Again to work!
Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name/Getty Pictures
Having written a column earlier this week concerning the ambivalent standing of the federal Juneteenth vacation within the wake of the second Trump administration’s assault on race-conscious anti-discrimination practices, I should have refreshed the White Home web site 100 occasions to see if the president had made any official utterance about this commemoration of the top of slavery. He did, in any case, repeatedly problem proclamations recognizing Juneteenth all through his first time period, and through his 2020 reelection marketing campaign he endorsed making it a federal vacation. However in 2025? Nothing in any respect. But late on June 19 he provided this oblique however quite pointed remark on Fact Social:
Too many non-working holidays in America. It’s costing our Nation $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to maintain all of those companies closed. The employees don’t need it both! Quickly we’ll find yourself having a vacation for each as soon as working day of the yr. It should change if we’re going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
It’s a bit bizarre to acknowledge a day commemorating the elimination of involuntary servitude with a requirement that folks work extra for a similar pay. However Trump has already made it identified that he thinks People get too many days off work, although the USA quite famously ensures far fewer vacation or trip days than most international locations. Assuming, that he was complaining about Juneteenth (since, you understand, he stated it on Juneteenth), it’s price noting that an terrible lot of companies, most likely a majority, had been open on June 19, partially due to the lower than enthusiastic perspective of leaders like Donald Trump.
Juneteenth has been a federal authorities vacation since Joe Biden signed laws making it so in 2021. If Trump wished to reverse that call, he may have definitely requested the Republican-controlled Congress to get it achieved together with the opposite huge adjustments in legislation and coverage they’re busily engaged in executing on his orders. Certainly, if he actually believes holidays like Juneteenth have an enormous damaging impact on the U.S. economic system, he may even have made the revocation of the vacation one other nasty little provision of his One Massive Lovely Invoice.
As a substitute of a forthright assault, the president simply disrespected Juneteenth in a snarky little Fact Social publish. Perhaps those that say TACO (Trump All the time Chickens Out) have a degree.
