President Donald Trump worked the phones. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) threatened to jam up the Senate. And a new player in Washington lobbying blitzed the nation’s capital.
That’s all part of how the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina won a decades-long push for full federal recognition, according to the tribe’s chairman and an outside lobbyist who recounted the effort in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Government.
After decades of advocacy without success, lawmakers tucked the Lumbee provision into this year’s annual defense policy bill that sets troop raises and weapons procurement — despite opposition from rival tribes. Now the Lumbee tribe and its K Street firm plan to navigate the executive branch, tapping federal funds available because of the recognition. The tribe also could decide to start a casino business.
Lobbyist Ches McDowell, whose North Carolina firm Checkmate Government Relations came on the Washington scene this year, took up the tribe’s cause at the federal level pro bono. McDowell said there was a multi-pronged strategy of working the Trump team and harnessing support from lawmakers in both chambers, including his brother Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.).
“People said lightning had to strike for this to happen, but I think lightning had to strike four times for this to happen,” McDowell said in the interview in his offices, located midway between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue, complete with a taxidermy bear in the entryway.
McDowell, a hunting pal of Donald Trump Jr., has built a multimillion-dollar book of federal lobbying business. The firm also includes Chris LaCivita Jr., whose father co-managed Trump’s 2024 campaign, and others with ties to the Trump team and Capitol Hill.
Presidential Priority
“We have never had a White House’s support like we did this year,” said Lumbee Chairman John Lowery the same day the Senate voted on the measure.
Tillis, Lowery said, “He knows our people. He went to the mat for it.”
Lowery and more than 70 other members of the Lumbee Tribe watched the Senate floor vote on the defense measure Wednesday from the chamber’s gallery.
As Tillis escorted them, the senator, who isn’t running in 2026, said in an interview that the president had promised the tribe that recognition was a priority and he fulfilled that promise.
“One thing was the commitment of President Trump, and of course, he expected us to do the work to get it positioned for a legislative vehicle, but he made it very clear, it was a priority,” Tillis said. “The joy in the faces of these folks after the way that they’ve been treated. It’s gonna be transformational for them.”
Three days after taking office for his second term, Trump signed a memo saying that full recognition was the policy of the US government.
“That started the ball rolling as far as Congress moving forward,” Lowery said.
Bipartisan Support
The measure also had bipartisan backing.
“It’s an extraordinary accomplishment,” said Sen.
Rep.
President Trump “spent hours on the phone on this,” McDowell said, adding that other administration aides logged “countless hours.”
“Don Jr. was a huge advocate,” he said of his friend who has visited the tribe and posted support on X.
The tribe also sent a letter to President Trump, noting his daughter Tiffany Trump has ancestral ties to the Lumbee but isn’t eligible to become a citizen of the tribe.
“There’s been a lot of lip service from every party, every president, every governor, every whoever, and not one of them delivered a damn thing except Donald Trump,” McDowell said. That was lightning strike one.
The second was Tillis: “You had Thom Tillis, who was not leaving the Senate without this being done.” Tillis held up nominees as part of his effort to pressure the chamber to include the provision in the defense measure.
‘Go to War’
Third, “Then you had to have congressional members who were willing to really go to war,” including his lawmaker brother, whom he said made the Lumbee measure his No. 1 ask to House Speaker
Addison McDowell said the provision’s passage delivers “an outcome that should have been resolved generations ago.”
A spokesperson for Johnson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“While other presidents made empty promises to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, President Trump actually delivered for them by securing historic support, full federal recognition, and expansive tribal benefits. Honoring the Lumbee Tribe is long overdue, and another promise made, promise kept,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in an email.
The fourth lightning strike, Ches McDowell said, was the lobbying and advocacy from the tribe.
On the other side, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has paid $270,000 for federal lobbying this year to the firm Integrated Strategy Group, disclosures show. That tribe lobbied against the Lumbee measure.
Tillis said it’s a conflict over potential gambling enterprises and called rival tribes part of a “casino cartel.”
To make the Lumbee’s case, Lowery logged dozens of trips to Washington and attended a fundraiser for Vice President JD Vance, Lowery and McDowell said. Others from the tribe, too, had been coming to Washington for 100 years, Lowery said.
The tribe now plans to consult with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service and explore Agriculture Department programs.
“We’ve never been here before, so we’re going to be walking and chewing gum all at the same time and learn the process,” Lowery said. “We have to be very smart and make sure that we go after different programs and stuff within the federal government while we continue to have this great relationship with the Trump administration.”
McDowell said his firm would stay on to help because he expects continued opposition.
“This fight is not over,” he said.
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