DOGE purge exposes Indian Country’s vulnerability
Trump targets tribal nations and partner federal agencies, carrying out Project 2025’s agenda and dismantling the federal Indian trust responsibility
Drawing on economic lessons from the Covid pandemic emergency, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation just east of Oklahoma City has frozen tribal spending and hiring until the pandemonium settles from President Donald Trump’s bloodless purge of federal workers, programs, and spending.
“We just want to make sure that none of our programs are affected as they sort of continue to identify programs and in areas of actual waste,” Jason Salsman, press secretary for Muscogee (Creek) Nation, told me days after HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rescinded Trump’s mass employee cuts at the Indian Health Service (IHS).
While President Trump, the world’s richest man Elon Musk, and chief architect of Project 2025 Russell Vought wreak havoc upon the federal government, day-to-day life goes on as normal for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. So far, no one has been fired or furloughed and the nation’s departments that receive federal funding are still fully operational. Salsman said the tribe is deliberate in its measured, non-reactionary approach to Trump’s polarized political environment. But while the tribe is confident in its ability to govern through this crisis, much of Indian Country is bracing for impact—especially upon the government’s federal Indian trust responsibility, a pillar in Indian-Federal relations, which has the grim potential to degenerate into something close to its original “guardianship” responsibility: A “Christian nation’s duty is to civilize and Christianize the backward people of the New World” while opening access to tribal lands and resources for exploitation.
“No matter if there’s a DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] or any political climate, or any sort of agenda that’s out there, we’re always concerned that [federal Indian] trust is being upheld and that things are being done right,” said Salsman. No presidential administration perfectly fulfills its trust obligations to tribes: the U.S. duty to protect tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, resources, and federal legislative mandates, like providing healthcare and education. (The U.S. regularly fails to live up to its responsibilities, according to a 2018 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights). Yet this administration may have other plans for the “chronically underfunded” federal programs designed to support tribal governance and cultural survival.
“All of this has been done without any communication or even notice to Native Nations, though the law requires it and that’s extremely alarming”
The unholy Trinity that is Trump, Musk of DOGE, and Vought are united in fulfilling Project 2025’s “promise” to dismantle the administrative state and in re-making the government, no matter the cost to tribal nations or U.S. federal Indian trust obligations. According to Vought’s April 2021 Newsweek article “Is there anything actually wrong with ‘Christian Nationalism?’”, the U.S. government should impose an “America First” political program with “Christian Nationalism” as a guiding force in government and in “maintaining the cohesiveness of a particular people and a cultural inheritance.” It’s not hard to deduce Native Americans are at odds in Vought’s fevered vision of this “country’s Judeo-Christian heritage.” Under a paternal or authoritarian U.S. government, tribal nations and Indian people are in an especially vulnerable position because their reservation trust lands, health care, education, individual Indian trust accounts and more are managed by the federal government. Tribal nations and organizations are alarmed that decades of progress made in Indian-Federal relations could be illegally upended in a matter of weeks.
“Tribes are a different entity: They are a political entity and they should be shielded away from just massive blanket cuts,” said Salsman, adding that the tribe’s hiring and spending freeze “was basically a move to buy some time, but do our due diligence while this was happening.”
Indians are often considered the “invisible minority” in both congressional and federal affairs, but much more so in mainstream public life. Yet U.S federal Indian trust obligations rely on healthy Indian-federal relations. A 1977 congressional report by the American Indian Policy Review Commission wrote that:
“The purpose behind the trust is and always has been to ensure the survival and welfare of Indian tribes and people. This includes an obligation to provide those services required to protect and enhance Indian lands, resources, and self-government, and also includes those economic and social programs that are necessary to raise the standard of living and social wellbeing of the Indian people to a level comparable to the non-Indian society.”
Each year, Congress appropriates billions of dollars to fund essential tribal programs and services, including over 20 federal agencies that serve tribes and urban Native Americans. Much of this budget is rooted in federal Indian laws meant to empower tribes and remedy dire health, education, social and economic outcomes. But as Trump, Musk’s DOGE, and Vought’s Project 2025 authoritarian playbook slash through the federal government, they do so without the advance notice, consultation, and prior informed consent of tribal nations as required under federal law, executive order, and international law.
“All of this has been done without any communication or even notice to Native Nations, though the law requires it and that’s extremely alarming,” said Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), chief executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs. She added, “The federal government is not properly consulting under federal law before it’s taking these actions that have desperate effects on our nations and our people.”
Federally recognized tribes, for the most part, are constitutional governments and maintain sovereignty over reservation territory. To serve their tribal citizens, they have their governmental agencies, court systems, police and fire departments, mental health and addiction treatment centers, food distribution, social services, child support enforcement, elder care, housing development, clothing programs, Head Start programs, K-12 and higher education schools, forestry and agricultural managers, environmental regulators, disaster relief programs, sanitation, and much more. (When fires broke out in Los Angeles earlier this year, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation sent out three semi-trucks of supplies to those who lost homes.) In one way or another, tribes are at least partially dependent on federal funding to run their governments, programs, and services.
Dozens of tribal nations and Indian organizations have signed letters to the White House and congressional lawmakers to protect federal funding and employees serving Indian Country amid Trump’s flurry of executive orders and federal memorandum, while clarifying that tribal funding and employees should not be targeted by the administration’s purge of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice (EJ) programs.
No Frontiers reached out to several leading American Indian governmental organizations that advocate for tribal sovereignty and the federal Indian trust responsibility, but has received little to no response. The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and National Council of Urban Indian Health (NCUIH) declined interviews to discuss Trump’s Indian Country agenda, while the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), National Indian Education Foundation (NIEF), and National Indian Health Board (NIHB) also did not respond to interview requests. A former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs declined to comment, not wanting to be in a story about Trump and DOGE’s dismantling of the federal government.
“We’re doing our best to stay out of a very politically charged climate,” said Salsman. “Make sure that there are no interruptions.”
In an interview days before the Presidential election, University of Richmond and Indian law expert David Wilkins told No Frontiers “I’m convinced that if Trump gets reelected, he will find ways to further shrink the trust relationship, even though they use the phrase a lot [in Project 2025]. I could see him also try to attack the fundamental essence of treaty rights themselves, because in the 1970s after a series of federal court cases that went our way, like the Indian Child Welfare Act, Indian Religious Freedom Act, and other positive pieces of legislation, there was a huge push in congress to end treaties—to terminate and abrogate all treaties.”
The man behind the federal funding freeze and workforce layoffs, Russell Vought, has issued a memo from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in late-February instructing “agency heads” to work with DOGE to submit a plan for “large-scale” layoffs due by March 13, 2025. This of course means more mass layoffs and funding cuts are yet to come in addition to his goal of infusing white Christian Nationalism into U.S. governance and American society.
So far:
DOGE has identified over 200 essential Indian federal funding programs and grants, listing them on its government website as “waste” to cut, (Mvskoke Media)
Federal workers in the Office of Indian Tribal Governments charged with working with tribal nations at the IRS was reduced by 50%, diminishing tribal tax expertise and guidance for tribes, (Tribal Business News)
DOGE includes Native-serving contracts in massive cancellation of 7,500 leases under the General Services Administration (GSA), (Tribal Business News)
Haskell Indian Nations University, a Bureau of Indian Education-funded school, is reeling from DOGE’s 35 faculty layoffs (ICTNews)
About two-thirds of tribal governments rely on direct or indirect federal funding to operate their programs and services (ICTNews)
Before the layoff memo was rescinded, the Indian Health Service (IHS) was expected to lose 950 employees (including 90 physicians, 350 nurses, at least 25 nurse practitioners, about 20 dentists, 43 dental assistants, over 85 pharmacists, 45 lab technicians, and more than 15 service area chief executives or their deputies; Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was expected to lose 118 employees, 40 Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) employees, two positions in the secretary of Indian affairs office, social workers, firefighters, and police (ICTNews)
“We’ve survived every government administration since the beginning of this republican democracy and we will survive this one,” said O’Loughlin. “As always it’s important that Native Nations assert their sovereignty and utilize it to protect themselves as well as build coalitions together and protect our relatives.” In the past, Indian people have sued the federal government for mismanagement of billions of dollars of tribal money, including funds from leasing tribal lands. These were known as “breach of trust” lawsuits. If federal Indian trust reaches egregious decline as it did for half a century already, tribes may turn toward the courts again, where justice is just as elusive as anticipating Trump’s next move.
For Salsman, there is reason to be optimistic. On Friday February 14, the day Indian Health Service was set to lose 950 employees, tribal nations and organizations sprang into action, pressuring the federal government to protect IHS workers, including the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. “The whole day a lot of tribal organizations were burning up the phones, really being able to unite and get together and have a voice,” said Salsman.
The IHS public affairs provided this widely shared statement from HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:
“The Indian Health Service has always been treated as the redheaded stepchild at HHS. My father often complained that IHS was chronically understaffed and underfunded. President Trump wants me to rectify this sad history. Indians suffer the highest level of chronic disease of any demographic. IHS will be a priority over the next four years. President Trump wants me to end the chronic disease epidemic beginning in Indian country.”
“Unity is extremely important for all of us right now, so we need within Indian Country: transparency, discussion, you know, opportunities to learn from each other about how different nations are protecting themselves from the onslaught or what they are doing to amend their budgets to protect their people,”O’Loughlin told No Frontiers. “I think we have to stand up to the administration, including potentially with litigation in order to protect our rights.”
Tips/documents?:
Got any info/documents that Natives, tribes, and the public need to know about?
Are you a federal worker or know someone who wants to get in touch with me?
Message me on Signal at: nofrontiers.25
Signal is a free (iOS or Google Play), open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging app, that enables you to send text messages, multimedia and some small files.
Signal does not retain any metadata and can also be configured to make messages disappear from all devices after the timer has elapsed.
Here is a guide by Freedom of the Press Foundation to sharing sensitive information and documents with the press if you want more information on safety and security.
Hey, Kalen! I listened to you talk today on the BIA meeting. I am very interested in your ideas on this. Thank you for speaking out!
Important piece. Great job!