President Donald Trump’s annual dinner with governors at the White House ended shortly after he learned of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his sweeping tariff policy, bringing a week of heightened tension between the administration and state leaders to a close.
The White House dinner is normally a low-key chance for leaders from both parties to meet the president ahead of the National Governors Association’s annual meeting, but this year’s event drew controversy instead. Ahead of the next NGA gathering, Trump ridiculed the group’s leadership, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, according to a report by The Associated Press.
In the days before Saturday’s dinner, Trump refused to invite Moore—and also Colorado Gov. Jared Polis—to a White House working event on Friday, the AP said. Trump later relented at the last minute, after Democrats threatened to boycott the dinner unless Democrats were allowed to attend the earlier meeting.
Some Democrats said they still would not attend even after Moore’s attendance was confirmed, and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called the situation a “farce” in a statement, according to the AP. When the dinner began, the AP reported that no Democrats were spotted in the room. The black-tie event included top administration officials and Republican governors, with tall candles arranged on tables.
In brief remarks, Trump joked that state leaders “look in that mirror and say, I should be president, not him,” the AP reported. Trump did not criticize any Democrats by name during his comments, but he blamed two states run by Democratic governors when he mentioned a sewage spill in the Potomac River near Washington.
Trump said, “We have to clean up some mess that Maryland and Virginia have left us,” and added that “it’s unbelievable what they can do with incompetence,” the AP reported. The AP said the ruptured pipe was part of a Washington-based utility that is federally regulated and under oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Vice President JD Vance told governors that they faced hard decisions and, in his view, “nobody blames you when anything goes wrong,” according to the AP. At least some governors who attended previous dinners described the tradition as a rare, helpful opportunity to connect with the president and cabinet officials outside the pressure of day-to-day governing, the AP said.
Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas who briefly challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, recalled being assigned to a table one year with then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and getting to know her family, according to the AP. Hutchinson said the evening was “a glowing evening in the White House” in an interview, the AP reported.
The final day of the NGA conference on Saturday 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, the AP reported.
Stitt said states should be empowered to issue workforce permits and warned that both parties were making false political assumptions, including a claim about how “OK, all the Democrats want open borders” and “all Republicans hate immigrants,” the AP reported. Stitt also said “rural Oklahoma Trump voters” had privately approached him and told him they could not operate their businesses without people seeking work authorization.
Despite the turmoil around the White House meetings, Moore said the conference was a success. He said that “There were a lot of things that were put in our way to try to distract us from our mission… to try to make our work irrelevant,” adding, “To all the people who tried to make that happen, you failed,” according to the AP.