White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters within the James Brady Press Briefing Room on the White Home, Thursday, June 19, 2025, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump honored Juneteenth in every of his first 4 years as president, even earlier than it turned a federal vacation. He even claimed as soon as to have made it “very well-known.”
However on this yr’s Juneteenth vacation on Thursday, the often talkative president stored silent a couple of day necessary to Black Individuals for marking the top of slavery within the nation he leads once more.
No phrases about it from his lips, on paper or by way of his social media web site.
Requested whether or not Trump would commemorate Juneteenth in any manner, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt advised reporters: “I am not monitoring his signature on a proclamation as we speak. I do know it is a federal vacation. I wish to thank all of you for exhibiting as much as work. We’re definitely right here. We’re working 24/7 proper now.”
Requested in a follow-up query whether or not Trump may acknowledge the event one other manner or on one other day, Leavitt stated, “I simply answered that query for you.”
On Wednesday, Black group leaders from throughout the nation, senior Trump administration officers and different people met on the White Home to debate bettering coordination between the leaders and federal, state and native companions, in response to a senior White Home official. Housing Secretary Scott Turner and Lynne Patton, director of minority outreach, have been amongst those that attended, stated the official, who insisted on anonymity to debate a non-public gathering.
The Republican president’s silence was a pointy distinction from his prior acknowledgement of the vacation. Juneteenth celebrates the top of slavery in the USA by commemorating June 19, 1865, when Union troopers introduced the information of freedom to enslaved Black folks in Galveston, Texas. Their freedom got here greater than two years after President Abraham Lincoln liberated slaves within the Confederacy by signing the Emancipation Proclamation throughout the Civil Conflict.
Trump’s quiet on the problem additionally deviated from White Home steerage that Trump deliberate to signal a Juneteenth proclamation. Leavitt did not clarify the change. Trump held no public occasions Thursday, however he shared statements about Iran, the TikTok app and Fed chairman Jerome Powell on his social media web site.
Within the night, Trump complained on the positioning about “too many non-working holidays” and stated it’s “costing our Nation $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to maintain all of those companies closed.” However most retailers are open on Juneteenth whereas most federal employees get a time without work as a result of the federal government is closed.
He had extra to say about Juneteenth in yearly statements in his first time period.
In 2017, Trump invoked the “soulful festivities and emotional rejoicing” that swept by way of the Galveston crowd when a significant basic delivered the information that every one enslaved folks have been free.
He advised the Galveston story in every of the subsequent three years. “Collectively, we honor the unbreakable spirit and numerous contributions of generations of African Individuals to the story of American greatness,” he added in his 2018 assertion.
In 2019: “Throughout our nation, the contributions of African Individuals proceed to complement each aspect of American life.” In 2020: “June reminds us of each the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable pleasure that should have attended emancipation. It’s each a remembrance of a blight on our historical past and a celebration of our Nation’s unsurpassed means to overcome darkness.”
In 2020, after suspending his marketing campaign rallies due to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump selected Tulsa, Oklahoma, because the place to renew his public gatherings and scheduled a rally for June 19. However the resolution met with such fierce criticism that Trump postponed the occasion by a day.
Black leaders had stated it was offensive for Trump to decide on June 19 and Tulsa for a marketing campaign occasion, given the importance of Juneteenth and Tulsa being the place the place, in 1921, a white mob looted and burned that metropolis’s Greenwood district, an economically thriving space known as Black Wall Road. As many as 300 Black Tulsans have been killed, and hundreds have been briefly held in internment camps overseen by the Nationwide Guard.
In an interview with The Wall Road Journal days earlier than the rally, Trump tried to place a optimistic spin on the scenario by claiming that he had made Juneteenth “well-known.” He stated he modified the rally date out of respect for 2 African American associates and supporters.
“I did one thing good. I made it well-known. I made Juneteenth very well-known,” Trump stated. “It is really an necessary occasion, it is an necessary time. However no one had heard of it. Only a few folks have heard of it.”
Generations of Black Individuals celebrated Juneteenth lengthy earlier than it turned a federal vacation in 2021 with the stroke of President Joe Biden’s pen.
Later in 2020, Trump sought to woo Black voters with a sequence of marketing campaign guarantees, together with establishing Juneteenth as a federal vacation.
He misplaced the election, and that made it doable for Biden, a Democrat, to signal the laws establishing Juneteenth as the latest federal vacation. Shortly after being sworn in for his second time period in January, Trump signed an govt order ending variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives throughout the federal authorities, calling them “unlawful and immoral discrimination applications.”
Biden issued annual Juneteenth proclamations throughout his 4 years in workplace, and noticed a few of the holidays with massive concert events on the South Garden. Biden’s ultimate observance in 2024 featured performances by Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle. Vice President Kamala Harris danced onstage with gospel singer Kirk Franklin.
Biden spent this yr’s vacation in Galveston, Texas, the place he spoke at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church.
