Photo: Woman wearing the MMIW protest symbol of the Red Handprint, Wikimedia
One of the proudest moments of my career as a United States Senator was the passage of my Not Invisible Act in 2020. This bipartisan law, signed by President Trump, commissioned a report with recommendations to combat the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) Crisis.
In 2023, the Not One More Report was published. It contained concrete steps that Congress, the Executive Branch, and state, local, and Tribal governments across the country could take to end the high levels of violence facing Tribal communities.
Unfortunately, this month we recognize a grim milestone: that report has been inaccessible to the public for a year after having been removed from the Department of Justice’s website by the Trump Administration. According to the Administration, it violated the Executive Order entitled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” That doesn’t even make sense. This report is about keeping women safe, not “gender ideology.”
The Not Invisible Act Commission spent years conducting hearings with Tribal leaders, law enforcement, the family members of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and survivors. I’ve used its recommendations to introduce two bills of my own. All of that information is now unavailable because President Trump wrote it off and has refused to take any action to put this critical report back up.
I’m not willing to end the story here, however. I will keep fighting to get this essential information back in the hands of the public, no matter how long it takes.
