The Brief

The U.S. has confirmed its first human case of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite whose northward creep from South America has put the country's cattle industry on high alert in recent months.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in coordination with the Maryland Department of Health, confirmed the case on Aug. 4 in a patient who had returned from travel to El Salvador, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon told NPR on Monday.

"This is the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm myiasis (parasitic infestation of fly larvae) from an outbreak-affected country identified in the United States," Nixon said. "Currently, the risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low."

David McAllister, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Health, confirmed to NPR that the individual — a resident of Maryland — has recovered from the infection."The investigation confirmed there is no indication of transmission to any other individuals or animals," he wrote, calling the detection a "timely reminder for health care providers, livestock owners and others to maintain vigilance through routine monitoring."

The New World screwworm is a species of parasitic flies typically found in South America and the Caribbean, according to the CDC. Infestation occurs when fly larvae feed on the tissue or flesh of warm-blooded animals, primarily livestock and, rarely, humans.

"It's a fly, and it's the larvae that does the damage," says Max Scott, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University.

He says infestation in humans can be "quite painful," with high mortality rates if left untreated.

"Because once an infestation starts, that often attracts more flies that lay more eggs," he explains. "And depending where the wound is, the maggots can make their way into vulnerable tissue like the brain, or the wound can get quite big and then you get sepsis."

But, Scott says, screwworm is an insect, not a virus — so it's not contagious.

The pest poses a much bigger risk to livestock, and in the past year has been detected in cattle farms in Mexico. As the New World screwworm gets closer to the U.S. border, federal authorities have taken a series of steps to eliminate the threat — which they did successfully in the mid-20th century.

What exactly is New World screwworm?

An adult New World screwworm fly. They are commonly found in South America and the Caribbean.

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Denise Bonilla

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U.S. Department of Agriculture

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Screwworms are a type of blue-gray blowfly that look very similar to black flies found in the U.S.

The difference is that screwworms — specifically females — lay their eggs in live animals, usually in a wound or another entry point like a nasal cavity.

"The females can lay up to, like, 200 eggs at a time," Scott says. "And then when the eggs eat, they eat the animal alive."

After feeding, the larvae fall into the ground, burrow into the soil and emerge as adult screwworm flies, continuing the cycle.

The parasites are named after the screw-like way they burrow into tissue using their sharp mouth hooks. Their Latin name, Cochliomyia hominivorax, "literally means maneater," Scott says.

"It was named after a sort of unfortunate number of cases in the French penal colony of Devil's Island back in the 19th century," he explains.

Human cases are relatively rare these days, though counts are growing in some parts of South America.

The U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua said in July that it had confirmed 124 cases in the past year. In June, the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica confirmed its seventh case since 2023 — and first human death "since at least the 1990s."

How was screwworm eradicated — and why is it spreading now? 

Screwworm used to be in the U.S., mainly in Florida, Texas and, during the summer, sometimes as far north as the Dakotas, Scott says.

In the 1950s, scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pioneered a method of combating them known as the sterile insect technique, which Scott calls "one of the great success stories of the USDA of the 20th century."

Instead of using broad-spectrum insecticides, they decided to use the pest itself as a control agent. That involves mass-rearing insects inside factories, sterilizing them with radiation and then releasing them — either from the ground or, as is the case today, by "planes that fly very precise routes."

"If the females on the ground mate with a sterile male, at least with a screwworm, that's all they'll mate with … so that female won't produce any offspring," Scott says.

Through this technique, the U.S. managed to eradicate New World screwworm in 1966. Mexico followed suit in the 1970s, and Central America in the early 2000s. The U.S. also used this method to eliminate what the CDC calls a "small outbreak" in the Florida Keys in 2017.

"Over a 50-year period, screwworm was pushed back from the United States through Mexico, through Central America, to the Panama-Columbia border. That was about 20 years ago," Scott says. "It was stopped at the border and then was held for a long time until the barrier broke and screwworm came back."

Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras have documented new cases in recent years, fueling concerns of a northward spread.

Scott says there are probably multiple explanations, including the movement of infested cattle and the possibility that the current strain of sterilized flies is less effective than in the past. The hope, he says, is that a bigger crop of sterilized insects will be able to contain the screwworm threat to southern Mexico, before it can reach the U.S.

The corrals were empty at the Union Ganadera Chihuahua cattle import facility in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, in June, after the U.S. reinstated its pause on cattle imports across the Southern border.

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Paul Ratje

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Bloomberg via Getty Images

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What is the U.S. doing about screwworm?

The U.S. briefly halted live cattle imports from Mexico in November, after a positive case was detected there.

It lifted the ban in February but reinstated it on a month-by-month basis in May, with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins citing "the continued and rapid northward spread of New World Screwworm (NWS) in Mexico." She said it had been detected in farms as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, some 700 miles from the U.S. border.

In the months since, the federal government has faced mounting pressure from agricultural groups worried about the threat of screwworm and its potential impact on the supply chain. In an early August letter to Rollins, they used USDA estimates to calculate that a contemporary outbreak could cause a total economic loss of more than $10.6 billion.

The USDA appears to have heard those concerns. Earlier this month, it announced sweeping plans to combat the spread of screwworm, including building the U.S.' only sterile fly production facility at an air force base in Edinburg, Texas. It says it will produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week.

Scott says at its peak, the half-century eradication campaign was run from a facility in Mexico that could produce at least 500 million sterile flies per week. It was shut down for economic reasons in 2012. There is currently only one such facility in operation, in Panama, with a maximum capacity of some 100 million flies per week.

Announcing the new initiative in Texas, Rollins did not specify when the plant will be operational, but has previously said it will take two to three years to build, Reuters reports. The USDA is also supporting a separate facility in Mexico that is slated to open in 2026.

Other steps the USDA says it will take include ramping up the hiring of USDA-employed mounted patrol officers, called "Tick Riders," to focus on border surveillance; training dogs to detect screwworm infestations in livestock at the border and investing $100 million in technologies to combat screwworm.

Agricultural groups welcomed the announcement. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement that the introduction of New World screwworm in the U.S. would only exacerbate an already-volatile cattle market.

"It took decades to eradicate this parasite from within and adjacent to our borders more than a generation ago, and this is a proactive first step," he added.
Copyright 2025 NPR

This summer's World Cup has been a bonanza for corporate sponsors.

Hydration breaks are "powered by Powerade." Each game crowns a Michelob Ultra "superior player of the match." Even the signs announcing player substitutions have a label slapped on: Rexona deodorant, which is owned by Unilever. They're the "official personal care sponsor" of this World Cup.

This relentless branding is nothing new for major sporting events, but it has provoked outrage in Los Angeles, where protests during the tournament took aim at FIFA's corporate partners, saying they betrayed the city's values.

At a demonstration in downtown L.A. last week, advocates rallied against a number of high-profile sponsors of the tournament, including Home Depot, the official "home improvement retailer" for the 2026 World Cup.

Its signature orange branding has been splashed across tournament activations this summer, but in the L.A. area its parking lots have been the sites of high profile immigration raids. Last summer in Monrovia, a man was killed fleeing ICE activity in a Home Depot parking lot after he ran onto a freeway and was hit by a car. In another incident, federal agents jumped out of a Penske moving van at the Westlake Home Depot and detained 16 people.

" Their parking lots have been turned into hunting grounds," said Miriam Arghandiwal, an organizer with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition.

" FIFA has been intentional in allowing the people's game to become the billionaire's game, and there's no better example of this than its choice in sponsors," she said at the protest.

The group also railed against FIFA partners Hyundai and Kia, citing a 2022 report that suppliers of Hyundai and Kia had used child labor in its Alabama factories. LAist has reached out to Home Depot and the Hyundai Motor Group, which also owns Kia, for comment.

Demonstrators said they wanted FIFA to make corporate accountability a metric of accepting a sponsor.

" We know mega-events like the World Cup can only happen with the support of host communities, local infrastructure and resources, with the workers throughout various supply chains that make these events possible," said Valerie Lizárraga with the nonprofit Jobs to Move America.

The group was also gathered to demand action from the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, which runs the L.A. World Cup Host Committee. Demonstrators said they were dissatisfied with the committee's guidance on human rights for the World Cup.

A spokesperson for that commission deferred to FIFA for comment on corporate sponsorships. FIFA did not respond to LAist's request.

Last week, a small group of climate activists also demonstrated outside SoFi Stadium against Saudi energy company Aramco, another major FIFA partner. They were calling on FIFA to drop the fossil fuel giant as a sponsor.

The World Cup is wrapped up in Los Angeles after Friday's quarterfinal match between Spain and Belgium. But advocates rallying in L.A. say they are looking toward the future.

" Things like the World Cup [and] the Olympics are events that are fueled by people," said Father Thomas Carey, a member of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. "The question is, do we hold them to account to take care of and protect the people who work for them and the people who attend their games?"

Next year, Los Angeles will host the 2027 Super Bowl. And the year after that will be the Olympics.

The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.

The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told NPR in a statement: "CMS does not comment on future rulemaking or speculate on potential actions. The Trump Administration rejects ideologically driven surgical interventions on vulnerable children."

(Surgery is very rare among transgender people under age 18, and the rule applied to all gender-affirming care, which is mainly therapy and medications for children.)

A "victory" for trans rights, but not a "retreat" by HHS

The fact that the Trump administration is backing off from this action is "a victory for people who are defending the rights and interests of trans people," says Sam Bagenstos, a professor at Michigan Law who served as general counsel at HHS under the Biden administration. "But I don't think it indicates a more general retreat from the aggressive posture of the Trump administration."

Bagenstos notes that this type of leverage — a "conditions of participation" rule for the Medicare and Medicaid program — has historically been used by HHS to compel states and hospitals to meet basic health and safety standards. Things like "making sure that you have stockpiles of certain kinds of equipment, making sure that you have certain kinds of emergency protocols, making sure that you have certain staffing ratios," he explains.

The proposed rule was unprecedented, Bagenstos says, because it instead would have prohibited certain kinds of treatments for a certain population. He says it seemed unlawful in a variety of ways. For one, "it violates the Medicare Act, which says that Medicare and Medicaid can't be used to control the practice of medicine within the state — states get to regulate the practice of medicine," Bagenstos says.

Medical groups opposed the change

Normally, HHS would propose a rule, accept public comment for 60 days, and then finalize the rule so that it could take effect. In this case, after proposing the rule in December and receiving more than 30,000 comments, the administration is abandoning the rule. At least in the next year, it will not be finalized and will not take effect.

The American Medical Association and the Children's Hospital Association both submitted comments urging the agency to rescind or withdraw the proposed rule. Major U.S. medical groups say that puberty blockers and sex hormones are safe and can be effective for transgender young people.

Even so, gender-affirming care for youth is banned in 27 states after a flurry of laws passed over the last several years. In the remaining 23 states, many hospital clinics that offer gender-affirming care have continued to operate, while others have shuttered in the past year citing pressure from the Trump administration.

That pressure has come in the form of this proposed rule, another rule that would bar federal Medicaid reimbursement for transgender pediatric patients, and a declaration from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that aimed to redefine the standard of care. (Interestingly, the press release issued when those actions were unveiled in December is now missing from the HHS website, as is the Kennedy declaration document.)

The Medicaid rule is currently in the final stage of review and appears to be on track to take effect in the coming weeks. A coalition of Democratic-led states sued over the so-called Kennedy declaration and succeeded in blocking it in federal court in Oregon. The Trump administration has not appealed that decision so far.

Protesters who are against gender-affirming care for young people gathered outside Boston Children's Hospital in September 2022.

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Carlin Stiehl for The Boston Globe

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Getty Images

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At the same time, the Department of Justice has issued administrative and criminal subpoenas to hospitals seeking full personal medical files for transgender youth and employment files for their medical providers, although many of those attempts have been blocked in court so far. The Trump administration has also reached settlements with hospitals in Texas and Ohio that involved establishing "detransition" clinics.

And last month, when the Supreme Court allowed states to bar young transgender girls from sports, the White House issued a press release saying that the decision "Bolsters President Trump's Push to Eliminate Transgender Insanity." The release listed actions targeting transgender people across the federal government, from passport markers to military service to research funding.

Will hospitals that ended care for trans youth restart it?

While the Trump administration does not appear to be backing down from anti-transgender actions broadly, its decision not to finalize its most aggressive healthcare rule is significant, says Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University who also worked in the Biden administration. Those other efforts are not nearly as durable as a finalized rule that takes effect, she notes.

The decision of the Trump administration not to finalize this rule "should give hospitals more confidence to either resume or continue offering the care," she says. Because the rule was never in effect, "I would argue that they should have been doing this all along anyway."

Kellan Baker agrees. He's a senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project think tank, which focuses on LGBTQ issues. "This administration may have checked itself in one of the most extreme expressions of its agenda and I think people should take solace in that," he says. "But at the same time, this administration is continuing to show that its ultimate goal is eliminating healthcare for trans people and that it is apparently prepared to use almost any means necessary to do so."

The Medicare and Medicaid rule could theoretically be revived at some point, since it has not been formally withdrawn. An entry in the Trump administration's recent unified agenda sets a final action date for the proposed rule as December 2028, just before President Trump leaves office.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that expands the state's mobile ID program to 60% of licensed drivers, his office announced Monday.

For the last few years, participating residents have been able to use the state-issued mobile app and store their IDs in certain phone wallets as part of a pilot program.

Where you can use it

The program works for driver's licenses and state IDs.

The mobile version is mainly valid at airport security, but use is expected to expand in the future.

TSA accepts the California DMV Wallet App, as well as Apple, Google or Samsung wallets. A small number of stores accept them for age-restricted purchases.

One big caveat: Mobile IDs are not accepted by law enforcement or most state government agencies.

That means you should still keep your physical ID or license with you, especially if you're driving. You can find a full list of accepted places on the DMV's website.

How you can apply

Access to the program was previously capped to 4.2 million drivers — now that's quadrupled to over 16 million.

You can join the pilot by downloading the CA DMV Wallet app from your phone's app store and logging into your MyDMV account.

You'll need to provide your driver's license or ID card information. The app will prompt you to scan your card, and you'll have to refresh the mobile ID every 30 days.

More than 3.5 million Californians have joined so far.