Since it was codified into law four years ago, the White House has commemorated Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the abolition of slavery in the United States, on June 19 every year. However, except from a social media post announcing that he will eliminate some non-working holidays, the president did not observe Thursday.
According to Trumpsaidin, we will soon have a holiday on every single working day of the year. He did not specifically mention Juneteenth or acknowledge that Thursday was a federal holiday. If we want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, things have to change!
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters she was not aware of Trump’s intentions to sign a proclamation declaring a holiday. Not one of the eleven official holidays, he has issued proclamations in the last week alone to honor Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Leavitt responded to a reporter’s query regarding Juneteenth by stating that although Thursday was a federal holiday, White House employees had arrived for work during a briefing that was mainly about whether Trump would launch strikes on Iran.
Instead, Trump, who frequently uses holidays to further his political agenda and disparage opponents and critics on social media, used Juneteenth to propose cutting back on government holidays, arguing that they are costing businesses billions of dollars. Private companies can choose to close or stay open on those holidays, but the majority of federal employees get time off.
On June 19, 1865, almost two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a Union general finally arrived in Galveston, Texas, to tell enslaved African Americans that the Civil War was over and that all enslaved people had been set free. This day is celebrated on Juneteenth. Slavery was outlawed in the last four border states that had not been affected by Lincoln’s decree when the 13th Amendment was approved a few months later.
Congress and then-President Joe Biden signed it into law in 2021, making it the newest federal holiday. Without a congressional act, Trump cannot reverse it.
Perhaps it was not surprising that the White House did not celebrate a holiday that has been a favorite of generations of Black Americans. Trump has taken steps since taking office to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from the federal government and to remove or even whitewash all allusions to Black heritage.
Nevertheless, the decision to not observe the holiday represented a sharp reversal from his previous administration, when Trump made remarks about Juneteenth for three years prior to its official designation as a federal holiday.
In 2017, he penned a letter praising Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger’s declaration in Galveston that all slaves were free, saying, “Melanie and I extend our warmest greetings to everyone celebrating Juneteenth, a historic day recognizing the end of slavery.”
He brought up Granger once again in 2018 and commended the bravery and selflessness of the over 200,000 African Americans who battled for freedom after being freed from slavery.
However, Trump’s second term has been characterized by a concerted attempt to reduce funding for diversity programs, which has drawn criticism from states, educational institutions, and the business community. This year’s Juneteenth celebrations will be reduced, according to some communities and organizations that have seen their funding cut.
Trump’s detractors pounded hard, using Juneteenth to draw attention to what they claimed were efforts by the government to obscure Black history.
The Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, charged that the White House and Trump’s supporters were deliberately trying to revert to the past and split the nation by outlawing books about Black history, dismantling DEI initiatives, and eroding the 14th Amendment’s protections for citizenship.
Jeffries, the first Black leader of a party in either chamber of Congress, said in a statement, “Today, we celebrate the freedom that Black Americans long fought for and the rich culture that grew from that great struggle.” That battle rages on.
The holiday coincided with a new low in Trump’s relationship with the NAACP, the largest and oldest civil rights organization in the United States. This week, the organization announced that it would not invite Trump to its national convention, ending a 116-year tradition in which the president is invited to its main event.
Following a resurgence of interest in the day’s history during the summer of 2020 and the widespread demonstrations that followed the police killings of Black Americans, particularly Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021.
During his administration, Biden commemorated the anniversary with comments and a concert on the White House’s South Lawn. Biden sat at the head of Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Galveston on Thursday night alongside local officials at a Juneteenth celebration. He was commended for appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and recognized for enacting the federal holiday.
Speakers attacked Trump’s administration’s policies, particularly those pertaining to diversity, but they did not identify him.
In a video of his comments, Biden urged the audience to applaud, saying that Black history is American history.
Those who believed that Juneteenth should not be a federal holiday were also criticized by Biden.
Biden remarked, “Some people tell you and me that this doesn’t deserve to be a federal holiday.” They do not like to recall the moral stain—the moral stain of slavery—that we all remember.
The New York Times was the first publication of this article.
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