Jack Stevens: The More Things Change at the BIA, the More They Stay the Same

The BIA’s 2026 budget brings good news for bureaucrats: They are still in charge.

After professing allegiance to the “BIA’s core mission,” which includes prominently an intention to “foster strong economies and self-sufficiency,” the BIA budget has eliminated the half-century-old Indian Loan Guarantee Program (ILGP) which was the primary source of financing for Native economic development projects, and buried and pauperized the Division of Energy and Mineral Development (DEMD), which is responsible for more economic progress than any activity outside of gaming.

After Biden Administration bureaucrats colossally mismanaged the ILGP, driving away all its competent field managers, Trump bureaucrats deleted the program altogether. It is telling that the Trump crew left the Biden manager in charge of the smoking ruins of what had been one of Interior’s most successful programs.

Without explanation or tribal consultation, Biden managers drastically reduced support for DEMD. Not to be outdone, the Trump budget placed DEMD under the auspices of the Indian Energy Service Center (IESC), an entity that has no contact with tribes and only deals with other federal agencies, The IESC knows nothing and cares not a whit about energy or mineral development. They are strictly paper shufflers.

This is no way to “unleash American energy,” as was called for in President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14154. But it certainly preserves the bureaucratic status quo at the BIA.

And that, not economic progress, seems to be the real goal of the BIA’s 2026 budget.