DOGE Gutted the Office Researching the Explosive Diarrhea Parasite

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.” ...