A Republican congresswoman has proposed making Donald Trump’s birthday a public holiday, in an effort probably doomed to failure in Congress but obviously intended to curry favor with the president.
Claudia Tenney, a representative from New York’s Finger Lakes region, introduced legislation on Friday aiming to combine the US annual commemoration of Flag Day with a new observance of Trump’s birthday on 14 June, arguing that the president is “the most consequential … in modern American history”.
“His impact on the nation is undeniable,” Tenney said in a news release. On X, she suggested that Trump’s birthday deserved the same treatment as that of George Washington, which is observed annually as a federal holiday on the third Monday of February.
“Just as George Washington’s birthday is codified as a federal holiday, President Trump’s birthday should also be celebrated to recognize him as the founder of America’s Golden Age,” Tenney wrote.
Among other differences, Washington helped the US win its independence from Great Britain and served as its first president. Trump was the first to be elected after being found guilty of felonies – specifically, 34 related to falsifying business records involving hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels right before the 2016 election that he won.
Many users on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, who has overseen the slashing of various federal agencies on behalf of the Trump administration, mocked Tenney’s proposal. “Is this satire?” one asked.
Referring to Trump’s unfulfilled campaign promise to quickly bring down consumer prices if given a second presidency after losing his 2020 re-election race to Joe Biden, another wrote: “Sure, that will bring down the cost of my groceries.”
Another wrote: “Surely you have better things to do with your time. Stop brown nosing and get to work for your constituents.”
Tenney’s bill could face steep odds of success. Even with unified Republican control of Congress and the Oval Office, the bar for establishing federal holidays has been historically high.
And even if Tenney’s bill clears the House, Republicans do not have a large enough majority in the US Senate to pass it there without support from Democrats, who ostensibly would have little to no motivation to support it.
The legislation in question is only the latest attempt by Republican lawmakers to compel the country to honor Trump beyond the office he holds after winning the electoral college in November’s White House race against the former Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris and a little less than 50% of the popular vote.
In January, the Republican congresswoman Addison McDowell proposed the renaming of Washington Dulles international airport after Trump, and the Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna also advanced a measure to add his likeness to Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
