By John Loftus, Daily Caller News Foundation | May 13, 2025
Toward the tail end of Donald Trump’s first term, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser goaded the president by renaming a street one block from the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza.
It was the summer of 2020, the height of BLM rioting and anti-Trump hysteria, an election year. Resistance Democrats like Bowser were kicking into overdrive, attacking the president every chance they got, stoking fear and paranoia to mobilize voters in support of Joe Biden.
But nearly five years later, at the start of Trump’s second term, Bowser has completely capitulated. In a symbolic gesture, the Democratic mayor erased the BLM plaza in March. It was not a one-off, however; she is now maintaining an entirely new posture toward the president.
According to a Politico report published Tuesday, Bowser and her team have finally smartened up and ditched the Resistance playbook for good, opting instead to make inroads with the new administration and avoid any harsh, public confrontations. She even appeared with Trump and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to announce that the 2027 NFL draft will be hosted in her city, and on the same day, reportedly urged the president to restore $1 billion in funding for the city that was blocked by Congress.
“She recognizes that there’s a power imbalance, and that power imbalance necessitates that her approach is one in which she doesn’t want to unnecessarily antagonize the president or his team, or GOP leadership in Congress,” an anonymous Bowser aide told Politico.
For now, the strategy appears to be working. After Bowser met with Trump earlier in May, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress would vote “as quickly as possible” to fix D.C.’s $1 billion funding shortfall after a stopgap funding bill in March accidentally prevented the city from spending its own tax revenue.
Bowser has also fallen into line with Trump’s rhetoric about making the nation’s capital a more beautiful place, emphasizing her own administration’s efforts to keep D.C. “clean, safe and beautiful.”
“We want every space, from sidewalks to parks to roadways, to reflect our pride and the investments we’ve made to keep DC clean, safe, and beautiful,” she said in April. “Spring cleaning is about more than tidying up, it’s about showing love for our neighborhoods and working together to keep our communities vibrant.”
Other Democrats, national or local, would do well to follow Bowser’s example. Bending the knee to Trump is not necessarily a zero-sum political game. Maybe with the second Trump administration in town, Bowser will actually have a shot at making D.C. great again.
John Loftus is an editor at large at the Daily Caller News Foundation
Original article link
