President Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Alice Marie Johnson, a woman he pardoned during his first term, as "pardon czar." The announcement came during a Black History Month event at the White House.

Trump called Black Americans an "indispensable core of America" at the White House event and decried focusing on 1619, the year the first recorded enslaved Africans arrived on American soil, saying that focus should instead be placed on 1776, the year the U.S. declared its independence.

During the Black History Month ceremony, which preserved a long-standing and bipartisan White House tradition, Trump omitted any mention of his anti-DEI efforts.