Let's talk about new issues with the Trump Toilet Flu....

0:00Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Bell again. So today, we're going to talk about Trump Toilet Flu, New Wereys, and Amateur Hour. Trump's habit of knocking down Testerton's fences is still causing problems for Americans across the country. While he continues to pretend everything is fine and refuses to adjust course. In fact, the USDA is reportedly moving forward with another change. That looks like it will destroy their last program monitoring cyclospora. Republicans in Congress have already defunded two of the three USDA programs that dealt with the study or surveillance of cyclospora. Now, as part of Trump's widely opposed restructuring of USDA, the administration will move the last program from Maryland to Iowa. The completely predictable problem is that the experts that have experienced don't want to move to Iowa.

1:06The reporting says that every single one of them has declined to relocate. Go figure right. Experts in their field who built a life somewhere don't want to move to Iowa. To continue their work for a government who doesn't care about them. That's especially true when Canada and other countries are actively recruiting top researchers from the US. Canada recently hired away dozens of top researchers from places like Harvard. If the offers are good enough to steal someone from Harvard, I'm going to suggest the offer is better than what the USDA pays. Especially when combined with how the Trump administration has constantly attacked American civil servants. At its core, the issue stems from the removal of funds from programs at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center or BARC, which the USDA is closing.

2:08This is Trump's restructuring plan at work. Well, failing to work. Democrats have pushed back on the effort, telling the USDA Secretary, quote, it is extremely troubling that instead of working with Congress on a sensible plan to modernize BARC. The department is pursuing an abrupt, politically motivated and short-sighted effort to shutter a facility of critical importance to US agriculture and food security. It looks like not only are Trump's poor decisions impacting the ability to control the current outbreak, but are also impacting the ability to deal with future ones. Reporting says that a USDA employee who worked on one of the defunded projects said, quote, we're basically not allowed to continue any research on that, beyond trying to preserve the samples that we already have from previous outbreaks.

3:09We see this as an enormous opportunity, this current outbreak, to have really a lot of samples that could help us understand these outbreaks better. While the US government is saying there have been 17,180 cases of cyclospora, food safety advocates and attorneys put the number at about twice that, based on public-facing state-level documents. There will be a link down below that allows you to click on various states' numbers and see the document. There still isn't a clear answer as to why this occurred, and while the Trump toilet flu is currently trending down, without explanation or changes, it's possible even likely to come back. Trump's restructuring plan should probably be flushed. I'll see myself out. Anyway, it's just a thought, y'all have a good day.