For Immediate Release
April 7, 2025
Contact:
Mike Inacay (Schatz) at press@indian.senate.gov
SCHATZ STATEMENT ON TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S DISRESPECT FOR PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS, INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, released the following statement on offers that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made to senior leaders across the Department to transfer to unspecified jobs in remote locations at the Indian Health Service (IHS), in an apparent attempt to oust them.
“IHS plays a critical role in delivering the trust and treaty-based promise of health care to Tribal communities, and its health care workforce should be strengthened to meet the specific needs of their patients. But this does not look like a serious plan to do that. And it clearly did not involve Tribal consultation.
If this administration truly cared about fixing IHS’s staff vacancy crisis, why did it try to cut the IHS workforce by nearly 1,000 employees just months ago? Why is it pushing to cut Medicaid, a critical funding source for IHS, to pay for tax cuts for billionaires? And why did it give high-level career employees just hours to decide whether to uproot their lives for jobs they never applied for in places they do not know?
If the administration actually wants to support IHS, it should talk to Tribes about what their communities actually need – doctors, nurses, dentists, and other clinicians – not use them as political pawns in its effort to purge the federal workforce in the name of so-called government efficiency.”
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