The Black Lives Matter mural that was painted on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., just two blocks from the White House, was a shot across the bow to Donald Trump after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
That was in June 2020. The street art was a point of pride for Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was photographed proudly surveying the work.
But a lot has happened since that BLM slogan was painted on the street. The national Black Lives Matter organization received upwards of $100 million from mostly large corporations, which it spent on some curious items, including a $6 million mansion for BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors and exorbitant salaries for friends and relatives of BLM officers.
After Cullors left the group, there was $60 million still in the bank with no one in charge of it. Things went downhill for BLM from there.
Several members of local chapters were caught with their hands in the cookie jar and sent to prison. Then came the 2022 and 2024 elections, where the Democrats got clobbered for supporting the BLM "Defund the Police" idiocy. Democratic politicians tiptoed away from BLM, claiming they never heard of it... or something like that.
Bowser and other big-city Democrats have ridden the BLM pony as far as they can. Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation to force Bowser to recognize the reality that BLM is a sham and was just the latest effort to milk white guilt for whatever activists can get. Accordingly, Bowser has decided that with the 250th anniversary of America coming up in 2026, the BLM street mural will be painted over.
"The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a painful period, but now we can't afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference," Bowser's statement said, referencing a recently introduced bill that calls for changing the plaza. "The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern."
Pay no attention to that group that called for defunding the police in the middle of one of the worst murder sprees in modern history.
"Black Who? What?"
The move shows Bowser’s striking shift in tone toward Trump and congressional Republicans since the president’s first term in office. Bowser, a Democrat, ordered the painting and renamed the intersection Black Lives Matter Plaza as a public act of defiance in June 2020. It came after days of chaotic protests at that location over police brutality following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Her approach to the protests brought her into direct conflict with Trump. The president at the time accused Bowser of losing control of her city and threatened to invoke his power to take over the Metropolitan Police Department. He didn’t follow through but declared his own multiagency lockdown that included helicopters flying at low altitudes to intimidate protesters.
In Trump’s second stint in the White House, Bowser has worked to avoid conflict and downplay any points of contention. She traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to meet with president after his election and has publicly emphasized their points of agreement, such as a mutual desire to return federal workers back to their offices full time.
Some members of Congress have called for repealing the "Home Rule" statute that took governing the district away from Congress. That's not likely to pass, given the filibuster rule in the Senate. But D.C. is a broken city, and painting over the mural named for an organization rife with criminals and fraudsters won't wipe away the stench of corruption that engulfs the city.
President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress has radical Democrats in panic mode, and their childish protests won't stop all of the winning.
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