UPDATE
Mar 18, 2025 9:45 AM CDT
Although a French lawmaker says he wasn't serious when he suggested the US return the Statue of Liberty to France, the White House isn't laughing. "Absolutely not," press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Monday briefing on the proposal on Lady Liberty, given to the US by France in 1884, per USA Today. "My advice to that unnamed, low-level French politician would be to remind them that it's only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now. So they should be very grateful to our great country." HuffPost notes some are calling Leavitt's remarks about an ally "insulting." Raphael Glucksmann, meanwhile, says his remark was meant as a "wake-up call," per the AP. "The statue is yours," he wrote. "But what it embodies belongs to everyone. And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe."
Mar 17, 2025 11:18 AM CDT
A Canadian premier suggested turning off electricity to 1.5 million US homes and businesses, and now a French lawmaker is suggesting the return of the Statue of Liberty. Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who's co-president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, put forth the suggestion at a party convention Sunday, saying President Trump's apparent embrace of dictators indicated the US had abandoned the values for which Lady Liberty stands. "We're going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: 'Give us back the Statue of Liberty,'" said Glucksmann, per Politico. "We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home."
The statue's engraved lines, welcoming the "tired" and "poor" masses "yearning to breathe free," "don't ring as strongly these days" given the Trump administration's mass deportations, as Euronews puts it. Still, Glucksmann's comment was tongue-in-cheek, per Politico. The S&D lawmaker appeared more serious, however, when suggesting Americans who've lost their jobs under the Trump administration's government cuts could move to France, where their skills would be better appreciated. "The second thing we're going to say to the Americans is: 'If you want to fire your best researchers, if you want to fire all the people who, through their freedom and their sense of innovation, their taste for doubt and research, have made your country the world's leading power, then we're going to welcome them," he said. (More Statue of Liberty stories.)
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