The White House tried to set the guest list, then got boxed in by the blowback. Now, the National Governors Association’s annual Washington ritual is doubling as a loyalty test, and two Democratic governors are still stuck in the gray zone.
What You Should Know
President Trump said nearly all governors were invited to a White House NGA meeting and related events, but he publicly excluded Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt told governors the meeting invite would be bipartisan.
The clash matters because the NGA week is supposed to be the rare, boring, bipartisan plumbing of federal-state politics. Instead, it is turning into a live-fire exercise in who gets access, who gets iced out, and who gets to claim the mantle of bipartisanship when the cameras are on.
The Power Move Was the Guest List
According to CBS News, the White House initially planned to exclude Democratic governors from a formal business meeting tied to the NGA conference scheduled for February 20th, 2026. That is not a minor tweak. The NGA meeting is the part where governors show up with binders, requests, and a reason to be in the room.
Then came the second event with bigger symbolism and softer edges, a dinner at the White House on February 21st, 2026, with the president, governors, and spouses. Two Democrats, Moore and Polis, were told they would not be invited, according to CBS News.
Access is a currency in Washington. A dinner invite is not policy, but it is a photo line, a handshake, and a signal to donors and party leaders back home about who can pick up the phone and who cannot.
Kevin Stitt Played Referee, Then Trump Cut His Legs Out
The turnaround started with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican and NGA chair, who worked with the White House after the reported plan to keep Democrats out of the formal meeting triggered resistance inside the organization.
Stitt sent governors a message that sounded like a peace treaty. In a note obtained by CBS News, he wrote, “He was very clear in his communications with me that this is a National Governors Association’s event, and he looks forward to hosting you and hearing from governors across the country. President Trump said this was always his intention, and we have addressed the misunderstanding in scheduling.”
The message did two things at once. It gave Trump an exit ramp, and it gave the NGA a way to protect the idea that this was still an association event, not a partisan rally.
Then, Trump jumped onto Truth Social and yanked the focus back to the two names at the center of the dispute. In his post, he said Moore and Polis were still out.
That is the contradiction sitting in plain sight. Stitt says the scheduling was a misunderstanding, and the event is for governors across the country. Trump says two governors are “not worthy” of being there, and that Stitt “got it WRONG,” according to CBS News.
In a power struggle, the person who controls invitations usually controls the narrative. Here, the narrative fractured, publicly, between a Republican governor trying to keep the NGA functioning and a president using the list as a political instrument.
Democrats Threatened a Boycott, and the White House Blinked, Sort Of
The NGA said it was told on February 5th, 2026, that only Republican governors would be invited to the formal business meeting, according to CBS News. The next day, the organization said it would not facilitate the meeting or put it on its official schedule.
That is the NGO version of slamming the brakes. If the NGA does not bless the meeting, the White House is left hosting a partisan gathering during an event branded as bipartisan cooperation.
The pressure did not stop there. After reports of Democrats being excluded, nearly every Democratic governor issued a joint statement indicating they would not attend any White House events during the conference week, including the dinner, in solidarity with Moore and Polis, according to CBS News.
That threat changes the math. A dinner of only Republicans reads like a campaign stop. A dinner with both parties reads like governance. If Democrats stay away, the White House gets a smaller room, a smaller photo, and a larger story about exclusion.
By Wednesday evening, Democrats began receiving invitations to the formal business meeting, CBS News reported. Moore, specifically, received an invite to the formal meeting, according to a source familiar with the matter cited by CBS News.
However, the dinner remained murkier, with CBS News reporting that the NGA did not receive updates about the White House dinner invite list.
Why These 2 Governors
Trump did not leave the rationale to imagination. He tied Polis to a specific grievance, the case of former Colorado county election clerk Tina Peters. Trump has pressed Polis for months to grant clemency to Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence on multiple state charges related to unauthorized access to voting machines, according to CBS News.
That framing turns a state-level prosecution into a White House social filter. It is not just that Polis is a Democrat. It is that Trump is signaling he wants a governor to use clemency power in a way that aligns with Trump’s election narratives, and he is willing to punish refusal with access denial.
Moore got a different kind of attack. CBS News reported that Trump called Moore “foul-mouthed” and claimed Moore embellished receiving military medals, while Moore has said an error on a 2006 White House fellowship application was an “honest mistake” and that he has since received a Bronze Star for his deployment to Afghanistan.
Those are not policy disputes. They are character disputes, broadcast to a national audience, attached to a physical invitation. It puts Moore in the posture of defending biography while trying to govern, and it lets the White House define the terms of the disagreement.
The RINO Shot Was Not an Accident
Trump also used the episode to slap the Republican in the middle, calling Stitt a “RINO,” shorthand for Republican in name only, according to CBS News.
That detail matters because Stitt had backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, CBS News reported. The dinner list drama is not only about Democrats. It is also about whether Republican elected officials are treated as allies or suspects, depending on their past loyalties.
In other words, Stitt tried to act like a bipartisan chair. Trump treated him like a subordinate who needed correcting in public.
The Governors Are Talking About Partnership, While the White House Talks About Worth
Moore, for his part, framed the snub as a governance problem, not a personal insult. He called the decision not to invite him “another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership,” CBS News reported.
A Polis spokesperson took a similar line, calling the exclusion “a disappointing decision for a traditionally bipartisan event between Governors and whomever occupies the White House,” CBS News reported. The spokesperson added that Polis would keep working with other governors regardless of invitations.
Those statements are doing careful work. They treat the White House as an institution that changes hands, and they treat NGA week as something bigger than one president’s personal grievances.
Trump’s language, as quoted by CBS News, is personal and absolute. “The invitations were sent to ALL Governors, other than two, who I feel are not worthy of being there,” he wrote.
That is the core tension. The governors are describing a system. The president is describing a hierarchy.
What to Watch Next
Two questions now drive the next news cycle.
First, will Polis receive a formal invitation to the business meeting, and will the White House clarify the dinner list in a way that matches what the NGA chair told the full group? CBS News reported it was unclear whether Polis received the meeting invite.
Second, will Democratic governors follow through on the solidarity threat if Moore and Polis are still frozen out of the dinner? The leverage is real. A bipartisan table protects the White House from a story about exclusion. An empty seat tells a story on its own.
The White House has hosted governors from both parties during previous NGA conferences. CBS News noted that last year’s gathering drew attention after a verbal exchange between Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, including her line, “We’ll see you in court.”
That moment ended as a viral clip. This one is a process story that can morph into something bigger, because it is about who gets access to the president, and what a governor has to say or do to earn it.
