Poisoned Eggs, Poisoned Air: The GOP’s Real “Defund the Police” Agenda

Why the party screaming for more cops on the border is quietly dismantling the only cops who protect you from poisoned food, water, and air — and why you should be furious.

A Little Email From Walmart. And a Trip to the ER.

This week, I got an email from Walmart. Always a delight.

This one informed me that, sometime between February 2 and now, I had purchased eggs contaminated with salmonella. You know — the bacteria that causes vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and, in some cases, death.

That alone would have been enough to brighten my week.

But wait — there’s more! I also wound up in the ER this week — with salmonella poisoning from a container of pre-cut fruit I bought at an entirely different store.

Two separate exposures to dangerous, preventable pathogens — in just a few months. And I’m not exactly out here living on truck stop sushi. I’m a health-conscious person. I read labels. I buy organic when I can. I wash everything. I don’t eat a lot of junk food. I try to stay informed.

And yet: poisoned eggs, poisoned fruit, ER visit.

For what it’s worth, this has never happened to me before, and I’m not young.

And if this is happening to me, I guarantee it’s happening to thousands, perhaps millions, of you, too.

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How We Got Here: A Government That Stopped Protecting Us

Here’s why: under Trump’s second term, health protections have been decimated.

In 2025, the USDA has drastically cut food safety inspections and shifted more responsibility to the companies themselves. Because, you know, corporations have such a great track record of regulating themselves, just like convicted felons.

The EPA has also generously gutted standards on water contaminants, including forever chemicals that cause cancer and infertility, because, honestly, there are just too many of us using water anyway.

Air pollution limits on industries are being slashed in the name of “boosting growth.” (Growth of tumors, apparently.)

Even school air quality and building safety standards are being quietly rolled back, because, as many a youth pastor and clergyman hath commanded: f*ck kids.

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Meet DOGE: The Department of Deregulation

And none of this is accidental. This is deliberate policy, spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — formerly “unofficially for legal purposes” helmed by none other than Elon Musk, who appointed himself America’s lead “efficiency” czar, a job he enjoyed until other cabinet members began punching him in the face.

And by “efficiency,” what he really meant was: fire the inspectors. Kill the regulations. Hand the keys to the corporations and pray.

DOGE has proudly slashed inspection budgets, fired USDA and FDA staff, and kneecapped environmental enforcement offices from coast to coast.

Meanwhile, The Atlantic is now openly telling Americans: “Don’t eat bagged salads.” Not because leafy greens are inherently dangerous — but because under this deregulated FDA, the risk of E. coli outbreaks is no longer hypothetical. It’s a ticking time bomb. (Atlantic article here)

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Regulation Is Policing. And They’ve Defunded It.

Regulation is policing.

It is policing of corporations — to stop them from poisoning us.

But the same far-right politicians who scream about “law and order” at the border they lie about being under “invasion” — who want to militarize immigration enforcement to stop migrants (who, as study after study shows, commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born citizens) — are the ones gleefully defunding the actual police whose job it is to keep toxins out of your kids’ lungs, chemicals out of your water, and pathogens out of your salad.

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The Real “Defund the Police” List

They are “Back the Blue” when it comes to border patrol agents in combat gear, going after legal residents and sending US citizen toddlers with cancer to die in a country that isn’t theirs.

But they are “Defund the Police” when it comes to:

☠️ USDA food inspectors
☠️ EPA air quality monitors
☠️ FDA safety enforcement officers
☠️ OSHA workplace safety inspectors

The “police” protecting us from corporate crime are being fired, sidelined, and stripped of power — because pollution makes money. Lax food safety makes money. Poison is profitable — when nobody is left to enforce the law.

And if you’re too busy demonizing brown people who have never hurt you and never would, well, all the better.

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The Migrant “Threat” Is a Political Lie

Meanwhile, the supposed “threat” from migrants is not just overstated — it’s a political fiction.

Multiple studies — including a major 2020 study in PNAS — confirm that undocumented immigrants commit significantly fewer crimes than U.S.-born citizens.

A six-year analysis of Texas crime data showed undocumented immigrants are less than half as likely to commit violent crimes.

But it’s not about facts. It’s about the political utility of fear.

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Poison Is Profitable. Just Ask Big Pharma.

Fear is profitable for campaigns.
Deregulation is profitable for corporations.
And let’s not forget: when people get sick from foodborne pathogens, there’s one more winner in this game — Big Pharma.

More gutting of food safety means more ER visits, more infections, more antibiotic prescriptions.

And guess who’s selling those $100 Z-packs and pocketing the profits? The very pharmaceutical companies whose lobbyists helped bankroll this deregulation frenzy.

Sick people are good business — when your friends are in power and the regulations are dead.

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America vs. Mexico: Who’s Actually Safer?

And if you want an even darker laugh?

When I went to the rural New Mexico hospital for treatment, the ER doctor asked if I’d been to Mexico.

“No,” I said, wishing I had. “Why?”

He told me he believed food safety was worse in Mexico than in the U.S.

Newsflash, Doc: it’s 2025 — and that is absolutely no longer true.

Under Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico now has far stricter food safety regulations than the United States. Several of my friends who’ve moved there recently have seen major improvements in their health — including two who’ve reversed lifelong autoimmune conditions — simply by eating food that isn’t laced with the additives and chemicals that remain legal in U.S. products but are banned in Mexico.

Meanwhile here? We’re deregulating like it’s 1925.

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Walmart’s Perfect Little Business Model

And here’s the biggest irony of all:

When I went to fill the prescription for the Z-Pack that’s helping me not die from the salmonella that is also apparently in Walmart’s eggs?

The only pharmacy in this rural area... was Walmart.

They sold me the poison — and now they’re selling me the cure.

Nice little setup, innit?

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The “Freedom” They Sold You

And here’s where it all comes together:

Congratulations, America.

You ran off the Honduran construction workers who used to build affordable homes down the street. You got a gay stylist and the legal workers in the egg factory deported to torture prisons in El Salvador.

And what did you get in return?

$7 bags of lettuce that might kill you.

No immigrants. No houses. No conscientious workers. No inspectors. More poison. This is the “freedom” they sold you.

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What We Should All Be Asking

So here’s what I want to leave you with:

If you’ve gotten sick from food lately...
If your kid is struggling with asthma...
If your town’s drinking water tastes funny...

It’s not random. It’s not bad luck.

It is the entirely predictable result of a deliberate political project:

To un-police the corporations that profit from poisoning us.

And if you’ve been told that “law and order” is about protecting Americans — ask yourself why the actual crimes that harm us every day are being systematically ignored.

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Final Thought

We should be mad as hell. I am.

Now excuse me — I have to go throw out my eggs. Again.

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If you value this kind of unflinching reporting, subscribe to ALISA WRITES. The more of us who stay loud, the harder we are to silence — as long as we don’t eat the eggs. Also, your paid subscription will help me pay for the ER visit, as I’m uninsured.