White House dinner ends governors’ dispute over attendance in DC

Body

The White House dinner with governors on Saturday closed a turbulent week marked by disputes over invitations, court-driven political fallout, and public spats among state leaders who were expected to mingle away from the usual pressures of day-to-day governing, the Associated Press reported.

The dinner was part of the annual run-up to the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, a tradition that leaders from both parties have often used to connect with the president and cabinet officials in a less formal setting. This year, the AP reported that the dinner became unusually controversial, beginning with President Donald Trump’s comments about the NGA’s leadership and a dispute over whether Democratic governors would attend a working event at the White House on Friday.

According to the AP, Trump ridiculed the bipartisan group’s leadership ahead of the gathering and initially refused to invite Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, along with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, to the Friday event. The president later relented at the last minute, but Democrats had already warned they would boycott Saturday’s dinner if members of their party were blocked from the earlier Friday meeting, AP reported.

When the black-tie dinner finally took place, the AP reported that no Democrats were spotted in the room. The event featured top administration officials and Republican governors, with tall candles arranged on tables, and Trump made brief remarks, joking that state leaders “look in that mirror and say, I should be president, not him,” according to the AP’s account of the comments.

The AP also reported that Trump’s week included an abrupt interruption of the Friday event. The AP said the gathering ended shortly after Trump learned of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his sweeping tariff policy, a development that became part of the backdrop for the governors’ meeting and the invitation dispute.

In a statement cited by the AP, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said, “President Trump has made this whole thing a farce.” The AP reported that Trump did not criticize any Democrats by name during the dinner, but he blamed two states led by Democratic governors when he mentioned a sewage spill in the Potomac River near Washington.

According to the AP, Trump’s remarks referenced a ruptured pipe that is part of a Washington-based utility regulated federally and under oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The AP reported that Vice President JD Vance praised the governors for facing difficult decisions, saying, “nobody blames you when anything goes wrong,” as described in the AP story.

Some governors who had attended previous dinners said the annual event can offer a rare opportunity for state leaders to connect with the president and cabinet away from daily governing pressures, the AP reported. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson—who briefly challenged Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination—said he remembered being assigned to a table one year with then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and getting to know her family; Hutchinson also said the dinners were “a glowing evening in the White House.”

The AP reported that by the final day of the NGA conference on Saturday, discussions focused on issues including affordability and political civility. During a conversation about immigration, Moore and Stitt said both parties had failed over decades to address the issue, AP reported, with Stitt calling for states to be empowered to issue workforce permits and warning that both parties were making false assumptions.

Moore, according to the AP, described the conference as a success despite the week’s turmoil. In remarks cited by the AP, he said “There were a lot of things that were put in our way to try to distract us from our mission, to try to divide us as individual governors, to try to make the mission of this organization where a bipartisan group of governors can come together and solve problems on behalf of our people, to try to make our work irrelevant,” adding, “To all the people who tried to make that happen, you failed.”