Last week, the Pueblo of Isleta joined the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, and five students of Haskell Indian Nations University (“Haskell”) and Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute (“SIPI”) to sue the Bureau of Indian Affairs (the “BIA,” which is part of the Department of the Interior) for violation of treaties and failure to consult in the reorganization of the Bureau and of the resulting harm to tribal members in indiscriminate firings of staff in BIA schools and colleges.
I report this news as a response to those who think that the Administration’s “cost cutting” operations, from the Presidential orders to the actions of the Presidential DOGE [intended to be read as dog-e?] are directed at waste and corruption. In a discussion with a reader who commented on my posting about the firing of forest service employees, I argued that balancing the budget was a bogus reason for this cost cutting. See What You Need to Know, February 23, 2025: Federal Firings in New Mexico – Sierra County Citizen. The present posting continues my thoughts on cost cutting. The actual harm done to two native American universities and the potential damage done to hundreds of BIA schools in the country, to the tens of thousands of children these schools serve, demonstrate that the across-the-board cost cutting intends to do just that, harm people. The question is only, why.
The filed complaint documents as alleged facts that after three Executive Orders and following the DOGE requests and directives by the Office of Management and Budget, the BIA fired 22 school safety specialists, fiscal auditors, financial analysts, accountants, human resource officers, management analysts, and IT personnel, among others, from its central and regional offices. At Haskell (in Lawrence, KS), 37 staff positions were terminated (out of a total 179). An additional 11 resigned. Haskell lost about a quarter of its staff, including the Dean of Students, instructors, property management specialists, coaches, tutors, residential advisors, academic advisors, custodians, and food services employees. 34 classes were left without instructors. Haskell served almost a thousand students. Two weekends ago, the Haskell Women’s Basketball team won the 2025 CAC Championship under the guidance of fired coach Adam Strom, who had remained with the team as a volunteer.
At SIPI (in Albuquerque), similarly, a quarter of the staff were fired or resigned, nine of them instructors. Instruction suffered, financial aid disrupted, maintenance and sanitary cleanup halted. For an overview of what happened click on the link to an article in Source New Mexico: Tribes, Native students sue feds over education cuts • Source New Mexico.
I think we can assume that all four expert businessmen involved in the harm alleged in this complaint, that is, President Trump, Elon Musk, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Mercier (the latter two graduates of Stanford Business School), understand the concept of the market. The market is based on multiple exchanges of money for goods (or services) which are equivalent in value. You pay for what you get. The cost cutting we are seeing in the BIA, we have to conclude, is understood by these businessmen as service cutting. Cutting waste and inefficiency, and corruption would mean finding them, but there was no looking for or finding waste, inefficiency, or corruption here, just immediate (it all happened in one day) and indiscriminate firing of personnel in order to cut all services drastically. Harm is the intention.
It seems that we, who are responsible for this government, don’t want educated native Americans in our midst. The dogs have been unleashed.
Until now I have enjoyed and appreciated what you are doing by keeping us informed about what’s going on in our local government. But your analysis regarding cost cuts in the BIA is bogus. It totally ignores the fact that most government agencies and departments are over staffed. Therefore the probability that the BIA is over staffed is quite high. Doge has uncovered the facts and is doing something about it. Just as Trump promised. The idea that to harm people is the sole intention of DOGE comes from a biased view and reveals an agenda designed to undermine the will of the people who elected Trump.
Mr. Brown, thank you for your comment. I may be biased, but I try to temper that possibility by finding and looking at the facts of the issue I am writing about, as I assume you would. But the facts I cited, such as the 34 courses left without instruction or the basketball coach fired just before the league championship do not tell me that these people were fired because of “overstaffing.” Are you saying that they are? If so, you should explain.
I think you are mistaken to take the undemonstrated but asserted “fact” that government agencies are generally overstaffed to indicate the possibility of BIA overstaffing. Since the firings occurred unilaterally in one day as a response to directives from above, it does not seem that any of the people were vetted as to the needs of their positions. This is what I meant by repeatedly saying that the firings were “indiscriminate.” Noone said this person is needed and this one is not. So, you see, there is reason for what I concluded, that the firings were to actually reduce services.
When services that are necessary are curtailed, then, I think you will agree, there are harms, since needed services are needed for the purpose for which they are needed. If educating people is a needed purpose, then reducing education is a harm not just to the purpose of the institution but to the people involved.
As I said, as businessmen, those involved in the decision, knew that cost cutting was a rhetorical cover for cutting services which resulted in harm. Therefore, that was their intent. I did not say that was their “sole” intent. In fact, I think they had other intents, but cutting services that would harm the recipients of those services was certainly an intent.
I do not think that the will of the people in the elections was to harm the people. I think that the people who voted for cost cutting really thought that they would get cost cutting. But as it turns out, cost cutting is not what they are getting. Instead, cost cutting is simply a mask for deservicing the people. Taking away needed services, hurting people so that they will turn to private corporations to fulfill those needs, will drive up costs because private corporation services, as so many studies have shown, cost more than government services because they need to show profit. So, the so called “cost cutting” will end up increasing costs for people, even if their taxes go down because the government is smaller. All that is happening is a shift of services from the public to the private sector, thus allowing Mr. Musk to make more money from you and from me.
As I wrote in an early reply, this shift is a complete upturning of the notion of what a government is, a revolutionary shift from the idea that government exists for the people, by the people, and of the people, the idea of the equality of people on which this country is founded, to an idea of government by the wealthy and powerful, for the wealthy and powerful, and of the people duped by meaningless catch phrases like “cost cutting,” “efficiency,” “rooting out corruption,” and other good sounding terms. Who could be against those nice sounding actions? Noone, except those who see behind the words.
Looking behind the words is what we as citizens and voters should be doing. In this article I am looking behind the words “cost cutting” to see what reality they have, and the reality is harm and future cost increases. The reality is students who don’t get their scholarship fundings on time, courses shut down, advising ended, meal services closed, washrooms uncleaned, administrators teaching courses they have no inkling about, buildings rotting from neglect. Are you really saying, Mr. Brown, that all that is “overstaffing”?