Trump and Black America: What Helped, What Hurt, and What Will Last?

Medicaid: This Wasn't Just an Executive Order. Congress Changed the Law.

This distinction matters.

A future president can often reverse an executive order. A law passed by Congress is much harder to undo.

The 2025 reconciliation law made major changes to Medicaid, including new work-related requirements and financing restrictions. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Medicaid provisions will reduce federal deficits by about $886.8 billion from 2025 through 2034 and leave about 7.5 million more people uninsured in 2034 than otherwise would have been.

Why does that matter to Black progress? Because Black Americans already have less access to private health insurance. KFF reported that in 2024, 10.1% of Black people under 65 were uninsured, compared with 6.8% of White people. KFF also warns that losses of Medicaid and ACA coverage are likely to widen racial coverage gaps because Black people rely disproportionately on those programs.

So this is bigger than saying, “Trump cut a Biden program.”

The federal health-security structure itself changed, and it changed through legislation.

That makes this a long-term policy change, not something the next president can simply erase with a signature.

SNAP: Food Assistance Was Also Reduced by Law

The same 2025 law changed SNAP, the program many people still call food stamps. It expanded work requirements, changed benefit rules and shifted more costs toward states.

CBO projects roughly $211 billion less federal SNAP spending through 2035, with fewer people receiving benefits and lower average benefits than under previous law.

CBO's broader look at the law is even more revealing: households near the bottom of the income ladder lose resources overall, while many households in the middle and toward the top gain resources, largely because lower-income households lose Medicaid and SNAP support while tax changes benefit other groups.

If our measurement is material security—food, health, income and the ability to stay afloat—this belongs in the setback column.

A 60-Year Civil-Rights Structure for Federal Contractors Was Ended

In January 2025, Trump revoked Executive Order 11246, which had been in place since 1965.

This was not simply a rule saying, “Don't discriminate.” Federal law already prohibited employment discrimination.

The order went further. Companies doing business with the federal government had affirmative-action obligations intended to make equal employment opportunity more than a promise on paper.

Trump ended those race- and sex-based affirmative-action requirements and directed the federal government to stop enforcing them. His administration says those programs amount to improper preferences and that government should instead enforce individual merit and race-neutral nondiscrimination.

Here is the other side of the ledger: a remedial structure created during the Civil Rights era because simply banning discrimination had not been enough was dismantled after roughly six decades.

Trump did not legalize racial discrimination. Title VII and other basic protections remain.

But the proactive federal-contractor mechanism was removed.

Because this was done by executive action rather than a new act of Congress, a future administration can rebuild parts of it. Still, a 60-year federal enforcement structure has been interrupted.

“Disparate Impact” Sounds Technical. It Isn't.

Imagine an employer creates a rule:

“Everybody must meet Requirement X.”

The rule says nothing about race. But it knocks Black applicants out at a dramatically higher rate—and the requirement is not actually necessary for the job.

Disparate-impact law allows the government or a court to examine what that supposedly neutral rule actually does, even when nobody leaves behind an email saying, “I want to discriminate.”

Trump's April 2025 order directed federal agencies to deprioritize disparate-impact enforcement and told the Attorney General to move against regulations that use that approach.

The administration says this protects equality and prevents government from forcing racial balancing.

The civil-rights concern is simple: if the injured person has to prove what was inside somebody's head instead of showing what the policy actually did, some forms of systemic discrimination become much harder to challenge.

That distinction matters enormously.

“Can you prove this person secretly intended to discriminate?” is a very different question from “What did this policy actually do, and was there a legitimate reason for it?”

This is a major enforcement change, but because much of it is executive and administrative, it is more reversible than the Medicaid and SNAP legislation.

Police Accountability: Federal Oversight Was Pulled Back

In May 2025, Trump's Justice Department moved to dismiss federal police-reform cases involving Minneapolis and Louisville and closed or retracted findings involving several other police departments.

The administration argues that some of these agreements were too broad, too expensive and relied too heavily on statistical disparities. It says unconstitutional conduct can still be prosecuted individually.

But consider Minneapolis.

The earlier Justice Department investigation found reasonable cause to conclude that Minneapolis police used excessive force and unlawfully discriminated against Black and Native American people. The proposed remedy was not merely a request to “do better.” It was designed to become a court-enforceable consent decree with independent monitoring.

Trump's Justice Department withdrew that federal mechanism.

Again, police misconduct did not become legal. But a system designed to force institutional reform was removed.

HBCUs Got More Money. That Is Real. It Is Also Not the Whole Story.

This is where partisan scorekeeping fails.

In September 2025, the Education Department ended discretionary funding for several Minority-Serving Institution programs, arguing that eligibility rules tied to racial or ethnic enrollment were unconstitutional.

Five days later, the department announced nearly $500 million in additional one-time funding for HBCUs and Tribal Colleges and Universities. The department said total FY2025 funding for HBCUs would exceed $1.34 billion.

That HBCU support is a real benefit and belongs in the positive column.

But the other changes happened too.

So the honest entry is:

HBCUs received substantial additional funding. Other minority-serving funding mechanisms were ended or redirected.

Record both.

And distinguish temporary money from permanent law.

Federal Jobs Matter More to Black America Than Many People Realize

GAO reported that nearly 378,000 federal employees separated during 2025, while only about 127,000 were hired. Across 22 major agencies, staffing fell by nearly 256,000 workers from December 2024 to January 2026.

Before those reductions, Black Americans made up about 18.5% of the executive-branch workforce, compared with about 13.1% of the civilian labor force.

That means federal employment has been an unusually important employment channel for Black workers and a significant path into stable middle-class jobs.

But here we have to stop before the evidence stops.

We cannot honestly say Trump fired 378,000 Black workers. The published numbers do not establish that.

What we can say is this:

Shrinking a sector in which Black workers have historically been substantially represented creates a credible risk to a long-standing Black middle-class employment pathway.

Before scoring the actual racial injury, we need the racial breakdown of the workers who left.

Evidence first. Conclusion second.

Justice40 Was Terminated—But We Shouldn't Invent the Amount of Damage

Trump also ended Justice40, the initiative that aimed to direct 40% of the overall benefits from certain federal investments toward disadvantaged communities.

GAO confirms that the initiative was terminated in January 2025.

But GAO also found that the federal government had not adequately measured Justice40's overall results. So we should not pretend we know exactly how much Black material progress was lost when it ended.

The honest entry is:

Mechanism removed. Exact material injury not yet proven.

That is what evidence-based accountability looks like. We do not have to make the number up to take the change seriously.

Now Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

A serious ledger cannot count only the losses.

Trump has signed policies Black Americans can benefit from. The 2025 law created Workforce Pell Grants for eligible short-term training programs beginning with the 2026–27 award year. The same law also extended and revised Opportunity Zones on a long-term basis. Those policies are broadly available rather than designed specifically to close a Black-white deficit, but Black Americans can benefit from them and the benefits should be measured.

There is also a particularly strong first-term example.

Trump signed the FUTURE Act in 2019, making $255 million in annual mandatory federal funding permanent across HBCUs and other Minority-Serving Institutions.

That is not merely an announcement. It is durable institutional support.

It belongs in the positive column.

But even then, the next question remains: Did the policy actually narrow a Black-white material gap, and by how much?

The Real Question Is Bigger Than “Trump Good” or “Trump Bad”

As of September 13, 2026, the evidence does not support saying, “Trump has done nothing for Black people.”

That statement is simply too broad to be true.

There are genuine Trump credits, including durable ones.

But the evidence also shows durable Medicaid and SNAP changes that reduce resources relied upon disproportionately by lower-income households, while several federal civil-rights enforcement mechanisms have been weakened, ended or redirected.

Some of those changes are law and therefore difficult to undo.

Others are executive and reversible.

And that is why the right question is not:

“Did Black people receive something?”

That bar is far too low.

The questions should be:

• What was permanent?
• How much was it worth?
• Who actually received it?
• Did it build Black income, assets, health, education, political power or institutional capacity?
• What was removed at the same time?
• Did a new benefit simply replace something already lost?
• Who received the larger benefit elsewhere?
• What remained unequal afterward?
• And after everything is netted together, did the Black-white gap actually shrink?

Under that standard, I see real credits for Trump. What I do not yet see in his second term is a major federal law specifically aimed at permanently closing an accumulated Black material deficit on a scale comparable in directness to some of the long-standing health, economic and civil-rights structures now being reduced or dismantled.

That is a much stronger conclusion than saying he has done nothing.

Because this is not about protecting a political argument.

It is about keeping the books.

Of everything this government has given us, taken from us, opened to us or closed off from us, what will still be changing Black life 10, 20 or 30 years from now?

That is the ledger The Missing Seat will keep building.

Ally = Action. 🪑

Pull Up a Chair

When a president, Congress or agency announces a policy as a win, do not stop at the press release. Ask for the rest of the account:

• Is it law, an executive order or temporary funding?
• Who qualifies?
• Who actually receives the benefit?
• What was cut or removed at the same time?
• How long will the change last?
• What measurable inequality changed because of it?

A benefit deserves credit. A loss deserves accounting. Neither should be hidden to protect a political side.

Sources and Receipts

• Congressional Budget Office, Estimated Budgetary Effects of the Medicaid Provisions in Public Law 119-21.
• KFF, Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity, 2010–2024.
• Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036, including SNAP effects of the 2025 reconciliation law.
• Congressional Budget Office, Distributional Effects of Public Law 119-21.
• The White House, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.
• The White House, Fact Sheet on Disparate-Impact Enforcement.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division dismissals and closures, May 21, 2025.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Minneapolis proposed consent decree, January 2025.
• U.S. Department of Education, Minority-Serving Institution discretionary grant changes, September 10, 2025.
• U.S. Department of Education, FY2025 HBCU and Tribal College funding announcement, September 15, 2025.
• U.S. Government Accountability Office, Federal Workforce: Government-wide Changes in Employment, 2025.
• U.S. Government Accountability Office, Justice40 Initiative: Status and Measurement.
• Internal Revenue Service, 2026 Opportunity Zone guidance.
• Congressional Research Service, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions: Mandatory Funding and the FUTURE Act.

Verification Notice

This editorial distinguishes enacted statutes from executive and administrative actions because their durability is different. Where available data do not establish a racial breakdown—such as the race of federal employees who separated in 2025—the article does not invent one. Where a program's overall material effect has not been adequately measured—such as Justice40—the mechanism's removal is recorded without assigning an unsupported dollar value to Black injury.