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Donald Trump promised federal cuts under the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency would “drive out the massive waste.” Indeed, waste is now being expelled on an incredible scale, across the country: A diarrhea-causing parasite, cyclosporiasis, has sickened thousands of people in more than two-thirds of U.S. states. And the outbreak’s severity—evidence increasingly shows—can be attributed at least partly to DOGE.According to a Friday report by WIRED, DOGE cuts significantly reduced the size of the team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responsible for responding to cyclospora outbreaks. The lab was “downsized from 11 people to just three” last year, parasitologist Joel Barratt, who formerly led that operation, told the publication.“Based on simple math, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” Barratt told WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It’s making the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”That’s not the only way Trump’s cuts have hamstrung the response. In an analysis at The American Prospect, for example, Ryan Cooper details how the administration devastated American food safety and public health infrastructure in ways relevant to the outbreak. Additionally, in July 2025, the CDC under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quietly changed the monitoring of cyclospora from mandatory to optional in Foodnet, its pathogen-tracking partnership with 10 state health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.With WIRED’s report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claim Thursday that the administration’s funding cuts did not impact the response to the outbreak “at all” sounds more dubious than it already did.Describing the wreckage left in DOGE’s wake, one GOP senator recently coined the phrase “DOGE shit.” The department’s increasingly apparent role in exacerbating this outbreak suggests there’s more mileage in that pun—a couple social media wordsmiths have already seized on it, nicknaming cyclospora “the DOGE shits.”

The report surfaced one week after the US President claimed that Al-Sharaa reassured him about Syria possibly having a role in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Zoe. , July 17, 2026

Despite recent evidence to the contrary, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear isn’t so sure that Senator Mitch McConnell is actually alive.Speaking with journalist Katie Couric in an interview published on YouTube July 15, Beshear explained why he had requested a formal update from McConnell’s office earlier this month. In his explanation, Beshear revealed that he had received information from multiple officials indicating that the 84-year-old Republican had passed away.“It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell,” Beshear recalled. “In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies—not state agencies—suggesting he’s passed.”The Kentucky senator went missing for nearly a month after he was found unconscious in his Washington residence and rushed to the hospital on June 14. For weeks, McConnell’s office refused to explain his extended hospitalization or elaborate on his eventual return to Capitol Hill. But the media blackout finally ended on Sunday, when the senator’s office shared a photo of McConnell sitting upright in a chair beside his wife, holding a copy of The Washington Post’s Sunday sports section in his lap.Far-right influencers immediately jumped on McConnell’s statement, baselessly claiming that the picture had been AI-generated while demanding that McConnell release a video statement to address public concern. (Forensic analysis teams concluded that McConnell’s “proof of life” image was very much real and not AI-generated.)McConnell’s team has not provided any further explanation or evidence supporting McConnell’s improving health condition since Sunday.Earlier this week, Beshear held a press conference in which he acknowledged that while the July 12 update was a “step in the right direction,” McConnell ultimately needed to provide a more comprehensive update in order to cut through the resulting conspiratorial noise.“We hope that there is a speedy recovery,” Beshear said on Tuesday. “But with all the speculation—and there’s been a ton—the fastest way to end all of it is calling into a news station if you’re otherwise taking calls, putting out a video or two, which all of us do in office.”

New details are emerging about the ICE agent who shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on Monday.David Brouillette has a history of violent and abusive behavior, his relatives told the Associated Press, including attacks on the women and girls in his life. His first ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, said that she divorced him after he became violent with her while she was pregnant with their daughter.In one instance, she told the AP, he threw boiling water at her while she was holding their daughter, which her mother, Avis Collins, also confirmed. In court records, another of Brouillette’s ex-wives also alleged years of physical and verbal abuse against her and her daughters. The AP did not identify her because she fears retaliation.Brouillette’s second ex-wife said he stalked and harassed her, and engaged in physical and verbal abuse against his daughter, forcing them to seek temporary protection orders. Brouillette allegedly tackled his teenage daughter, smashed spaghetti in her hair, and one in instance, dragged her around the house while she was crying.“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” the ex-wife wrote while applying for a temporary protective order on behalf of Brouillette’s teenage daughter, which a judge granted in 2021.Brouillette’s oldest daughter, Madison, also told the AP about her father’s mental health issues.“I saw my dad struggle with a lot of things,” she said, recalling one instance where she came home from school and he told her that he had sat on a tree stump holding a gun to his head. “If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help.”One relative anonymously told the AP that Brouillette was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and severe bipolar disorder as a kid, which Ashley Brouillette confirmed. That relative said that David Brouillette was “extremely mentally ill,” attempting suicide when he was 12 years old and having to go to the hospital. His ex-wife Ashley shared a three-minute voicemail with the AP from last winter where he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.In that message, sent around the time he joined ICE, he called her “disgusting” and said that she and other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.“And all of you should have your f—king throats cut,” Brouillette’s voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f—king throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”Brouillette reached out to Ashley and his daughter Madison after the shooting, telling them it was justified and that Durán Guerrero tried to run him over with a car. In those calls, he told his ex-wife to lie for him and to cover for his “character.” Based on his history, that was a lost cause.

“No country can be great without fair and honest elections,” Trump, himself notorious for lying, said in his speech.