The city of Washington, D.C, is poised to erase the iconic “Black Lives Matter” street mural near the White House, a major change in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s position amid increasing political pressure.
Mayor Bowser, who in 2020 commissioned the mural in rebuke to then-President Donald Trump as a symbol of defiance, now invokes “hopeless congressional overreach” and budget issues. “The mural voted hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now we need to fight a job slashing by the federal government,” she wrote on X.
The effort follows as President Trump, in his second time in office, rekindles talk of a federal take over of the capital, noting crime and governance concerns. For his part Republican lawmakers are pushing the BOWSER Act a hostile bill that would strip D.C. of its self governance. 
Activists have been outraged, in effect charging Bowser of turning his back on the movement. You never cared about Black lives, Nee Nee Taylor, co-founder of D.C. Black Lives Matter chapter said. The mural was always performative.”
Bowser’s shift in stance is part of a larger political movement. Even after a Trump duel in 202o, she has since met with him at Mar-a-Lago and concurs on issues like onsite federal office workers.
As the budget forecast for the city bottoms out at $1 billion, Brooklyn Mayor Bill de Blasio and other allies amassed a 14-foot record of the house of homeless individuals from Washington properly discard economic balance with symbolic gestures–an approach more willing to intensify most fundamentally divisions in the nation’s capital.
