Sheldon Whitehouse Receives Some Unwelcome Beach Club Reminders With His Juneteenth Post

As Democrats have been rushing to put out posts commemorating Juneteenth, some members have found themselves in a bit of trouble. As we covered earlier, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was forced to take down her post after many chimed in to remind her that her home country of Somalia still has a problem with modern-day slavery. She's since put out a new one, but that too is filled with such unwelcome reminders in the reply section, and has also been ratioed. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has also received some unwelcome reminders with his post, though he's left his up.

"This Juneteenth, I think of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who reminded us that 'darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that,'" Whitehouse began his post with. "There’s serious work ahead as we build a more just nation," he also added.

This Juneteenth, I think of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who reminded us that “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

There’s serious work ahead as we build a more just nation.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) June 19, 2025

That added point is quite the way for Whitehouse to conclude his post, given that he belongs to a beach club in Rhode Island that has come under fire in recent years for having only white members.

The people who run the place were "still working on that," Whitehouse offered in 2021 when it comes to minority members. "It’s a long tradition in Rhode Island and there are many of them and I think we just need to work our way through the issues," Whitehouse also said to defend the existence of such clubs.

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, his wife & their families have been members of an all-white private beach club for decades.

“It’s a long tradition in Rhode Island & there are many of them & I think we just need to work our way through the issues,” @SenWhitehouse said https://t.co/EA7rnkRiAX pic.twitter.com/gwaphKBYWq
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) June 20, 2021

Today we celebrate Republicans freeing slaves from their Democratic slaveholders. We continue to fight for their rights today as Democrats fight for illegal aliens who take away resources from Americans in need. Oh, and mutilating children too. Another big fav of the Dems.
— NashvilleHawk (@mw66896684) June 19, 2025

Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation in mid June 2021 to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, celebrating when the remaining slaves in the Confederacy learned that President Abraham Lincoln had freed them over two-and-a-half years prior. The June 19 order came from Galveston, Texas. As bipartisan as the bill was, then President Joe Biden, when signing the bill into law, went on a political screed at the time about how voting rights were supposedly "under attack."

The timing is particularly rough for Whitehouse, given that it's at least the second time in one week that he's put out a post garnering such criticism about the beach club. As we also covered at the time, Whitehouse put out a post showing a photo of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) being briefly detained side-by-side with a photo of the now late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) being confronted by police during a Civil Rights rally in 1961.

Padilla was removed from a presser being given by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem last Thursday after he tried to rush the podium to interrupt and also did not properly identify himself in time. He was still able to meet with Noem afterwards and they even exchanged phone numbers. That hasn't stopped Democrats, such Padilla and Whitehouse but also plenty of others, from lamenting and milking the incident, as Padilla even did from the Senate floor earlier this week.