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‘Dangerous and disastrous': Cuts to federal jobs could disproportionately impact Black workers

‘Dangerous and disastrous': Cuts to federal jobs could disproportionately impact Black workers

Yahoo12-06-2025
Protesters demonstrate outside U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise's office at Heritage Plaza in Metairie on May 22, 2025. (Katie Jane Fernelius/Verite News)
NEW ORLEANS – For Harold John, a job with the federal government meant a more stable, comfortable life than the one he knew as a child.
John grew up in the Melpomene Projects with his three sisters. Neither of his parents, both of who had grown up on rural farms in Louisiana, had obtained more than an elementary school education. John was able to finish high school, join the U.S. Navy and then get a job with the U.S. Postal Service, all of which helped carry him into the middle class in the 1980s.
But today, the now-retired letter carrier is concerned that that same pathway may not be available to young people growing up in similar circumstances.
That is because the second Trump administration has set its sights on dismantling the federal workforce, especially through the slash-and-cut measures of the Department of Government Efficiency, which until recently was led by Elon Musk. In its first few months, DOGE had already targeted diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and initiated mass layoffs across multiple federal agencies, which, some allege, have disproportionately impacted women and people of color.
The U.S. Postal Service has not yet been subject to the same types of abrupt and indiscriminate cuts seen at agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Department of Education but DOGE has its sights set on the post office, which worries John.
'There's been a dedicated narrative from the right that federal workers aren't necessary for a long time,' John said. 'This is not the first time that they've come after the postal service or federal unions, but it's the most disastrous and dangerous time.'
The U.S. Postal Service is highly diverse. As of 2023, 45% of postal employees were racial minorities. Though Black people make up about 14% of the total U.S. population, 30% of postal workers that year were Black.
To John, who is Black, that diversity is one of the Postal Service's greatest strengths.
'That was one of the better things about having a federal job: you knew they weren't going to discriminate when it came to hiring,' John said.
There are approximately 34,000 federal employees in Louisiana, 38% of whom identify as Black – the second-highest share of Black federal workers among the states, behind only Georgia. This trend is consistent across most of the South. In Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee, at least one-third of federal workers are Black.
Part of the reason Black people are overrepresented in federal workers in the South is due to the fact of demographics: There are more Black people in the South.
But Gary Hoover, an economist at Tulane University, said that overrepresentation of Black people in the federal workforce also has to do with the fact that public sector work is one of the few on-ramps to the middle class for historically marginalized communities of color, especially in the South.
'You have to go back nearly 60 years to … the Civil Rights Act in 1964, where employment discrimination became a federal offense,' Hoover said. 'There's the creation of the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] that looks into unfair hiring and labor practices. And with the creation of the EEOC, the federal government becomes a leader in fair hiring practices – not by doing anything particularly progressive, just by actually upholding the law as it is written in regards to employment.'
At that time, many Black workers, especially educated Black workers, struggled to get hired or be promoted within the private sector due to widespread racial biases. This was not only the case in white-collar and professional industries, but also in skilled blue-collar industries.
Especially since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, public sector work, notably with the federal government, has provided an opportunity for upward mobility for Black workers. It was also a workforce that was rapidly becoming more unionized following a 1962 executive order by President John F. Kennedy granting federal workers the right to engage in collective bargaining
In Louisiana and across the South, a unionized job with the federal government was a good job – and one that ultimately helped build the Black middle class, Hoover said.
'Once I have job security, I can start thinking about buying a home,' Hoover said. 'Once I start thinking about buying a home, I'm thinking about stable communities. Once I have a stable community, then I can start thinking seriously about the future and intergenerational wealth transfers.'
On a recent steamy afternoon in May, a group of protesters gathered outside Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise's Metairie office. The protest, which was organized by the grassroots organization Step Up Louisiana, featured about two dozen people decked out in union garb, holding picket signs above their heads. Marching in a circle outside the 18-floor Heritage Plaza office tower, the protesters took turns leading raucous chants.
'Step Up,' one protester shouted.
'For federal workers!' the rest replied.
'Step Up,' went another call.
'For U.S. Mail,' came the response.
The protest had been organized in response to a Trump-championed budget reconciliation bill, called the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' which, as drafted, would significantly cut assistance for Medicaid and food stamps. Scalise was set to vote on the bill that same day (May 22). (He ultimately would vote in favor, along with 214 of his colleagues, and help the bill pass the U.S. House of Representatives.)
The group outside Scalise's office included a contingent of current and former federal workers — all of them Black — who were also protesting DOGE's cuts to the federal workforce.
Terrence Johns, a current employee of the National Finance Office, a New Orleans-based federal office that manages payroll and personnel across multiple federal agencies, stepped up and spoke into the megaphone.
'Here in the South, you know there's largely a minority population that makes up these government service jobs,' Johns said, noting that his own office was majority Black. 'Believe me, brothers and sisters, everything that comes out of this administration attacks Black and Brown people.'
Johns, who has also served as the longtime president of a local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees union, said that both federal jobs and social welfare — necessary to sustaining the people of the Deep South — have been gutted since the Reagan administration.
'Don't believe the rhetoric,' he added. 'Nobody is living high on the hog. But these are decent jobs and have always set the standard for American workers.'
When John started at the Postal Service in 1985, that there were a small number of good, unionized jobs across the greater New Orleans area, such as at the Avondale Shipyard and the port, John said. But apart from those, the best opportunities were in unionized public sector work. Many educated Black people like him found opportunities with the federal government at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (then known as the Veterans Administration), or at the nearby NASA Michoud facility. Or with the Postal Service.
'We had a definite economic impact on New Orleans,' he said, referring to the Black middle class that was emerging through public sector work.
Troy Lee Davis, another Postal Service employee in New Orleans, grew up in the Desire Projects before moving to New Orleans East. His dad, who had served in World War II, worked in construction while his mom worked as a housemaid and cook. Davis, like his father before him, joined the military, which helped pay for college at the University of New Orleans. After that, he got a job as a mail handler.
'This was one of the better-paying jobs in New Orleans,' Davis said, adding that the job came with benefits, paid time off, holidays and regular cost-of-living adjustments. 'So, it was a big opportunity for anybody coming from poverty to get to have a comfortable lifestyle.'
Being part of the Postal Service has a long, storied reputation among Black communities because it was one of the earliest available public sector jobs – and one that paid decent wages.
But these days, both John and Davis are worried that the second Trump administration may unravel the gains that post office and other federal employees have made.
In March, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy entered into an agreement with DOGE, allowing the team to find 'further efficiencies' in the postal service, targeting a specific list of issues, including the management of retirement plans, workers' compensation costs, lease renewals and counterfeit postage. He also said he would seek to cut 10,000 of the Postal Service's 600,000-plus employees through early retirement offers. (DeJoy resigned later that same month.)
However, some worry that the DOGE partnership, along with Trump's pick of a FedEx board member to lead the USPS, means that the Postal Service may soon be privatized – an idea that Trump and Musk have expressed support for in the past.
'I've seen all the progress that was made during my lifetime destroyed in less than one hundred days,' John said. 'It is just so disheartening to see it all gone, pretty much overnight.'
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This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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DOGE AI Tool to Target 100K Federal Rules for Elimination: Report
DOGE AI Tool to Target 100K Federal Rules for Elimination: Report

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  • Newsweek

DOGE AI Tool to Target 100K Federal Rules for Elimination: Report

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DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations
DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations

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time5 hours ago

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DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations

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At the Department of Health and Human Services, a 2020 'Regulatory Clean Up Initiative' drew on an AI tool to identify and remove archaic language, defunct federal provisions and outdated terms from federal rules. Trump has pushed the limits of the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs repealing federal regulations, most notably through an executive order ending a rule that restricted the water flow of showerheads. It is unclear if courts will allow the administration to void rules. Meanwhile, private-sector companies tend to be uncomfortable ignoring a rule that was illegally repealed, said Nicholas Bagley, an administrative law expert at the University of Michigan. 'There's been some flashy sideshow efforts to avoid the legal strictures, but in general, they don't stick,' Bagley said of Trump's unilateral efforts to cut regulations. DOGE officials may be concerned about the legality of the AI tool. One page of the slideshow says four people identified as 'DOGE lawyers' — Burnham, Austin Raynor, Jacob Altik and Ashley Boizelle — each 'vetted and endorsed' the AI deregulation tool. Raynor, Altik and Boizelle could not be reached for comment. Federal regulations, as they stand now, can be divided into three categories, the PowerPoint says: 50 percent are not required by law, 38 percent are statutorily mandated and 12 percent are 'Not Required but Agency Needs.' By ending the rules that are both unnecessary by law and to agency operations, the PowerPoint states, the government could recover $3.3 trillion a year. But the PowerPoint also suggests it would take 3.6 million 'man-hours' to nix 100,000 regulations under the current system. It is not clear how the PowerPoint's authors arrived at these figures. That's where the AI tool comes in, the PowerPoint proposes. The tool will save 93 percent of the human labor involved by reviewing up to 500,000 comments submitted by the public in response to proposed rule changes. By the end of the deregulation exercise, humans will have spent a grand total of 36 hours gutting half of all federal regulations, the PowerPoint claims. The PowerPoint lists two case studies as examples of how well its AI tool can work, detailing recent efforts to slash regulations at HUD and CFPB. Asked about the AI-driven regulation slashing, a HUD spokesperson wrote in a statement that the agency is having 'ongoing discussions' to consider how to make government more efficient. 'We are not disclosing specifics about how many regulations are being examined or where we are at in the broader process,' the spokesperson said, adding, 'the process is far from final.' The spokesperson continued: 'The intent of the developments is not to replace the judgement, discretion and expertise of staff but be additive to the process.' CFPB did not respond to questions. The Post was not able to independently confirm the use of AI at the agency. At HUD, efforts to use AI to kill regulations began three months ago, according to three employees familiar with the matter and emails obtained by The Post. A message sent to some of the agency's Public and Indian Housing staff on April 18 announced a 'DOGE team' would be 'learning how AI will be able to analyze all PIH regulations looking for and flagging discrepancies between them and the underlying statute.' 'This is a major effort,' the email continued. 'We are working with the lawyers to simplify the [Administrative Procedure Act] process … use AI for drafting, and use AI for complying notices in the future.' The overall goal, the email noted, was to deploy AI to reduce the time staff had to spend on deregulation. Another document, signed 'HUD DOGE Team' and sent to staff, detailed how DOGE team members wanted federal staffers to engage the AI tool. Staffers were supposed to look over the tool's recommendations for proposed regulatory eliminations and mark whether they agreed, disagreed or believed deletions should go further. One HUD employee who participated in this process said the AI tool made several errors. It delivered an analysis saying those who drafted various agency regulations had misunderstood the law in several places, said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal conversations. But the AI tool was sometimes wrong, the employee said. 'There were a couple places where the AI said the language was outside of the statute,' the employee said, 'and actually, no — the AI read the language wrong, and it is actually correct.' After its tryout at HUD, the AI deregulation tool is supposed to deploy across the rest of government in coming months, according to the DOGE PowerPoint. Over the next five months, agencies will work with the AI tool to identify regulations to kill, respond to public comments about the proposed deletions and submit formal deregulation proposals, the PowerPoint says. The goal is to wrap everything up and 'Relaunch America on Jan. 20, 2026,' the PowerPoint states.

NASA slashing over 20 percent of workforce
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The Hill

time6 hours ago

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