WASHINGTON — After a yearlong fight, Juneteenth could be on its way to becoming a federal holiday, as Sen. Ron Johnson announced he would drop his objections to the bill.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865 — the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned, more than two years later, that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Celebrated in 47 states and the District of Columbia, Juneteenth has long unofficially marked the day slavery in America truly ended.
Last year, in the wake of millions marching under the Black Lives Matters banner following the killing of George Floyd, a bipartisan group — led by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, along with Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and John Cornyn, R-Texas — tried to get Congress to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday. But their effort was thwarted by Johnson, who objected to a unanimous consent motion in the Senate, arguing that adding a 12th federal holiday (including inauguration) to the calendar was a waste of taxpayer money.
In a press release Tuesday, Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said he would not oppose another unanimous consent motion. “While it still seems strange that having taxpayers provide federal employees paid time off is now required to celebrate the end of slavery, it is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter,” he said. “Therefore, I do not intend to object.”
Cornyn sounded pleasantly surprised Tuesday. “If he won’t do it, then it is likely to pass, so that’ll be good,” he said when reporters asked him about Johnson’s change of heart.
Markey and Cornyn will attempt to pass the Juneteenth bill via unanimous consent this week, an aide to the Democrat said.
Still, all it takes is one other objecting senator to derail the legislation. Even though the Senate bill has 60 bipartisan cosponsors and would therefore likely meet the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster, doing so would take up considerable floor time that Democrats would rather spend on larger issues, like confirming judges and working on an infrastructure bill. So quickly passing the bill via a unanimous consent motion is the preferred path.
In a statement, Markey said marking the holiday would help heal racial wounds that still afflict the nation more than 150 years after the Civil War ripped it apart.
“Commemorating Juneteenth as a national holiday will address this long-ignored gap in our history, recognize the wrong that was done, acknowledge the pain and suffering of generations of slaves and their descendants, and finally celebrate their freedom,” said Markey.
Johnson wasn’t alone in his opposition last year — Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma also balked at giving federal workers another day off. Lankford and Johnson tried to amend the Juneteenth bill to remove another federal holiday, but that ran into opposition from groups with ties to those days, like Italian-Americans with Columbus Day. Lankford’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
The bill is expected to move quickly through the House, which can pass legislation more quickly than the Senate.
If the bill passes, federal government employees would get June 19, or a Monday or Friday near it, off every year. It would put pressure on the private sector and local governments to do the same — though some federal holidays, like Columbus Day and Veterans Day, regularly go unobserved by many employers. The last new federal holiday added to the calendar was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983 after a 15-year push.
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(Roll Call's Jessica Wehrman contributed to this report)
