President Donald Trump hasn’t formally acknowledged Juneteenth, however he did spend time Thursday complaining on social media that Individuals have “too many non-working holidays.”
“It’s costing our Nation $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to maintain all of those companies closed,” the president wrote on his Fact Social platform on Thursday night. “The employees don’t need it both! Quickly we’ll find yourself having a vacation for each as soon as [sic] working day of the 12 months. It should change if we’re going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Earlier Thursday, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt made it clear Trump has no plans to have a good time the federal vacation.
“I’m not monitoring his signature on a proclamation immediately,” Leavitt mentioned throughout a press briefing. “I do know this can be a federal vacation. I need to thank all of you for displaying as much as work. We’re actually right here. We’re working 24/7 proper now.”
Juneteenth was formally designated a federal vacation in 2021 after a invoice to codify the vacation handed each chambers of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan help.
In 2020, Trump took credit score for Juneteenth gaining nationwide recognition and even campaigned on making it a federal vacation.
“I did one thing good: I made Juneteenth very well-known,” he mentioned after he confronted sharp criticism for scheduling a marketing campaign rally on June 19, 2020. “It’s really an essential occasion, an essential time. However no one had ever heard of it.”
Black Individuals have lengthy celebrated Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when a Union normal rode into Galveston, Texas and instructed enslaved folks there that the struggle was over and so they had been free — months after the battle had ended and greater than two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Trump’s silence about Juneteenth marks a break from custom established throughout his first administration. He commemorated the vacation with a presidential message every year of that time period.
“As a Nation, we vow to always remember the hundreds of thousands of African Individuals who suffered the evils of slavery,” he wrote in 2018.
However in his second time period as president, Trump has actively labored to dismantle variety, fairness and inclusion efforts within the federal authorities, whereas concurrently sanitizing the historical past of systemic racism in opposition to Black Individuals.
Because of Trump’s struggle on DEI initiatives, many Juneteenth celebrations throughout the nation have been scaled again or canceled altogether as funding has decreased. About 15% of corporations surveyed in a latest research mentioned they’d now not have a good time occasions like Juneteenth.
Whereas Trump’s message on Thursday appeared to point that he has set his sights on ending Juneteenth’s federal vacation standing, he’ll first want Congress’ help to take action.
