Congress funds tribal missing-persons coordination, streamlines BIA hiring
S. 390 — BADGES for Native Communities Act · Filed by Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 4, 2025 · Passed chamber
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What it does
This bill creates two main programs to address missing and murdered Native Americans. First, it establishes a 5-year demonstration program allowing the Department of Interior to conduct background investigations and security clearances for Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement applicants, potentially streamlining hiring. Second, it authorizes $5 million in federal grants (2026–2030) to tribes, states, and tribal organizations to establish coordination centers, regional commissions, and alert systems to track missing persons, sexual violence, and death investigations affecting Native communities.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is establishing grant programs and coordination infrastructure for missing-persons investigations in tribal communities, paired with a demonstration program for streamlining BIA law enforcement hiring. Both are public-safety measures, not regulatory relief or private carve-outs.
What the text implies
- The background-investigation demonstration program delegates federal security-clearance authority to Interior, potentially reducing OPM oversight of BIA hiring standards for 5 years; outcomes depend on implementation and reporting fidelity.
- Grant eligibility requires states to enter memoranda of understanding with tribes for data-sharing; this may expose tribal law enforcement data to state systems with different privacy/retention standards.
- The bill authorizes $1M annually but does not mandate appropriation; actual funding depends on annual congressional action, creating uncertainty for grantees planning multi-year coordination infrastructure.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill directly addresses a documented public-safety crisis—missing and murdered Indigenous people—by funding coordination infrastructure, data-sharing systems, and law enforcement training resources. The background-investigation demonstration program may improve BIA hiring efficiency without removing oversight. Ordinary citizens in tribal communities gain better investigative coordination and faster case documentation.
Who stands to gain
- tribal law enforcement agencies
- state and local law enforcement (as grant co-applicants)
- federal law enforcement training providers
Named in the bill
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Programs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Personnel Management, National Crime Information Center, National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Indian Tribes, Tribal organizations
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Republicans, 1 Democrats.
- Feb 4, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 4, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Indian Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs”
- Mar 5, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Indian Affairs. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably”
- Dec 11, 2025 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S8685; text: CR S8685-8687)”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $3,050,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 49 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Catherine Cortez Masto, the sponsor, reported $298,634 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Friends Committee on National Legislation — $3,000,000 on 3 filings
- Peace Officers Research Association of California — $50,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (8,547 characters) on Jun 8, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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