Feb. 12, 2026, 4:45 p.m. ET
- President Trump excluded Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis from a bipartisan White House event.
- Trump cited specific grievances with both governors, including policy disagreements and personal attacks.
- Critics question the snubs, highlighting that Moore is the nation’s only Black governor, and Polis is openly gay.
President Donald Trump has been warring with Democratic governors since returning to the White House, whether by targeting their states for strict immigration enforcement and funding cuts or mocking them with insults, such as calling Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker a “big fat slob” and using a slur for intellectually disabled people to describe Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Many have returned fire, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has taken to lampooning the president on social media with coarse language. Others like Maine Gov. Janet Mills made headlines when clashing with the president in person.
But Trump has zeroed in on excluding two relatively mild-mannered Democratic governors – Wes Moore of Maryland and Jared Polis of Colorado – from an upcoming bipartisan event at the White House, despite the National Governors Association suggesting this week he agreed to meet with all its members.
“The invitations were sent to ALL Governors, other than two, who I feel are not worthy of being there,” Trump said in a Feb. 11 Truth Social post.
“I even invited the SLOB of a Governor, JB Pritzker, and horrendous California Governor, Gavin Newscum, to the Dinner, despite the terrible job that they are doing,” he added.
Trump cited specific reasons for their exclusion in his post, but liberal critics are now questioning the motive, given that Moore is currently the only Black governor, and Polis is openly gay.
“What’s unique about them? Out of 50 governors in the country that stands out,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, the country’s oldest civil rights group, told USA TODAY in a Feb. 12 interview.
“There is no justification considering how (Trump) has had ongoing interactions with Newsom, Pritzker or other governors who have criticized him.”
What is Trump’s beef with Moore, Polis exactly?
The initial exclusion of Moore and Polis prompted more than a dozen of their fellow Democratic governors to announce plans to boycott the White House meeting and dinner scheduled to take place when the NGA meets in Washington, from Feb. 19 to 21.
The bipartisan organization said Trump had agreed to “welcome governors from all 55 states and territories to the White House.”
In the Truth Social post, Trump said disinviting Polis, the first openly gay man to be elected a U.S. governor, was over Colorado’s continued imprisonment of Tina Peters. She’s a former county clerk convicted of multiple crimes for letting an activist connected to election-denier and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell access data from a secure voting system in an effort to prove unsubstantiated 2020 election conspiracies.
Trump described Peters as an “unfairly incarcerated” 73-year-old woman with cancer.
When defending the snub to Moore, the president described the nation’s lone Black governor as “foul-mouthed” before accusing him of allowing crime in Baltimore to become a “disaster.” The city’s homicide rate in 2025 dropped to its lowest in nearly five decades, according to local police statistics, including reductions in car thefts and assault.
Trump also ripped Moore, a possible presidential candidate in 2028, for prematurely claiming that he was a Bronze Star recipient. The president said in the Truth Social post that the 47-year-old governor “fraudulently stated that he received Military medals, A LIE.”
Moore, a retired Army Reserve member, served in Afghanistan beginning in August 2005 and had been recommended for the prestigious medal by his superiors.
But for years he had wrongly claimed receiving it after military officials instructed him to include it in a 2006 White House fellowship application before the paperwork had been fully processed. He was formally awarded the Bronze Star in 2024.
Progressives say snubs fit a pattern targeting diverse, marginalized groups
Other Democrats with diverse backgrounds, such as Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, who are both lesbians, haven’t been turned away from this year’s gubernatorial event. But progressive leaders say the president’s rebuffs of Moore and Polis underscores a larger pattern of targeting marginalized communities and eliminating diversity initiatives.
“It cannot be surprising that an administration that has targeted over and over again, LGBTQ+ people in this country and that has targeted Black and (Hispanic) people in this country is also targeting an openly LGBTQ+ governor and the only Black governor in America,” said Brandon Wolf, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBTQ+ civil rights group.
The Trump administration earlier this week removed a large gay pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.
The administration has also eliminated a phone hotline connecting LGBTQ+ people to specialized counselors in moments of crisis, renamed an oil tanker honoring slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk and issued an executive order requiring the federal government to only “recognize two sexes, male and female.”
Similarly, the administration has aggressively purged racial diversity initiatives in the federal government during its first 100 days, targeted inclusive race and gender policies in the military and pressured major corporations and universities to roll back workplace equity policies or risk losing federal contracts.
More recently Trump said in a January interview with the New York Times that civil rights-era policies aimed at remedying historic patterns of discrimination resulted in white people being “very badly treated.”
The president also sparked outrage this month, including from some Republicans, over a video posted to his Truth Social account that transposed the faces of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama onto animated apes in a jungle.
Neither Moore nor Polis’ offices immediately responded to USA TODAY’s request for comment, but Moore said in a Feb. 8 statement that as “the nation’s only Black governor,” he couldn’t ignore being singled out for exclusion from a bipartisan tradition, “whether that was the intent or not.”
Asked about what makes Moore and Polis different from other Democratic governors who’ve jousted with Trump in the past, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the two are excluded for “no reason other than their own incompetence.”
But Johnson said the exclusion of Moore is will be particularly striking to Black Americans.
“Wes Moore is one of the most civil governors in the country,” Johnson told USA TODAY. “This president has clearly demonstrated that he has a hard time dealing with African American men in leadership.”
Contributing: Joey Garrison
