Sid Miller

To be fair to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, he did warn that the New World screwworm was heading toward Texas. The problem is that leadership requires more than correctly predicting a disaster. If forecasting catastrophe were enough, every guy yelling at a television in a sports bar would be eligible for public office.

As the screwworm crisis has worsened, Miller has increasingly resembled a man standing in front of a burning house screaming, “I told you this would happen!” while everyone else scrambles to find water. Nearly every public statement from the commissioner has focused on blaming the USDA, blaming bureaucracy, blaming sterile-fly programs, blaming Washington, or blaming somebody else entirely. The one glaring omission has been a coherent explanation of what Miller himself has done to prepare Texas for the outbreak.

The most troubling moment came when Miller suggested that ranchers might be reluctant to report infections because of fears about quarantines and restrictions. Federal officials responded by calling those comments “dangerous,” warning that discouraging reporting could make containment dramatically harder. In an outbreak, early detection is everything. A public official’s job is to encourage reporting, not casually explain why people might choose not to do it.

To be clear, Miller may have legitimate disagreements with federal policy. He has been advocating for the Screwworm Adult Suppression System (SWASS), arguing that sterile-fly releases alone are insufficient. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he isn’t. Scientists and federal officials are actively debating the issue. But even if SWASS turns out to be the silver bullet Miller believes it is, that doesn’t explain why his public messaging has so often sounded less like crisis management and more like an audition for cable news.

What’s particularly frustrating is that this crisis was not a surprise. The screwworm moved steadily north through Central America and Mexico for years. Miller himself issued repeated warnings as cases approached the Texas border. By April he was declaring, “This is not a drill.” Yet now that the pest has arrived, Texans are watching a public feud between state and federal officials instead of a unified response. If the commissioner knew the threat was imminent, Texans might reasonably ask why his most visible accomplishment has been winning arguments on social media.

The stakes are enormous. The screwworm threatens livestock, wildlife, pets, and potentially billions of dollars in agricultural losses. Federal authorities are now spending more than a billion dollars on eradication efforts because the parasite’s return represents the first domestic outbreak in roughly sixty years. This isn’t the sort of challenge that rewards political theater. It rewards competence.

Texans don’t need an agriculture commissioner whose primary skill is saying “I told you so.” They need one who spends less time assigning blame and more time convincing the public that somebody is actually in charge.