NEW MEXICO

Screwworm spreads beyond Texas

Three more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed, including one found in a dog in New Mexico, outside the main cluster in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping a resurgent pest that could devastate the nation’s cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on June 8.

The screwworm is actually a fly larva that eats living flesh instead of dead material. The flies lay their eggs in open wounds of animals like cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested. The government has a program to breed sterile male flies and drop swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females, which kept screwworm contained at the southern end of Panama for decades.

So far, there are five confirmed cases: three calves and a goat in Texas and a dog from neighboring Lea County, New Mexico. The small dog, which the USDA initially reported as a Texas case, lives in New Mexico and was reclassified as the first in that state.

The dog had not traveled to Mexico or Texas, so authorities were investigating around the property where the pet lived..

The first two screwworm cases were discovered a week earlier n calves a few miles apart in south Texas. A case was announced on June 8 in a calf in La Salle County, southwest of San Antonio, and in a goat in Gillespie County, west of Austin.

In each case, officials have set up a 12-mile quarantine zone to try to slow the parasite’s advance.

The USDA and the U.S. cattle industry have been racing to prevent an outbreak since screwworm was detected in Mexico late in 2024. The USDA has been dropping sterile flies in south Texas since February and is working to both increase sterile fly production in plants outside the U.S. and build a $750 million fly factory in Texas.

So far, screwworm’s reappearance hasn’t greatly affected beef prices, which are already near record levels because there are fewer cows in the United States. Although the parasite attacks live cattle, it does not infest meat or fruit.

WYOMING

Candidate wants to move BLM

CHEYENNE — Reid Rasner, a Casper-based businessman and Republican candidate for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, has pledged that, if elected, he hopes to prioritize the relocation of the national headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Cheyenne.

Rasner said he believes the current centralized model in Washington, D.C. is out of touch with the realities of the West.

The proposal follows a previous attempt by the federal government to locate BLM headquarters in Grand Junction in 2020, in a move that was reversed after a year.

Rasner projects the relocation will create 500 federal jobs in Wyoming and would return $1 billion annually to Wyoming.

Rasner cited Cheyenne’s growing infrastructure and its proximity to regional partners as the reason for choosing Cheyenne over other locations within the state.

BLM’s move to Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope drew criticism due to the city’s isolation. After the announcement, 87% of D.C.-based employees left the BLM, according to numbers released by the Biden administration.

Rasner said he believes that a move to Wyoming, however, would be different.

“We look back on that and we look at what Colorado is … Wyoming is completely different,” Rasner said. “We’re a great conservative red state. We align with the administration and keeping it right here in Wyoming is something Wyoming can manage, Wyoming can do.”

Data center moratorium nixed

CHEYENNE — City Council members voted down a proposed ordinance that would have imposed a temporary 12-month moratorium on data center development within city limits after a marathon meeting that ended after midnight on May 27.

The ordinance would have imposed a moratorium on “the establishment, construction or conversion of any buildings or structures for use as a data center, including any change of use to a data center.”

The proposed ordinance wouldn’t have applied to data centers already in operation, currently under construction, or to the repair or replacement of existing data centers. 

It also called for city staff to study the impact of data centers on the environment, power grid, electricity rates, water usage, and any other factors related to the health, safety and welfare of residents.

Public comment was nearly a 50-50 split between those who supported the moratorium and those who were against it.

Many who spoke against the moratorium were labor union workers who currently work in data center construction or have in the past. Others said they supported technological advancement.

Opponents said council members need to have a moratorium in place to gather answers to questions community members have about data centers.

The proposed ordinance died on second reading in a 8-1 vote, with its sponsor the only vote in favor.

UTAH

DHS sued to block detention plan

Salt Lake City and its county have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to open a giant warehouse in the city that would be used to detain up to 10,000 immigrants.

The lawsuit, filed June 8 in federal court, is the latest brought by local officials around the country who were not consulted before DHS purchased industrial warehouses that it planned to convert into regional immigrant processing and detention centers.

The lawsuit targets the most expensive property purchased by DHS for the initiative: $145.4 million for a 833,000-square-foot warehouse that is roughly the size of 15 football fields. The March purchase, from a real estate development group partially owned by Deutsche Bank, cost nearly 50% more than the property’s 2025 assessed market value, records show.

“This kind of facility has no place in Salt Lake City, not only due to its inhumane nature but also because of our limited water supply, the increased strain on public utilities systems, and the potentially drastic public health and safety impacts it would have on our residents,” Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in a statement.

Like others filed around the country, the lawsuit in Utah alleges DHS violated federal law by failing to conduct required environmental reviews or get input from state and local officials before the purchase.