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The mayor of Washington, D.C. signaled Tuesday that the mural marking Black Lives Matter Plaza in view of the White House will likely be painted over after a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill threatening the District’s federal funding if it fails to change the name.
Black Lives Matter Plaza is marked with a mural of its name in bright-yellow letters along a two-block pedestrian stretch of 16th Street NW in downtown D.C.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, the second Black woman to serve as D.C. mayor, addressed wiping out the name in a post on X and in a news release titled “The Evolution of Black Lives Matter Plaza” a day after the proposed legislation was introduced.
She wrote that the plaza would become part of a citywide project in which students and artists would create new murals on the street to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
“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. The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern,” Bowser wrote.
“Our focus is on economic growth, public safety and supporting our residents affected by these cuts,” she added.
Bowser arranged to have the mural painted the morning of June 5, 2020, just days after federal authorities used chemical spray and smoke grenades to clear protesters from the area so that President Trump could walk to a historic church near the White House and pose for photographs holding a Bible.
Activists across the nation during that time were protesting the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody.
Trump, who was rushed one night to the White House bunker with First Lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, amid protests, attacked Bowser as “incompetent” for renaming the plaza.
The plaza bill, HR 1774, introduced by Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde, seeks to withhold federal funding unless the city “removes the phrase Black Lives Matter from the street symbolically designated as Black Lives Matter Plaza … in addition to government websites, documents and other material under Washington, D.C. jurisdiction.“
The bill calls for the area to be redesignated as “Liberty Plaza.”
The bill is currently in committee and has no cosponsors.
It was not immediately clear if the mayor will rename the area “Liberty Plaza.”
The plaza will still be part of the city’s 250 mural project in honor of the country’s birthday next year, Bowser said. Students and artists will be invited to create new murals across all eight wards of the area, which will include Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Bowser has been treading carefully since Trump’s re-election. Last month, the president suggested the federal government should take over the District of Columbia, which is currently overseen by Congress, as established in the Constitution.
About $1.5 billion in federal grant funding is slated for the city’s 2025 fiscal year operating budget, according to the D.C. Policy Center.
Washington, D.C. is expected to lose $1 billion over the next three years, largely due to federal layoffs expected to throw the area into a recession, the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute reported this week.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has eliminated thousands of federal government jobs. Approximately 13 percent of the city’s population has been employed by the federal government.
The Fiscal Policy Institute predicts the revenue drop will disproportionately harm Black workers.
