The Trump administration is facing criticism amid accusations of targeting the black middle class during the ongoing government shutdown. Black individuals make up 19 percent of the federal workforce, which is notably higher than their 13 percent representation in the overall U.S. labor force. Several suburbs around Washington, D.C., known for hosting some of the nation’s wealthiest black communities, are feeling the impact. As the shutdown reached its 30th day on Wednesday, the deadlock between Republicans and Democrats left hundreds of thousands of workers either furloughed or out of work.

Critics are increasingly pointing fingers at President Donald Trump, alleging that the crisis is aimed at harming the black middle class, particularly women. When questioned by the Daily Mail regarding these accusations, the White House responded, “How are we targeting them with the government shutdown? We want the government open.” Meanwhile, comedian Clark Larew Jones shared on Threads the cultural significance of a “good government job” in black families, especially from the perspective of a “black millennial kid.”

Jones’s post ignited a wave of responses, with one commenter suggesting that the aim is to push the black middle class back into menial jobs. Another noted that the DC area’s prosperous black communities owe much to stable government positions. Baltimore-based rapper and media figure Dapper Dan Midas (DDm) also sparked a discussion, highlighting what he described as a troubling increase in black unemployment since Trump’s tenure began. Midas claimed, “300,000 black women have lost their jobs since January.” On Capitol Hill, Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley has echoed these concerns, addressing them in a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

‘What I’m calling on the Fed to do is collect the data, to analyze the data and to come up with a plan. 300,000 black women have been pushed out of the labor force in the public and private sector — and that is a crisis,’ Pressley said last month. Black women make up 12 percent of the federal workforce, almost double their share of the overall labor force. Between February and June, 318,000 black women lost their jobs, according to Forbes, which cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reason for the massive employment change is due to a combination of factors, not limited to Trump’s policies.

While it is true that federal layoffs by Elon Musk’s DOGE and the dismantling of DEI programs impacted black women’s jobs, they were also affected by the expiration of pandemic-era supports, which coincided with Trump’s first term, including childcare subsidies. In total, the federal government workforce is 3 million people, not including another 1.3 million military personnel. Black women are overrepresented in the government workforce, meaning that the demographic is particularly sensitive to shocks in the federal labor market.

Brittney Cooper, a race and gender professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, posted on Threads: ‘You can’t bounce 300,000 black women out of stable jobs without it having a seismic effect on overall black economic stability.’ In February, a report by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) noted that the federal hiring freeze implemented by the administration was a threat to ‘a long-standing pathway towards stable, middle-class employment for Black Americans as 19 percent of the federal workforce is Black compared to 13 percent of the overall workforce.’

NCRC’s report also notes that the legacy of federal hiring and retention practices can be seen in helping build the black middle class in the Washington, DC suburbs, particularly in Prince George’s (PG) County, Maryland , just across the river from the nation’s capital. PG County ‘has consistently been among the wealthiest Black communities in the country,’ per the NCRC’s report. Another article posted by the Center for American Progress (CAC) in August notes that ‘black employees made up as much as one-third or more of the staff at agencies such as the Department of Education, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development,’ while calling the Trump administration’s federal workforce purge an ‘unprecedented assault.’

The shutdown stems from a partisan dispute over health care subsidies for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, which serve approximately 24 million Americans who don’t have employer-based insurance or public coverage like Medicaid. Democrats fear that any budget agreement could be undone through rescissions, a rarely-used presidential power that Trump revived earlier this year to codify spending cuts recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency. The Senate has held repeated votes on a House-passed continuing resolution, with most Democrats voting against it and Republicans supporting it. But the Senate needs 60 votes to break the stalemate and has not been able to achieve that number.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led House has remained in recess throughout the entire shutdown and has not held any votes, though Speaker Mike Johnson said the chamber was on 24-hour notice to return if needed. The AFGE, the largest union that represents federal workers, split with the Democrats earlier this week in an attempt to get them to end the shutdown by agreeing to the Republican funding proposals. However, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told CNN Monday that he was ‘not seeing any change in position at this time.’ The president is currently overseas on a diplomatic trip to Asia, further complicating negotiations as the crisis drags on at home.