For nearly five years, two blocks leading up to the White House were the home of a mural that had become one of the most recognizable symbols nationally of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the nation in the summer of 2020.
And that was far too long for Georgia U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, who filed legislation about a week ago threatening to withhold federal funds from Washington if the bold yellow letters weren’t removed from the two blocks renamed Liberty Plaza. Clyde, R-Athens, said renaming Black Lives Matter Plaza was a crucial component of President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“The Left has allowed this deeply divisive slogan to shamefully stain the streets of America’s capital city for nearly five years,” he wrote in a press release announcing the March 3 bill. “It’s past time for Congress to exercise its constitutional authority over Washington’s affairs to remove BLM Plaza and rename the street to Liberty Plaza. Our capital city must serve as a beacon of freedom, patriotism, and safety — not wokeness, divisiveness, and lawlessness.”
Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the mural would be removed just as Clyde wanted. She said the city had bigger battles to fight than one over a streetscape, pointing to the mass layoffs affecting federal workers in the nation’s capital and other GOP-led threats to its home rule.
“The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference,” she wrote in a statement. “The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern. Our focus is on economic growth, public safety, and supporting our residents affected by these cuts.”
Bowser has also been working on her relationship with Trump, meeting with him privately amid the cost-cutting efforts his administration has exerted and the outsize impact they could have on Washington residents. Her Black Lives Matter Plaza olive branch — workers began digging up the mural embedded into the asphalt on Monday — comes at the same time as a much bigger threat.
The U.S. House will vote Tuesday on government funding legislation that, if approved, would require Bowser to immediately reduce the city’s budget by roughly $1 billion. The across-the-board spending cuts could lead to layoffs of teachers and police officers and library closings — services funded by local taxpayers and not the federal government.
Bowser and other local officials have lobbied to have the city exempted from the cuts required by the continuing resolution, but so far Republicans have not agreed to amendments. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress final authority over all matters related to the capital city.