[smallmancontrov]

The border didn't magically eradicate the flies on one side. Pushing the border down to the Darien Gap took work, but we did it before and can do it again. The real problem is the gleeful destruction of government capacity to do things like this.

[tptacek]

Yes, that's true, but the point the parent commenter was making is that recent previous administrations also didn't take this problem seriously.

[smallmancontrov]

Who was president in 2020 again?

[stretchwithme]

I see you are bias-free.

[tptacek]

You get that there was a president between 2020 and now, right? Nobody is sticking up for Trump; they're just saying, this particular bad thing isn't a DOGE outcome.

[chris_wot]

If this particular bad thing was bad before DOGE, then it’s far worse under DOGE. It’s a particularly ridiculous argument.

[b112]

Knowing how and why a thing happened, is far more important than political grandstanding.

The doge cuts may affect the future of this program, but have absolutely positively nothing to do with the situation now. Nothing. Not a thing.

It is fine to say doge will make this neglect worse, but the neglect happened for a decade.

And that's important. That's vital to understanding why, and how it happened.

And that is absolutely not a ridiculous concept.

[hedora]

They cut funding in March in the middle of it beginning to spread north, and the spread has continued uncontrolled in the months since then.

The DOGE cuts directly worsened the current situation. It’s unclear if the initial covid era cuts were performed by Biden or Trump (I can’t find a date or primary source for those).

[tptacek]

I don't know about "not a thing"; have to be careful about overcorrecting the other direction. The thing I'm wary about is just shutting down discussion of complicated things as soon as Trump appears. The screwworm situation is interesting!