A woman who was fired after a White House photographer captured her flipping off President Donald Trump's motorcade has won a local election in Virginia, CBS News reports.
The viral photo, taken back in October of 2017, shows Julia Briskman riding her bike while making the rude gesture as a line of SUVs escorting Trump went past.
When her employers at federal contractor, Akima, learned that she was the individual in the photo, she was asked to leave her government job or face termination. The 52-year-old sued the company, arguing that the firing violated her freedom of speech, and won a severance claim. However, her wrongful-termination lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
Rewatch the moment Donald Trump announced the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi:Yesterday, however, Briskman won a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, beating Suzanne Volpe, the eight-year incumbent Republican in Algonkian District, 5,586 to 4,721. With 99% of precincts reporting results, she captured 52.4% of the vote.
Just over two years earlier, the Democrat felt angered by the president's plan to end the immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), as well as his response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
"I don't employ that gesture very often but I wanted to express my opinion, and I was faced with tinted, bullet-proof glass, and I was assuming the person in the car was who I thought it was," Briskman told BuzzFeed News in 2018.
Robert De Niro calls out President Trump in a rare interview on CNN:Ultimately, Briskman felt driven to take a stand against Trump and his policies and won against her Republican opponent following a campaign which centred around issues such as funding local schools and expanding green space in the community.
"It’s not like I can run against him," she told the Washington Post in July. "But I can run."