News Analysis
Racial Justice
Black Workers Are the Canaries in the Coal Mine During Trump 2.0
In 2016, Trump asked Black voters what they had to lose if he was president. In 2026, the answer is clear.
by Austin C. McCoy
May 21, 2026
Truthout
Nearly a decade ago, Donald Trump infamously asked Black voters in his pitch to garner their support: “What do you have to lose?”
The Federal Reserve answered Trump’s question in its recent Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households report for 2025: Black Americans lost more financially than every other racial group. According to the report, 60 percent of Black Americans expressed that their financial well-being declined, down 5 percent from 2024. In contrast, 79 percent of white Americans said they were “doing okay” last year.
Black job losses in 2025 underscore the Fed’s reporting. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Valerie Wilson, the Black unemployment rate rose 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same time last year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also recently reported that the Black unemployment rate, which is typically higher than the national average, rose to 7.3 percent, making the rate as high as it was the pandemic in 2021. As I’ve previously noted, Black women endured sudden and staggering job loss as more than 300,000 were let go in the first few months of 2025.
Black American workers have experienced job losses across labor sectors during the first year of the new Trump administration. Its targeting of federal workers using the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) as an economic battering ram disproportionately hit Black Americans hard. Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, more Black Americans came to view the federal government as a reliable employer that ensured some degree of economic mobility for a racial group increasingly marginalized by the growing “post-industrial” private sector economy. At the end of 2024, Black Americans comprised nearly 19 percent of the federal workforce. Now, with DOGE cuts and this administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion plans and affirmative action programs for contractors, the prospects of Black employment in the federal government appear bleak as ever.
Weaknesses in manufacturing during Trump’s second term hurt Black laborers, who comprise nearly 11 percent of that industry’s workforce. Despite the president’s promises to grow manufacturing jobs in the U.S., that sector shed more than 70,000 jobs between April 2025 and January 2026, surely negatively impacting the industrial Black working class.
Tariffs and energy shocks from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran are broadly hurting American agriculture. The war is driving up the price of fertilizer and diesel as farmers are experiencing drought. However, Black agriculturalists in particular are experiencing significant strain: In addition to dealing with the rising costs of fuel and fertilizer, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other farmers of color who need help from federal assistance programs are being hindered by the Department of Agriculture’s choice to eliminate anti-discrimination protections. The agency’s cancellation of the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program is one example of how this administration’s backlash against any hint of racial justice leaves workers of color vulnerable to ongoing trade and military wars. Again, the Trump administration is enacting economic policies that disproportionately hurt Black Americans in the name of “colorblindness” and “meritocracy.” It is more Jim Crow.
The theft of Black Americans’ jobs, wages, and property is linked to political disenfranchisement.
The economic devastation comes as Black Americans are experiencing a rollback in political rights not seen since the end of Reconstruction. And, as the history of racial violence and the implementation of Jim Crow segregation in the U.S. illustrates, the theft of Black Americans’ jobs, wages, and property is linked to political disenfranchisement. When Black Americans joined with whites to elect a “fusion government” in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, white people there waged a white supremacist campaign to delegitimize that election, culminating in what many have called a coup d’état. Black Wilmingtonians not only lost out on governing, but many whites drove Black folks out of their communities and their jobs. Nearly two years after white supremacists took control over Wilmington’s government, they passed Jim Crow laws.
Of course, Black Americans are not the only ones experiencing economic loss in Trump’s second administration. Everyone is paying the price in high gas and energy due to the war on Iran and the tech sector’s efforts to build resource-sucking data centers in places like Memphis and rural Utah; rising inflation is cutting more into workers’ pay; and workers continue to pay more for groceries, vehicles, and housing. Most Americans are living in an economic crisis as the wealthy continue to profit from the oil shocks, AI boom, and war. All this political and economic turmoil presents us with organizing opportunities.
This is why we must support unionizing all workers, including undocumented laborers, and engage in other collective actions to protect and expand labor rights. Workers’ organizations and unions like the Federal Unionists Network, formed in the wake of DOGE cuts, and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists also called for a national day of protest akin to the 1981 Solidarity Day mobilization in Washington, D.C. Their calls materialized in the “May Day Strong” coalitional effort to oppose the war, inflation, and economic inequality as thousands of workers and students stayed home from work and walked out of school to participate in nearly 3,500 May Day rallies. Ultimately, more of us will need to continue to participate in more of these protests and consider using them to build toward organizing a general strike.
Black Americans are the canaries in the coal mine. Black workers are usually the first to experience economic downturns and tend to endure the worst outcomes due to structural racism, lack of wealth, and disproportionate under- and unemployment. While we need to continue to build multiracial coalitions to protect and grow unions, to ensure jobs and wages, and to maintain and grow social programs, we need to pay attention to the economic prospects of Americans disproportionately at the bottom. That way, more Americans might prepare themselves to endure economic turbulence and we can better position ourselves to collectively fight back against the 1 percent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Austin C. McCoy
Austin McCoy is a scholar of African American history, labor, social movements, and popular culture. He is also the author of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made. Follow him on Bluesky.
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 7:28 AM
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https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-05-18/what-to-know-about-trumps-1-7b-fund-to-compensate-allies-claiming-political-targeting
What to Know About Trump’s Nearly $1.8B Fund to Compensate Allies Claiming Political Targeting
The Justice Department has announced a nearly $1.8 billion compensation fund for Trump allies who believe they were wrongly prosecuted by the Biden administration
by Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Associated Press
May 18, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump 's allies who believe they have been wrongly investigated and prosecuted could soon have access to a nearly $1.8 billion compensation fund, the Justice Department announced Monday in a move slammed by Democrats as unconstitutional and corrupt.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund" will represent “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” Blanche's statement made no mention of how investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s political opponents under his watch have exposed the Justice Department to the same claims of politicized law enforcement that he has said he opposed.
The fund was announced as part of a deal to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.
The fund is in keeping with Trump's long-running claims that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was weaponized against him, even though then-President Joe Biden himself was scrutinized during that time. The fund would represent not only a highly unorthodox resolution but also a further demonstration of the Trump administration’s eagerness to reward allies who were investigated and in some cases charged and convicted.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday the fund is dedicated to “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”
Democratic lawmakers opposed to the move argue that it will become a taxpayer-funded “slush fund” for Trump allies and supporters who claim political persecution. They also question whether the president should be able to direct money for the fund without explicit congressional approval.
Here's what to know about the fund:
Justice Department casts fund as redress for political targeting
The fund was announced after Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization agreed to drop their lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. The lawsuit alleged that a leak of confidential tax records caused them reputational and financial harm and negatively affected their public standing, among other allegations.
According to the Justice Department announcement, the fund is meant to provide a formal process for people or entities who say they were unfairly targeted by the government for political, ideological or personal reasons.
“The use of government power to target individuals or entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, or ideological reasons should not be tolerated by any administration,” Justice Department official Trent McCotter said in the statement announcing the fund.
The money itself would come from the federal judgment fund, which pays out court judgments and compromise settlements of lawsuits against the government.
The fund will be able to review claims of alleged government political targeting, issue formal apologies and award monetary compensation to approved applicants, the Justice Department said.
The claims of a weaponized Justice Department during the Biden administration overlook the fact that Biden himself was investigated for the potential mishandling of classified information, and his son Hunter was charged with gun and tax crimes.
Justice Department has not said who could qualify for compensation
The Justice Department did not identify anyone by name who could theoretically benefit from the fund, but there were multiple investigations of Trump allies during the Biden administration where targets could look to obtain payouts.
Prosecutors, for instance, charged about 1,500 people in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump on his first day in office of his second term either pardoned them, commuted their prison sentences or dismissed the cases.
It’s unclear whether those entitled to compensation would include Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of attacking officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and crutch. More than 250 people were convicted of assault charges, with the attacks in many cases captured on surveillance or body camera footage.
Asked Monday if individuals who committed violence that day should receive compensation from the fund, Trump said, “It’ll all be dependent on a committee." He added: “I didn’t do this deal. It was told to me yesterday.”
Other prominent Trump supporters who were investigated and charged include Steve Bannon, who served a prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, and Peter Navarro, who was similarly convicted of contempt. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Blanche-appointed commission would oversee claims
The Justice Department says the fund will receive $1.776 billion from the federal judgment fund, to operate through Dec. 15, 2028, and will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by Blanche, with one member chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. According to the Justice Department, the president can remove any member.
It was unclear how the commission would determine who should be awarded compensation.
Critics warn fund could reward Trump loyalists
Democratic lawmakers and ethics watchdogs slammed the creation of the fund, saying it was corrupt, opaque and had the potential to become a “slush fund” for the president and his allies.
A group of nearly 100 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a legal challenge to the case.
“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called the fund "corruption on steroids.”
Last month, she and a group of other Democratic lawmakers introduced the Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act, which would ban the sitting president and vice president from collecting settlement payments from the U.S., among other things.
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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
