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Moore and Trump have sparred in past over National Guard deployments and funding to repair the Francis Scott Key Bridge
Josh Marcus in San Francisco Sunday 08 February 2026 19:49 GMT- Bookmark
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CloseDemocratic Governor Wes Moore rules out 2028 presidential run despite being considered a frontrunner
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The nation’s only sitting Black governor was excluded from an upcoming bipartisan dinner for governors at the White House, a decision he feels could be rooted in racism.
“This week, I learned that I was uninvited to this year’s National Governors Association dinner — a decades-long annual tradition meant to bring governors from both parties together to build bonds and celebrate a shared service to our citizens with the President of the United States,” Gov. Wes Moore, Democrat of Maryland, wrote in a statement.
“As the nation’s only Black governor, I can’t ignore that being singled out for exclusion from this bipartisan tradition carries an added weight — whether that was the intent or not,” he added, calling the choice a sign of “blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership.”
The White House dismissed this reading of the decision.
“Many Democrats were invited to dinner at the White House, and others were not,” a White House official told Politico. “These are White House events and the President reserves the right to invite whomever he wants.”
open image in galleryGov. Wes Moore of Maryland believes race may have been a factor in the Trump administration’s decision not to invite him to an upcoming bipartisan event with governors at the White House (Getty Images)Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, was also singled out for not being invited to the black-tie event.
President Trump previously announced that this month’s annual meeting of governors at the White House will only include Republicans.
The administration is still planning to host a bipartisan dinner with governors and their spouses while they are in Washington for the National Governors Association gathering, which begins on February 19.
The NGA has said it will not consider the meeting or the dinner officially sanctioned NGA events.
“The president has decided to only invite Republican governors,” the NGA told members, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. “N.G.A. leadership has decided that this will not be an N.G.A. event, and no N.G.A. resources will be used to support transportation for this activity.”
“The NGA will not support this dinner,” Moore told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “If the president wants to have a dinner with his friends and have a black-tie dinner with his friends on that night, that is perfectly fine. It will not be an NGA event.”
open image in galleryColorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, also was not invited to the dinner (AP)The back-and-forth over the invitation comes amid controversy over Trump’s social media account sharing a video on Friday depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle as apes, invoking centuries-old racist tropes used to dehumanize Black people.
Trump launched his political career in part by spreading the birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
President Trump has declined to apologize, claiming he didn’t watch the full clip before it was posted. A White House official told The Hill a staffer “erroneously” shared the video on his behalf. It has since been deleted.
The video provoked rare bipartisan criticism of the president, including from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate.
“It's the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott, who is Black, said in a post on X.
Moore and Trump have sparred in the past.
The Maryland governor pushed back against Donald Trump’s threat to send the National Guard to Baltimore to fight crime, prompting Trump to threaten to withhold funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was destroyed in 2024 when a ship collided with it.
At last year’s governors meeting at the White House, President Trump had a memorable exchange with Maine Governor Janet Mills, as the two clashed over the president’s executive order pushing governments to ban transgender women and girls from women’s sports or risk losing federal funding.
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