Federal Overhaul is a multipart series that explores the impact of the Trump administration’s restructuring of the federal government on Black communities.

When Theodore Johnson was a young boy in Raleigh, North Carolina, he and his family had to be strategic to make ends meet. They often went shopping at Kmart months in advance, putting clothes on layaway and then picking them up a week or two before he and his siblings started school.

Johnson knew that he wanted more economic stability for himself and the family of his own he’d have one day. So, when he had the chance to receive a stipend in college in exchange for joining the military after graduation, he seized it.

“It helped to sort of leapfrog a generation,” Johnson, a senior adviser at the public policy think tank New America, told Capital B, referring to the 20 years he spent as a U.S. Navy commander. “All the things that people from families that had been middle class for generations have — like parents absorbing the costs of becoming an adult — the federal service gave that to me. It was like the grandparent I never had because of Jim Crow.”

For decades, federal employment has been a lifeline for Black families, a way of bringing the elusive American dream within reach. But the early days of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House have upended this sense of opportunity. Black access to federal jobs — which provide steady pay and excellent benefits, don’t always require a college degree, and offer a competitive pension — is in doubt.

Among the slew of executive orders Trump has signed, one dismantles federal agencies’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Another forbids race-conscious recruitment in the military. Still another rescinds Executive Order 11246, which was signed in 1965 to prohibit discriminatory employment practices for government contractors. Trump has also taken aim at the Environmental Protection Agency, threatening the former administration’s attempts to deliver clean air and water to Black communities, and eyed privatizing the U.S. Postal Service.

While 14% of the entire U.S. population is Black, about 18% of the federal workforce is Black. The number of Black federal workers who have been or could be affected by the administration’s anti-DEI actions isn’t known, but the administration has ordered all federal personnel in DEI roles to be placed on paid leave.

The developments of the past several weeks have alarmed Black federal staffers — past and present — as well as experts, who fear that the attack on DEI will chip away at Black federal workers’ morale, erode Black economic progress at a moment when the racial wealth gap is increasing, and spur anti-DEI behavior beyond the federal government.

“My whole life is built on having a parent who was working in the federal service. That definitely shaped me — all of the opportunities and experiences that I got,” a Black former federal employee told Capital B, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “That [legacy] is huge. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about generations that are going to be impacted by these executive orders.”

Black federal employees are concerned about the future of their jobs, and many feel as if they have a target on their backs. Elon Musk, whom the president has given a long leash to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” and other conservative players are on the warpath, as they seek to restructure federal agencies, obtain sensitive government data, and slash what they call “wasteful” expenditures.

Other assaults on the federal workforce abound: moving to fire probationary employees, trying to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, offering employees buyouts, and more.

These machinations could hamper access to a source of employment that for years has been prized as a ticket to the Black middle class, especially in and around the nation’s capital. The federal service was among the first national workforces to be integrated, and compared with the private sector, it’s traditionally had firmer safeguards against discriminatory hiring practices.

Tyra Mariani, the founder and principal of UP Advisors LLC, a consulting firm, echoed some of these observations about the significance of the federal service. Under the Obama administration, she was appointed chief of staff to the U.S. deputy secretary of education and deputy chief of staff to the U.S. secretary of education, helping to shape priorities across different levels of schooling.

While she was a political appointee, Mariani came to understand why Black civil servants she worked with wanted to make a career in that particular space.

“They clearly lived solidly in the middle class. They had a good, quality middle-class life, and on a scale that didn’t exist for their parents’ generation,” she told Capital B, highlighting that civil servants are crucial to keeping federal agencies afloat from administration to administration. “Those positions offer longevity if you do your job well.”

The administration’s reversal of civil rights protections

Race-conscious policies, specifically those that have ramped up diversity in the federal workforce, have “been a godsend for so many people who live in this country and love this country and want their fair shot at making a living and having a good life,” Marcus Board, an associate professor of political science at Howard University whose father was in the U.S. Air Force, told Capital B.

After assuming the presidency in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson expanded federal workforce protections for Black Americans and other marginalized communities.

On Sept. 24, 1965, he signed Executive Order 11246, outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin for groups receiving federal contracting and requiring federal contractors to affirmatively work toward creating equal opportunity for everyone.

Trump rescinded this order on Jan. 21, just one day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. He referred to efforts to make amends for the historical wrongs Black Americans have endured as “illegal discrimination.” While Trump insists that his intention is to vanquish DEI and forge a “colorblind” society, what we’ve actually seen are incursions into protections from the Civil Rights era, Board said.

The president’s actions, in some ways, mirror those of President Woodrow Wilson. On entering office in 1913, Wilson swiftly segregated the federal workforce, erasing gains Black Americans had made after Reconstruction, according to a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

Mariani, the Obama administration appointee, shares these deep concerns about the current attempts to undermine measures intended to help marginalized communities.

She explained that it was angering to watch the first Trump administration come behind former President Barack Obama and dismantle work she and her colleagues had done in the interest of every child receiving a quality education.

To witness another Trump administration take steps against things including education is “extremely heartbreaking,” Mariani said. The president is determined to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, whose Office for Civil Rights is charged with enforcing laws such as Title VI of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination by recipients of federal funds.

“It’s hard,” she continued. “You’re looking at your communities, and you know that Black and brown communities will be most affected by all of this undoing.”

The consequences of the federal government’s policy shifts

The administration is “killing morale right now,” said the former federal employee who spoke with Capital B on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional retaliation. Numerous federal agencies have halted Black History Month observances and other events celebrating the impact marginalized communities have had on the U.S. — often in the face of great odds — as these agencies scramble to comply with Trump’s orders.

These moves have rattled the members of other vulnerable groups, too.

“One of my folks who reached out to me — he’s a gay man — was like, ‘OK, so, I’m basically going back into the closet,’” the former federal employee said, nodding to the “bold, supportive” programs that the federal government long had for LGBTQ workers. “What does it mean for our transgender employees in the federal government that gender-neutral bathroom signs have been taken down? Clearly, employee morale is going down — which means that employee performance is going down.”

Additionally, there’s worry about what the deterioration of Black federal employment would mean for the demographic landscape of the broader Washington, D.C., region, which includes parts of Maryland and Northern Virginia. About one-fifth of the federal workforce — nearly 450,000 people — resides in the region, per the Pew Research Center.

Areas such as Prince George’s County and Charles County, both in Maryland, boast especially large Black populations — 63% and 54%, respectively. Black communities there have been able to thrive economically, thanks largely to the doors opened by federal employment.

“That [demographic landscape] could change, without question,” said Board, the author of the 2022 book, Invisible Weapons: Infiltrating Resistance and Defeating Movements. “I imagine that we’re going to see a level of displacement that rivals the Great Migration, because Black people are going to be pushed out or they’re going to take early retirement. They’ll leave the area, and that’s going to fundamentally change how it’s shaped.”

There’s also concern about the ripple effects of the federal government’s actions. Already, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has instructed the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate private sector DEI initiatives. There is “no place” for “race- or sex-based preferences, diversity hiring targets, or preferential treatment based on DEI- or DEIA-related criteria,” she underlined in a memo, illustrating that she intends to bring the department in line with Trump’s platform.

Private companies frequently follow the federal government’s lead on workforce strategies, as they assess what kind of behavior is acceptable.

“If the federal government determines that diversity is no longer important, it shouldn’t be surprising that major corporations also are deciding, ‘Well, maybe we don’t need DEI anymore. Maybe we don’t need pro-diversity initiatives,” said Johnson, the retired U.S. Navy commander. “They didn’t come up with that on their own. Five years ago, they were posting about Black Lives Matter. Now, they’re getting rid of DEI and following government cues.”

This focus on obliterating DEI makes Johnson anxious about the years ahead, as he reflects on how Black Americans — members of his family included — have used the federal service to “get out of Dodge and find opportunity.”

“When the federal government became one of the early major workforces to integrate, that first generation of Black workers could then help their children not only get a better education and enjoy a better upbringing, but also get a foot in the door for another good federal job to allow them to later take care of their own families,” he said. “If you interrupt this pipeline, you’re interrupting all that you’ve worked for to transfer to your family.”