There is a series of firings of Black officials from high-profile positions in an overwhelmingly white administration that has banished all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. While there are no statistics on firings by race, an examination of the people Mr. Trump is appointing to fill those and other jobs reveals a stark trend.
Of the president’s 98 Senate-confirmed appointees to the administration’s most senior leadership roles in its first 200 days, ending on Aug. 7, only two, or 2 percent — Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Earl G. Matthews, the Defense Department’s general counsel — are Black.
The statistics were compiled for the Brookings Institution by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who specializes in presidential personnel. The statistics track appointments to the 15 cabinet departments in the presidential line of succession: Treasury, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs.
“Trump seemed to be very proud to have ‘Blacks for Trump’ at all of his rallies and behind the podium, but not behind him in the cabinet meetings,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that tracks Black representation in government leadership, among other markers. The dearth of Black people at the top, he said, would result in “radical substantive policy changes” for African Americans. “When we’re not in the room,” he said, “things don’t tend to go better for us.”
Mr. Trump’s highest-profile firing of a senior Black leader was in February, when he welcomed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s senior military officer. Joint Chiefs chairmen traditionally remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the president’s party, and in 2020 Mr. Trump had nominated General Brown, a fighter pilot, to be the Air Force’s chief of staff. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had previously said that General Brown should be fired because of a “woke” focus on D.E.I. programs in the military and questioned whether he was promoted because of his race.
General Brown was replaced with a little-known Air Force general, Dan Caine.
The president has fired other Black officials, like Mr. Primus, from top jobs at government agencies and independent boards that typically serve multiple administrations.
