President Donald Trump unleashed one of his traditional holiday rants on Thursday, threatening to scrap the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery.
Trump chose Juneteenth to claim that there are “too many non-working holidays in America.”
Refusing even to name the holiday, he continued: “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. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also downplayed the holiday, requesting that the Pentagon take a “passive approach” with its Juneteenth messaging this year.
The newest federal holiday, which was introduced in 2021 under President Biden, commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared in 1983.
Trump’s attitude to Juneteenth was very different when he was on the campaign trail in 2020. He even included a pledge to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in a campaign document aimed at Black voters.
Trump reportedly learned the significance of the holiday after a Black Secret Service agent informed him after he found himself facing a backlash for scheduling a rally in Tulsa on that date. Tulsa was the site of a race massacre in 1921, and African-American leaders explained that holding a rally on the anniversary, particularly as Black Lives Matters protests continued around the country, was insensitive.
Trump eventually pushed the rally to June 20, tweeting, “Many of my African American friends and supporters have reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all it represents.“
Trump later attempted to reframe the backlash, telling the media, “I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
Earlier this year, Trump also signaled his displeasure with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which was adopted as an alternative name for Columbus Day after protests over the controversial legacy of Christopher Columbus.
“I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!” he said.
Columbus Day, which was established as a federal holiday in 1968, has reained the same status ever since.
