White House has full schedule on Juneteenth, marking DEI shift from Biden

Despite Juneteenth’s status as a federal holiday, President Trump has a full schedule at the White House on Thursday in sharp contrast with Joseph R. Biden, who gave staffers the day off and didn’t hold public events.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is holding a press briefing, and Mr. Trump will receive an intelligence briefing and participate in a swearing-in ceremony for the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. He’s also expected to sign a proclamation honoring Juneteenth, The Washington Times has learned.

The Juneteenth holiday was signed into law by Mr. Biden in 2021 to commemorate June 19, 1865,  the first new holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. It marks the day a Union Army general rode into Galveston, Texas, and told slaves the Civil War had ended and they were free. It’s marked as a celebration of the end of slavery in America.

Mr. Biden celebrated it. In 2021, 2022 and 2024, he spent the holiday at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and didn’t return to the White House until the next day, according to a review of his schedules by The Times. Mr. Biden did fly to California on June 19, 2023, to attend a campaign fundraiser in California. Staffers were rarely seen on the White House campus on those days.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has kept a mostly light schedule on federal holidays. He spent Presidents Day at his Mar-a-Lago residence playing golf at his nearby country club.

On Memorial Day, he delivered the traditional presidential speech at Arlington National Cemetery in the morning and played golf in the afternoon at his Virginia country club.

The White House’s business-as-usual approach to Juneteenth comes as celebrations across the country are being scaled back or canceled. Resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has made organizers weary.

Plano, Illinois, which declared Juneteenth a holiday before the federal government, canceled its fifth annual celebration as sponsors feared a political backlash.

“The sponsors were starting to get caught in the middle of ’if you support this we won’t support your business,’” organizer Jamal Williams told The Wall Street Journal.

In Denver, the annual Juneteenth Music Festival, traditionally a four-day event, was scaled back to one day after sponsors pulled out or reduced their contributions.

Indianapolis announced it wouldn’t hold its parade but would still hold several events to observe the holiday.

The NAACP Metuchen Edison Piscataway Branch in New Jersey moved its Juneteenth celebration to a smaller location after the site where it was previously held grew skittish about hosting what it viewed as a DEI event, the group said in a statement.

A museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said it scaled back its Juneteenth celebration because it could no longer access National Endowment for the Arts funding.