Jesus Christ, it's going to be too late by November

The Bureau of Indian Affairs told the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on Friday that their reservation will be "disestablished" and their land taken out of trust, per an order from the Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell announced in a post on the tribe's website.

"Today's action was cruel and it was unnecessary. The Secretary is under no court order to take our land out of trust. He is fully aware that litigation to uphold our status as a tribe eligible for the benefits of the Indian Reorganization Act is ongoing," Cromwell wrote. "It begs the question, what is driving our federal trustee's crusade against our reservation?"

[...]

Jean-Luc Pierite, head of the North American Indian Center of Boston, called the move an existential crisis for all tribes federally recognized after 1934. The move without a court order signals that reservations across the United States could be taken out of trust at the discretion of the secretary of the interior, Pierite said.

[...]

Pierite said the interior secretary's move is based on the 2009 Supreme Court ruling Carcieri v. Salazar, which established that the federal government cannot take land into trust for tribes that weren't "under federal jurisdiction" in the year 1934.

Conner Swanson, a spokesperson from the Department of the Interior, said the tribe remains federally recognized, and that there was a court decision mandating the department's action.

[...]

Cromwell said that no court mandate had been issued that told the Department of the Interior to take the land out of trust.

"We know that Congress is the only group that has a plenary authority to do that. So the court did not issue a mandate," Cromwell said. "So this is very nefarious activity by the [interior secretary]."

  WBUR

Why are they doing this now, for fuck's sake? Because everybody is distracted with the virus and can only fight one crisis at a time? What else are they doing while we're occupied?*

Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, who represents the South Shore, South Coast, Cape and Islands and who reintroduced the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act to provide the tribe with federal recognition, called the interior secretary's action "one of the most cruel and nonsensical acts I have seen since coming to Congress."

The cruelty is the point with this administration.

"This also calls out the need for the Senate to act on the dual bipartisan proposals led by myself and [Oklahoma U.S. Rep. Tom Cole], which would rectify this issue."

Not with Mitch McConnell at the helm they won't.

The House was originally supposed to vote on the bill in early May 2019, until a critical tweet by President Trump led its sponsors to pull it from the House floor. The bill eventually passed with a vote of 275-146. Almost all Democrats voted for it, and most Republicans voted against it.

November is going to be too late. He has to go now. His treatment of states whose governors he doesn't like and his complete failure in the response to the pandemic are reason enough to impeach the motherfucker again. Sadly, we still have the same fuckers controlling the Senate.

Cromwell said that the Trump administration has been actively working against the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

[...]

"My tribe [is] just gonna continue to fight for our land, including going through proper channels like the courts. This isn't the end for us," Cromwell said.

In his statement, Cromwell affirmed the tribe's commitment to survival despite adversity.

"We have survived, we will continue to survive," he wrote. "These are our lands, these are the lands of our ancestors, and these will be the lands of our grandchildren. This Administration has come and it will go. But we will be here, always. And we will not rest until we are treated equally with other federally recognized tribes and the status of our reservation is confirmed."

This administration is not going to go fast enough.

*UPDATE:  Here are a couple things.