OP-ED: Trump’s Anti-DEI Assault Could Have New Victims: Native American Businesses

(Editor's note: With Jim away on vacation, today we're publishing this op-ed from Tommy Christopher, (

Thomas E Beller

) a valued friend and voice in our community. If you appreciate the op-ed, please follow and restack and let’s help him grow his presence here on Substack.)

President Donald Trump began an assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs the moment he took office with a flurry of executive actions designed to fulfill his "end woke" campaign promise.

The moves pleased the MAGA crowd that propelled him to victory and outraged opponents with antics like the removal of references to the Enola Gay and the scrubbing of Black historical figures like Jackie Robinson and the Tuskeegee airmen from government websites.

But a lesser-discussed outrage is the unfolding threat to Native American tribal businesses.

These entities, rooted in the sovereign legal status of tribes as governments, not identity groups, face an uncertain future as federal policies shift. The Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, a cornerstone of economic development for disadvantaged businesses, is under

scrutiny, and a new anti-DEI executive order threatens to further erode tribal participation in federal contracting. If it comes to pass, it will be especially ironic, since Trump was the beneficiary of majority support from self-identified Native American voters, according to exit polls. Undoubtedly, this is not what tribal voters voted for.

The SBA 8(a) Business Development Program is designed to support small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals or entities. For Native American tribes, it

has been a critical tool for economic growth. Tribal businesses, often operating in regions with limited economic opportunities, rely on 8(a) contracts to create jobs, build infrastructure, and fund community services.

Unlike other participants, tribes qualify not as racial or ethnic groups but as sovereign

governments—a distinction rooted in centuries of federal law and treaty obligations (which tribes often signed up to under duress). Few may be aware of it, but tribal sovereignty is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, federal treaties, and landmark Supreme Court decisions like Morton v. Mancari (1974), where the Court ruled that preferences for tribes are not racial classifications but political ones, rooted in the government’s trust responsibility to tribal nations. More recently, the current conservative—indeed Trumpy— Supreme Court has ruled multiple in support of tribal sovereignty, for example in the Brackeen case.

The bottom line is: Federal law, including the Constitution, says that tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations are not racial or ethnic groups.

But recognition of that fact could be set to change—and not just due to Trump’s anti-DEI push.

In part, the reassessment of 8(a) stems from a federal lawsuit filed by a white-owned business, which argued that the program’s race-based eligibility criteria violated equal protection principles — exactly the kind of legal challenge that the MAGA right wants to see more of, and believes is legally sound and philosophically justified.

The court’s ruling in that case, while not directly targeting tribal businesses, did prompt the SBA to reevaluate its criteria, opening the door to broader questions about tribal participation on the basis of allegations of “unfair discrimination.” Layer that on top of Trump’s sweeping anti-DEI executive order, and fear is growing on reservations across America that tribal businesses could be inadvertently—or intentionally—swept up in the rollback, despite their distinct legal status.

Per Kevin Allis, a member of the Forest County Potawatomi Community and the founder and President of Thunderbird Strategic, LLC, the anti-DEI order’s “broad language and potential for misinterpretation have triggered concerns about the participation of tribally-owned businesses” in 8(a).

Allis and the Potawatomi are not alone. Several other tribes are concerned about the impact of the lawsuit coupled with the anti-DEI order, though they requested that their identities not be revealed in order to avoid potential friction with the administration (the history of tribes successfully speaking out against US government action that could destroy them is basically nonexistent, and no one wants to risk provoking an adverse response from a President who loves Andrew Jackson). As one consultant for a Midwestern tribe put it, “conventional policy advocacy tactics can seem a little pointless or even dangerous when your nation has a history of speaking out about mistreatment or worse for hundreds of years, and being consistently ignored or retaliated against by the powers-that-be.”

But there is hope the point will be taken onboard nonetheless.

Professor Adam Crepelle, a legal scholar at Loyola University Chicago, author of "Becoming Nations Again: The Journey Towards Tribal Self-Determination," and an outspoken opponent of government intrusion on tribal sovereignty, recently noted that "In his last administration, seven tribes gained federal recognition. Objectively, Native Americans did well under Trump.”

Trump has, to his credit, advanced federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina— something both he and Kamala Harris had long pledged to accomplish.

And as the National Congress of American Indians notes, "Native peoples and governments have inherent rights and a political relationship with the U.S. government that does not derive from race or ethnicity. Tribal members are citizens of three sovereigns: their tribe, the United States, and the state in which they reside."

Yet the point has not been noted—so far. Just over one hundred days into Trump’s second term, the support he gained from tribal voters seems to have mostly been repaid with actions that threaten to harm Native American businesses, and tribal sovereignty itself. The push against DEI is just one of many examples — but undoubtedly one of the most clear-cut.

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