Rounds helping Trump deprive Natives of their humanity

What a shocker. 

Earth hating former South Dakota Governor now-US Senator Mike Rounds is an insurance salesman by trade and has wanted to deconstruct the Indian Health Service and Medicaid for most of his life. So to nobody’s surprise, Rounds turned on American Indians when in the days after Donald Trump’s inauguration that career criminal commanded the US Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the Dakota Excess pipeline that violated tribal sovereignty, repeatedly cut funds for Indian education, moved to privatize Native trusts, cut foreign aid to countries with high Native populations and praised Brazil’s extreme white wing autocrat who laid waste to Indigenous lands in the Amazon. 

Trump hates American Indians so deeply after losing a 1993 casino case under the 1988 Indian Gaming Act he deployed Covid as a biological weapon in 2020 to annihilate as many people as he could and so far he has gotten away with genocide. 

Contending tribal nations enjoy racial preference lawyers and political appointees in that administration attempted to deny Medicaid benefits to some three million Native Americans even after Republicans cut funding to the Indian Health Service. Under Trump’s direction US Immigration and Customs Enforcement performed mass hysterectomies on Indigenous women, stripped funding for enforcement of the Violence Against Women Act and stonewalled investigations of missing and murdered Indigenous women or MMIW cases. 

South Dakota’s junior US Senator even described the “unimaginable horrors” at the IHS after his fellow Republicans created those unimaginable horrors.

In total, we find that DOGE canceled nearly $470 million worth of grants and contracts going to Native American Tribes and organizations. This accounted for roughly 6.5% of all DOGE funding cuts that we were able to confirm using de-obligations through USAspending. DOGE cuts have impacted the government’s obligation to provide services to Tribal governments and Tribal citizens, including health care and food systems. [DOGE’s impact in Indian Country: Nearly $470 million in lost funding]

There is a growing movement among Democrats and others to fund Medicare for all but this interested party likes the idea of rolling the funding for Obamacare, TriCare, Medicare, the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Administration together then offering Medicaid for all.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! Did you know that while Native Americans account for 3% of the U.S. population, just 0.5% of philanthropic funding goes to Native-exclusive causes? Some insights from our @brookings.edu research about the need for more robust philanthropic investment in Indian Country

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— Rob Maxim (@robmaxim.bsky.social) October 12, 2026 at 1:10 PM