying this choice to take those comments further and refuse to apologize, all while planning to appeal the ban.
It just stoked more.
Right.
With people arguing, someone going, I apologize for nothing when getting banned for advocating for the slaughter of women and children should disqualify you from appealing said and tripling down and quadrupling down on killing migrant children is completely fucking deranged.
Only 14 days is not enough for this insane rhetoric. Keep him banned indefinitely.
All that said, as all of this continues to play out, I got to ask you, where do you land on right one?
What are your general reactions to the takes themselves?
Two. What are your thoughts regarding the 14 day?
And three, do you think that Twitch has a double standard, whether you think that other people should be banned as well, or that he's being.
And then we've got to dive into this crazy Epstein-connected situation.
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But then diving right back into the news. We've got to talk about the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. Right.
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This place goes way back. It was founded in the 1920s.
It draws students from all around the world to attend both its boarding school and its summer camp. Launched the careers of some pretty huge names like Josh Groban and Jabal Rone.
Maybe the most famous former Interlochen student is Jeffrey Epstein. You had him attending when he was a teenager. And later he became one of the school's most celebrated donors.
Even had a lodge named after him, though after his conviction in 2008, Interlochen said that they cut ties with him.
They changed the name of the lodge, but also, as with kind of everything else the guy touched, there was still some red flags.
In fact, you had the New York Times reporting that mingling with students at Interlochen as an alumni and a donor, that's where Epstein encountered some of his earliest victims.
And in fact, the school, which had already brought in a law firm in 2024 to investigate reports of sexual abuse by faculty and staff, expanded that investigation to include the allegations against Epstein as well.
And where the report, it's now been released and it is so much worse than you can even imagine.
Right, after two years of interviews, the report say that roughly 70 former students describe sexual abuse by nearly 50 adults who were employed or affiliated with the school from the 1950s to the 20 tens.
You've got a full range of allegations that these teachers were grooming, flirting with, sexually touching and even outright having sex with these students.
You've got the report reading the information gathered during the investigation is simply devastating. Right. In it.
It talked about the severe impact those traumas had on the students with, for example, one saying afterwards she was lost and just went home while all her friends were applying to other performing arts schools.
Another saying, I do remember it being a pretty significant blow to my motivation to continue as a young artist.
Right. That's just the academic impact. There's also the career side.
Many saying they didn't pursue performing arts as a full-time job because of the abuse at Interlochen.
At one saying that he decided against it because, quote, it all seemed so integrated. You were going to pursue this, this was going to be part of the deal.
Would need to be sexually involved with someone if you would continue to be a performer.
Then you have the mental health and personal relationship side of things.
Many of the alumni that this law firm interviewed said they've had to seek therapy to process what happened to them.
People dealing with depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, substance abuse, and on and on.
Are you have a significant number saying that they found it hard to trust people and that the abuse they faced at Interlochen, it's skewed the perception of older men.
It taught them to be uncomfortable when people come on to them and poison their relationships with men altogether.
Then as far as Epstein's involvement and all this, you have the report, including the account of two of the three former Interlochen students who have described having disturbing encounters with him.
With one of them telling investigators that Epstein engaged in sexual conduct with her, brushing against her body over her clothes in a manner in which he indicated was accidental, then adding that he paid her to visit him in New York while she was a student.
And when she was there, he'd often put his hands on her. And she described him touching her crotch.
Then you had another alum saying that Epstein also paid her to go to New York after she graduated and that she had given him a massage and he, quote, may have asked her to remove her top.
Then, very notably, that woman's mother reportedly called the school to warn them that Epstein was preying on students.
Then she said that no one from Interlochen ever followed up.
As far as the school, now, when this report came out, they released an overview and an apology letter, saying we are deeply sorry for the harm experienced by members of our community and extend our apologies to those impacted by abuse at Interlochen.
Then adding, we also want to say, clearly, Interlochen will not tolerate predators or those who enable them. Saying our campus exists to protect, educate and empower every student.
They went on to say that Interlochen is fundamentally different than it was back then, and adding that the majority of the abuse mentioned in the report took place many decades ago.
And that reports of abuse at Interlochen have significantly decreased over the past 25 years.
Then also had them saying they turned over the names of all the accused faculty to the local authorities.
They added that no one accused in the report is still employed at the school, and many of them are dead.
Actually, they named a few of the staff who have passed away, but who also investigators got multiple firsthand accounts of creepy, pervasive behavior about.
So that included Byron Hansen, who worked at the school from 1960 to 2015, Charlie McCord, who was a trustee from 1970 to 1999, and John Hood, who worked there from 1963 to 1979, full time and seasonally until 2004.
Then what you saw is this, you know, saying sorry and naming a few names approach. It didn't sit well with a lot of the Interlochen alumni who were abused.
One of those people was Paul Bush, who was a dancer who was sexually abused by his ballet teacher at Interlochen back in 2005 when he was just 16 years.
In 2004, after he spent a summer as a music student in Interlochen, Paul was recruited by Thomas Clower to be a boarding student during a sophomore year of high school on a partial scholarship and everything.
And you had Paul telling NPR that he was over the moon about saying the summer students, they dreamt of getting a spot as a boarding student, that it felt like his prayers have been saying, a lot of my desire was to prove that I was good enough, and that I was worthy of.
And so that he said it put him in the perfect condition for someone to prey on his.
Paul tells it, Clower began showering him with attention and became increasingly involved in his. They'd meet one on one.
Clower would email him inappropriate questions about his personal life and sexual activity, and Paul said that he let a lot of the creepy behavior slide because it's really hard to differentiate what's appropriate and what's not until it's too.
Then one day, Clower brought both Paul and another student over to his house, and they all watched a movie. Paul describing her throwing a blanket over the two of them and then touching his thighs and genitals while the other student was sitting right, saying he wanted me and he took me. And it didn't even matter that someone else was watching it and closer.
He eventually pled guilty. He was convicted of abusing Paul. He was added to the sex offender registry and Interlochen. They fired.
But for Paul, he said that the trauma went beyond just that. In the aftermath, he was interviewed twice by investigators from the sheriff's department, and he was grilled about his sexuality.
And he became a social pariah for his last two years at Interlochen, saying, I was never integrated back into the community.
I was always looked at as while he went on to dance professionally for over a decade, he struggled with mental health issues, including PTSD and substance.
As this topic of abuse at Interlochen has gotten more and more attention, you have Paul placing the responsibility solely on the, saying it's the lack of aftercare, let alone that it happened 69 other times with other people.
Fact that the predator was on the campus to begin with is all Interlochen responsibility. He and many of the other alumni, they're still waiting for some sort of real accountability.
And you've got Paul saying the school's apology letter, it doesn't even come close to that. They get to say, case closed. That is completely unacceptable because guess what?
My life is still.
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And then before I let you back out into the world, let's cram in some more news you need to know today.
And we'll do a quick starting with this boat captain that just got arrested because he had a boat capsizing in New York Harbor this weekend, killing a mom and her five-month-old.
With the boat flipping around 10:25 Saturday night near the Statue of Liberty. It could have been so much worse. But luckily, when it happened, there was another boat nearby.
They were apparently able to call for help and get 12 survivors on the boat as officials arrived on the scene. And the response was huge, right. The Fire Department, the NYPD, the Coast Guard.
It was actually the police divers on the scene who eventually found 27-year-old Sara Sanchez and her daughter, Antonella Garcia, in the water. Well, they're both taken to the hospital in critical condition.
They ultimately didn't make it.
We're still waiting on details on what exactly caused the boat to flip.
Apparently part of it looks like it was because the captain, Manuel Hernandez, had 14 people on board when the boat was only big enough to hold about a dozen.
So now he's been charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment. Actually, the police are also investigating whether or not he was working under an illegal charter that night.
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But then also in the news, you've got the Trump administration getting ready to pay a total of $300 million in grants for cities that are willing to abandon what they're calling progressive ideologies on policing.
Where they want those cities to fall in line with direct support for federal immigration enforcement, tighten up on anti-homelessness laws and provide treatment for people on the streets with mental health problems.
Apparently you've got cities like DC and Memphis being called the model cities where all this.
And so with those changes next month, the Justice Department is announcing up to four finalist cities will split that money.
But then with all this, you have some leaders saying this money is just an enticement to get them to give in to Trump's ideological interests.
Because apparently, to get the grant, they have to be evaluated by senior political appointees from the Justice Department instead of something legal experts say is more politically neutral, like a peer review process.
Also they have to have documented buy-in and support across their local governments as well.
And then on top of that, you're also seeing some more logistical reasons that people are skeptical. Right.
And one example is we don't know if accepting the grant means that they'd have to also let the National Guard in if Trump made that call.
And if he does, it also sounds like those recipient cities would be the ones who would have to pay for it down the line.
So that's why you have legal experts saying that forcing those cities to preemptively foot the bill for future unspecified federal interventions in their own backyards is unprecedented.
But without that, you have the DOJ saying, hey, there are already some cities that are interested, although they haven't specified which ones.
And so you're going to see next month how this all plays out and, more importantly, how the people of those cities react.
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And then you've also now got the news that former NBA center Enes Kanter Freedom is the latest pro to officially declare for the 2027 WNBA.
And I say ladies because you have him, along with former NBA first-rounder Royce White, saying that they're joining the Women's Basketball League by claiming that they're entering the draft as transgender women.
Really, everyone knows that this is a deliberate political pressure campaign, a political stunt targeting the NBA's eligibility policy. Right.
Because even these two, we're not exactly hiding. Three of them pointing out that while the WNBA's collective bargaining agreement states only women can play, the 400-page document never actually defines the term or set specific guidelines on self-identification.
It seems like this whole standoff exploded after Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham publicly voiced support for barring biological men from women's sports.
And actually all of this has now resulted in WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert sending a memo to all teams saying that they were forming a task force to address trans athlete eligibility.
Notably, that seems to be a decision in the hands of the league itself and not the players, because the Players Association issued a statement declaring that they refuse to be used as political pawns.
That's not to say that players and even coaches having support of trans athletes on their own. Many, many have.
But also, this is one of those issues that no matter what the WNBA decides here, what they do, there's then just going to be another blow-up.
And in the meantime, Kanter and White, they're facing praise and criticism.
Right.
Those against trans athletes think they're making a good point about how, as they see it, it's ridiculous to let trans players play.
Then on the other side, you have many saying that it comes off as an absurdist example for a few reasons.
The first being that this is just a bridge that the WNBA has never actually had to cross, where there are no trans athletes in the league. None intending to enter other than supposedly Kanter and White.
The those do seem clearly not serious though. Hey, if they seriously transition, I recant that statement.
But overall for many here it comes off as a culture wars stunt that's meant to distract from the really bad things that are happening right now. Or just a way to troll and grift.
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But then also you've got the news that your Taco Tuesday just turned into a serious biohazard.
Right, in that because you now have Taylor Farms issuing a massive recall across over 20 states for prepared foods containing jalapenos because of potential salmonella contamination.
And so far, over 340 people have actually gotten sick. And that number is expected to rise.
If you're thinking, hey, no big deal, I'll just avoid Taylor Farm stuff.
Turns out chains like Chipotle and Qdoba, they have to pull their peppers. And it's also going way beyond just them.
Turns out Taylor Farms provides produce to pretty much everyone in every grocery store. So the recommendation right now is to just avoid anything with jalapenos.
The products affected have a best-of-use-by date of up to August 16th.
The good news, at least if you believe it, is that Taylor Farms does not expect this to be a problem after that. Right.
Because the CDC and FDA traced the outbreak to Coast Citrus Distributors, who Taylor Farms bought from. And the two were no longer working together because of this.
A huge thing is to say this has been like a few bad months for Taylor Farm. That not only is an understatement.
Because they were also tied to the massive Cyclospora outbreak that got thousands sick.
Also for many Americans, this feels larger. These recalls have become increasingly common.
Just this month alone, you've had multiple produce outbreaks.
Not to mention the FDA just issued recalls of pastrami and corned beef linked to listeria, as well as over 12,000 pounds of bacon.
And it does end up kind of holding up when you have many blaming the Trump administration for cutting funding across the board.
Or because, well, outbreaks, they're always more common in the summer. Right.
It's hot and the conditions are perfect for the bacterias to thrive.
Trump has made things easier.
His administration has cut reporting requirements on at least five different pathogens, including Cyclospora. So tracking exactly how bad this year is is a bit harder.
Although we do know that there does seem to be at least a small spike so far.
But also tracking whether that's because of Trump's policies or just it being a really unusual year, to be super confident about that, it would probably take months of research to get a better idea.
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And then last up today, there is a parasite that has been eating people alive in Mexico, and it's made its way now into the United States.
But you have officials saying it is under control, at least for now.
So don't freak out. If you haven't heard about this, they're called screwworms. The larvae of screwworm flies.
And those flies lay eggs in the wounds, inflame tissue and mucous membranes of anything warm-blooded.
When those hatch, the babies start chowing down on flesh.
You've actually had the US, Mexico and Central America fighting against them for decades. They were declared eradicated in the US back in the 60s.
Then Mexico got rid of them in 2003, and Panama in 2006.
Panama was maybe the most important because it was like a biological barrier for the flies that kept them from getting out of hand. But the barrier seemingly got breached in 2022.
From there Mexico started seeing animal cases rise by 2024. And then human cases started creeping up as well.
And you have what started out as three new cases a week in 2025, growing to more than nine cases a week by early this year, while Mexico's had six gruesome-related deaths since this new outbreak.
It's unclear as of right now how much they actually contributed to each death, since there were other health issues at play in some of those other cases.
But whatever the case there, the US also got its first animal cases back in June.
And we're, it's blaming the DOGE budget cuts because those apparently impacted a project that was helping to keep the flies contained.
Had Trump officials pushing back, claiming that there was only ten staffers dedicated to screwworms at the start of his second term. They claim that they've stretched that team to over 120 people.
For now, at least in the States, you only have five animal cases.
And officials are reportedly maintaining a pretty aggressive response to prevent it from getting any worse than.
And actually, the way that we fight them here and what we've done for years is really interesting.
You see, the female screwworm only mates once in her entire life.
What they do is they breed millions of males. They sterilize them and then dump them out of airplanes.
Because these lady flies are one and done. She picks one, and that's the end of the family line.
And so hopefully these cases stay few and far between.
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