he Receipts: Every Way Trump Has Hurt Black People in His Second Term
Blogged by poligirlsayswhat
The Trump second term impact on Black Americans is no longer theoretical. From rising Black unemployment and DEI rollbacks to voting restrictions, HBCU funding cuts, and attacks on the Smithsonian, the first sixteen months of Trump’s second term have produced measurable consequences across Black America.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
Black unemployment hit 7.6 percent in the first quarter of 2026. That is 1.2 percentage points higher than where it sat in the first quarter of Trump’s second term. The Black men employment to population ratio dropped 1.7 percentage points from 60.5 to 58.8 in a single year, with non college graduates driving the decline. Nearly 300,000 Black women left the labor force in the second quarter of 2025 alone, according to reporting cited by the Center for American Progress. Black women who were college graduates and public sector workers got hit first and hardest, because that is exactly where Trump’s federal workforce purges landed.
The Joint Center’s State of the Dream 2026 report does not mince words. It describes Trump’s policies, from DOGE to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as actively pushing Black workers backward and setting Black households further behind. That report dropped in January. The numbers have only gotten worse since.
The DEI Demolition
The Trump second term impact on Black Americans started on day one. On January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, Trump signed the executive order “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” It eliminated DEI programs, offices, and staff across the federal government and extended the ban to federal contractors. Within months, he expanded the order to target DEI in artificial intelligence development and the United States military.
On March 26, 2026, he signed “Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors,” which the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation describes as a measure that “does not protect against discrimination but instead reinstitutionalizes it.”
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