A New Mural in France Shows the Statue of Liberty Covering Her Eyes in a Swipe at Trump
A towering mural in France of the Statue of Liberty covering her eyes is racking up millions of views online with its swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump 's immigration and deportation policies.
Amsterdam-based street artist Judith de Leeuw described her giant work in the northern French town of Roubaix, which has a large immigrant community, as 'a quiet reminder of what freedom should be.'
She said 'freedom feels out of reach' for migrants and 'those pushed to the margins, silenced, or unseen.'
'I painted her covering her eyes because the weight of the world has become too heavy to witness. What was once a shining symbol of liberty now carries the sorrow of lost meaning,' de Leeuw wrote in a July 4 post on Facebook, when Americans were celebrating Independence Day.
Her depiction of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French people in the late 1800s, has inspired some sharp criticism.
Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican lawmaker from Tennessee, wrote in an angry post on X that the work 'disgusts me.' He said he had an uncle who fought and died in France, where U.S. forces saw combat in both World War I and World War II.
In an interview with The Associated Press, de Leeuw was unapologetic.
'I'm not offended to be hated by the Donald Trump movement. I am not sorry. This is the right thing to do,' she said.
The town stood by the work, with its deputy mayor in charge of cultural affairs, Frédéric Lefebvre, telling broadcaster France 3 that 'it's a very strong and powerful political message.'
Since returning to the White House amid anti-immigration sentiment, Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. People from various countries have been deported to remote and unrelated places like South Sudan and the small African nation of Eswatini.
Polling by Gallup released last week showed an increasing number of Americans who said immigration is a 'good thing' and decreasing support for the type of mass deportations Trump has championed since before he was elected.
The mural in Roubaix is part of an urban street culture festival backed by the town. Roubaix is one of the poorest towns in France. It was economically devastated by the collapse since the 1970s of its once-flourishing textile industry that used to attract migrant workers from elsewhere in Europe, north Africa and beyond.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
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- Yomiuri Shimbun
They're Rich. They're Anti-Trump. And They Don't Want Their Big Tax Cut.
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'Imbalanced is really not good for anyone, even if you're on the positive end of that imbalance, because it's unsustainable.' Hoover's experience reflects an unusual irony of Trump's signature tax legislation: Many of its biggest beneficiaries fiercely oppose the president – and even oppose policies he is pushing that will make them richer. The mismatch is partly a result of a crucial, if ongoing, evolution of the role class plays in American politics. During the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, affluent Americans who benefited from tax cuts were more likely to be Republicans. The political party they supported delivered material benefits that boosted their pocketbooks. Democratic voters, by comparison, were more likely to be working or middle class. Now, more than half of upper-income families – defined as those earning more than $215,400 per year – vote Democratic, according to a 2024 Pew Research survey, as more highly educated voters shift to the left. The top fifth of earners went from supporting Barack Obama in 2008 by a 2.5-point margin to supporting Joe Biden in 2020 by close to 15 percentage points. 'Affluent Americans used to vote for Republican politicians. Now they vote for Democrats,' one 2023 paper found. That shift intensified during the 2024 presidential election, when large numbers of Black and Latino voters, who tend to be lower-income, defected to the Republican ticket for the first time in decades, according to several political scientists, exit polls and studies. 'There's been a lot of talk about how even though the Republican coalition has changed and gotten more working class, their policies have not,' said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University. 'But there's been less attention to a similar but true fact on the other side – a lot of Democratic politicians were elected by very rich constituents who are more likely to benefit from Republican tax policy than Democratic policy.' As a result, many of the provisions of the GOP tax law will benefit a voting bloc that is increasingly Democratic. The $3.4 trillion legislation extends a lower tax rate for the top tax bracket, rejecting the president's suggestion of a new tax on million-dollar earners. It expands and makes permanent a smaller federal estate tax, allowing up to $15 million to be passed on tax-free ($30 million for couples). It also makes permanent a large deduction for businesses formed as pass-through entities, while raising the cap on what filers can deduct in state and local taxes. (The GOP's 2017 tax law also permanently lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.) 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Yomiuri Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump Arrives in Scotland for Golf and Bilateral Talks as EU Trade Deal Nears
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Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
EU's Von der Leyen to meet Trump in bid to clinch trade deal
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