Cyclosporiasis, expensive burritos are turning working-class Latinos against Trump, columnist says

A nationwide outbreak of cyclosporiasis has a lot of consumers avoiding lettuce at all costs and looking skeptically at berries this summer.

But it’s also exposing weaknesses in the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network — changes made under President Donald Trump’s massive cutbacks of staff and funding at the CDC.

For Gustavo Arellano, it all goes back to Mexican food. Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times whose latest column tackles Donald Trump, RFK Jr. and Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme all at once.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Gustavo.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: ¡Hola!

LAUREN GILGER: All right, so this cyclosporiasis outbreak was traced back to several places, including Taco Bell. That company responded quickly, but Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the criticisms were invalid. You report he says the outbreak is under control?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: No one in this administration ever wants to take responsibility whenever something bad happens. So when there’s — look, foodborne outbreaks, sadly, it is a part of American life when so much of our produce is grown hundreds, if not thousands of miles away.

But under the Trump second Trump term, there has been massive cutbacks to the very programs that are supposed to monitor this. So specifically for that little bug, cyclospora or whatever, it is no longer. If state inspectors note it, they are no longer required to report it to the CDC like it was under many, many previous administrations, especially the first Trump administration.

So the first outbreak, sadly, it was really caught in Taco Bell. So look, I’m no fan of Taco Bell, but they should not deserve the blame to like spread this around the United States, you know?

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. You also write about another foodborne illness outbreak at another Mexican food chain, Gustavo — at Chipotle, right? Like the FDA recently revealed a Salmonella outbreak that was traced back to contaminated jalapeños that Chipotle, it sounds like, had already removed before this announcement came.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Chipotle last decade got hit really bad with foodborne outbreaks that caused illnesses. Hundreds of Americans sickened. And to their credit, Chipotle implemented in-house systems to monitor like the moment outbreak happens.

So this is actually what happened: They got a bad batch of jalapeños, immediately they were able to — I believe it was Bloomberg that reported this — they were able to trace it back within like a couple of days and they shut it down.

It was only until two weeks later that the FDA said, “Oh yeah, by the way, there’s this Salmonella outbreak among jalapeños, so, you know, watch out, American public.” So leave it to — again, another chain that I don’t particularly care for. I’m not saying Chipotle is not good, but, you know, I’d rather get other burritos or burros elsewhere. But leave it to them to do far better than what the federal government under Trump has done when it comes to, you know, sicknesses attributed to food.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So you mentioned burritos there, so we have to go to another kind of thread that you’re tying in in this column, which is that Mexican food is more dependent on this kind of exported produce, right? Produce coming from Mexico or other places that has been impacted by tariffs in a more extreme way. You argue here basically that the cost of a burrito may be like the cost of a gallon of milk, is is our gauge of cost of living, right?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: It is my barometer wherever I go. And look, to tie to tie it in to you folks out in Phoenix, what was it, last year I stopped by Carolina’s, which is of course legendary spot.

LAUREN GILGER: So good.

Gustavo Arellano

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GUSTAVO ARELLANO: I needed one of their big, humongous burros. And I hadn’t been to the Phoenix area in a couple of years and I, I mean, the price was, geez. Let’s just say I had sticker shock. And I’m like, “I do not remember it being this expensive.”

And similarly out here in Southern California, like my place for a breakfast burrito. If any of you are ever in the Southland, Athenian Burgers #3 in Buena Park near Knott’s Berry Farm, it’s now — the breakfast burritos amazing, now costs $13.

Even at Del Taco, which I know it’s the classic chain of the American Southwest, my favorite fast food of all time is just a half-pound bean and cheese burrito. Now, at least at my local one, it’s going for like $2.31, where maybe just five, before the pandemic, it was just about a buck and change.

And burritos at this point, I don’t even order them that much anymore because they’re cost prohibitive. Yes, they’re still more affordable than a three-course dinner somewhere or other, even going to an In-N-Out, which is overrated. The burritos are just such a perfect exemplar of how prices go up and down. And under the Trump administration, everything has been going up and up and up.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So I mean, let’s bring all these things together, right? You’ve got Taco Bell, Chipotle, the the way that these companies dealt with these outbreaks of foodborne illness differently than the administration did. You’ve got the cost of living tied in here with the cost of the burrito. What do you think all of this, you know, all of these kind of Mexican food examples says about the fate of the Trump administration right now, especially among Mexican American voters?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: I mean, we all know that Latinos voted for Trump in bigger numbers than any Republican presidential candidate ever. They proved the crucial swing vote in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. And we also know that support among Latinos for Trump has plummeted, partly because of the immigration raids that have gotten so much attention, but really — and look, I’m guilty of this as well — we try to essentialize Latino into a certain type of voter. But no, they are the classic blue collar voters.

And when carne asada — I mean my dad, we held a carne asada for one set of cousins from his side of the family, and we had the carne asada, the chorizo and the chicken, and the total price — and then you get the tortillas — the total price was over $200. Two hundred dollars just to host about 15 people when we’re supposed to be relaxing.

No, that’s going out for a banquet type of prices. And not that my family ever voted for Trump, but now more so than ever, they’re not. And I keep hearing this again and again from people, the same criticisms I heard under Biden. The cost of gas is too much, the cost of tortillas is too much, we need to take out the incumbent.

And right now it just happens to be the Republican Party who is in charge of the House and the Senate, and of course, Trump is not up for re-election, but the midterms is definitely going to be a referendum on what he has wrought so far in these two years.

LAUREN GILGER: So were you surprised a couple of years ago, Gustavo, when we saw Mexican Americans, Latino voters in in record numbers vote for Trump? Or did these kind of economic bellwether issues, you know, make it seem clear to you that that would might happen?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Oh no, I have been calling this since 2016, and I hate to be a Cassandra, but that’s exactly who I was. I would keep telling my Democratic friends, especially those who are involved in politics, “You got to watch out for those working-class Latinos. They are getting annoyed and outraged by the economy, by trans women in sports, especially in in high school sports, but especially even the issue of immigration.”

And the Democratic Party just paid no attention to it. So most people were surprised in 2024. Me, I’m like, “Well, this is why people don’t ...”

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, but but you see that shifting at this moment and and because of these kind of economic issues, you think?

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Yeah. Latinos have never really been a single, definitely not a single-issue voter, and definitely in more recent years, they have gone away from the Democrats, especially as prices started going up. And look, under the Biden administration the last year, let’s call it what it was, it was inflation.

And even though Democrats said it wasn’t happening, again, you tell that to the working-class people who are driving a Ford F-150, and now they have to pay upwards of $100 just to do daily trips around their neighborhoods, let alone going off to the construction sites.

So price of course has gone even higher for gas because of the Iran War, so it’s just a perfect confluence to see these Trump voters, especially from Latinos, not necessarily going for the Democrats but rejecting Trump. Of course, though, we’re only in August, we’re still a couple of months away from the midterms. Let’s see what happens in a couple of months.

LAUREN GILGER: See what happens. It all goes back to the burrito. Gustavo Arellano with the Los Angeles Times joining us. Gustavo, thanks as always for coming on. Appreciate it.

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: Gracias.