US President Donald Trump honored Juneteenth in each of his first four years as president, even before it became a federal holiday. He even claimed once to have made it “very famous.” But on this year’s Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, the usually talkative president kept silent about a day important to Black Americans for marking the end of slavery in the country he leads again. Juneteenth, the holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States, has been celebrated at the White House each June 19 since it was enshrined into law four years ago. But Thursday, it went unmarked by the president — except for a post on social media in which he said he would get rid of some “non-working holidays.” “Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. ,” Trump said in mangled syntax, not mentioning Juneteenth by name nor acknowledging that Thursday was a federal holiday. “It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” The holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the US after the Civil War — specifically, the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, nearly two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to inform enslaved African Americans there that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people had been freed. A few months later, the 13th Amendment was ratified, officially abolishing slavery in the remaining four border states that had not been covered by Lincoln’s proclamation.and belatedly announced that enslaved people were freed.
Earlier Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters during the daily briefing that she was not aware of any plans by Trump to celebrate the day or otherwise officially mark it. “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today,” Leavitt said of the president, who has in the past week signed proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 federal holidays in United States. The lack of revelry at the White House for a holiday that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans was perhaps not a surprise. Trump, in his last term, issued statements on the anniversary of Juneteenth every year for three years, before it was ever a federal holiday. “Melania and I send our warmest greetings to all those celebrating Juneteenth, a historic day recognizing the end of slavery,” he wrote in 2017, extolling Maj Gen Gordon Granger, who announced in Galveston in 1865 that “all slaves were free.” In 2018 he evoked Granger again, and praised “the courage and sacrifice of the nearly 200,000 former enslaved and free African Americans who fought for liberty.” Trump has previously also tried to take credit for making Juneteenth “very famous,” saying during his first term in 2020 that, “nobody had ever heard of it.” His comments came while the nation was reeling from ongoing civil unrest after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. But since returning to office he has moved to purge the federal government of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and sanitize Black history — or even erase references to it entirely. Juneteenth is the newest US federal holiday, enshrined into law in 2021 by Congress and then-President Joe Biden. Trump cannot undo it without an act of Congress.
