Less than three months after President Donald Trump complained that Americans have “too many non-working holidays,” the White House says he would not oppose adding one more — in honor of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Asked whether the president would support legislation to establish a 12th federal holiday to the calendar to commemorate Kirk, who was shot and killed earlier this month by an assassin in Utah, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied: “I’m sure he wouldn’t oppose such a thing.”
Last week, the Senate adopted a resolution calling October 14 of this year — the day that would’ve been Kirk’s 32nd birthday — a “National Day of Remembrance” for the late Turning Point USA founder. The House also adopted a resolution honoring Kirk as well, but neither action establishes a holiday in his memory.
Creating a federal holiday on which the government closes for the duration, leading many businesses to follow suit, requires passage of a bill in both chambers and a signature from the president.
Congress last created a federal holiday in June 2021, when then-president Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth — a portmanteau of June 19th — the 11th federal holiday on the calendar. The annual celebration marks the day that Major General Gordon Grainger ordered enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas following the end of the American Civil War, freeing the last African-Americans in the U.S. who had been kept as slaves.
During his first term, Trump signed a yearly proclamation marking Juneteenth and pledged to support the legislation that was eventually signed by Biden when he ran for re-election in the 2020 presidential race.
But after returning to office this year, he took to Truth Social on Juneteenth to denounce the same holiday he’d once supported as a candidate four years earlier.
He wrote: “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. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he added.
