Bulwark Takes - Norman Rockwell’s Granddaughter Rips Into DHS for Hijacking His Legacy (w/ Daisy Rockwell)

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

DHS is using Norman Rockwell’s art to sell an anti-immigrant message and his family is furious. Catherine Rampell sits down with Daisy Rockwell, Norman Rockwell’s granddaughter and a writer and artist herself, to talk about why these images are being misused, what Rockwell actually believed, and get her take on how nostalgia and Americana are being weaponized to promote white nationalist ideas.

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stick. That was Daisy Rockwell. She may not have a lot to say to Donald Trump, but she has a lot of words of wisdom for the rest of us. I'm Catherine Rampel, and in this very special episode of Bullwork Takes, we're going to get into all of that soon. Because Daisy is a writer, she's an artist, and she also happens to be the granddaughter of the great Norman Rockwell. Yes, that Norman Rockwell, the Norman Rockwell, whose work defined the 20th century and whose famous paintings captured all of these wholesome, iconic moments of American middle class life. Some of Rockwell's famous paintings have been used this year without permission by the Department of Homeland Security, basically co-opting his legacy to promote their anti-immigrant campaign

in social media posts. So, like, I'll give you one example. One of these posts read, protect our American way of life. And it was alongside, of course, white women, white men, and cute little white children saluting the American flag. All of this completely misreads Norman Rockwell's legacy. Yes, he was known in the early 20th century for these very white, wholesome, boy scout populated paintings of small town America. But in the 60s, Rockwell basically got woke and painted some of the most,

iconic images, enduring images of the civil rights movement. The Rockwell family was understandably unhappy about this hijacking of their patriarch's legacy in furtherance of an anti-immigrant agenda. In a letter, an op-ed published in USA Today, they expressed their outrage and indignation. They have asked for DHS to stop. DHS did not stop. In fact, they just published another one of these social media posts with a famous Norman Rockwell Santa painting, again, part of the government propaganda campaign. And in their letter in USA Today, the family writes that this goes against everything that Norman Rockwell stood for. They say he believed compassion, inclusiveness, and justice for all were the real message for America. I visited Rockwell's granddaughter, Daisy, at the

Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Here's our discussion. Norman Ruffel was Antifa because these are all anti-fascist paintings. They're using Norman Ruffel's work. To promote fascism. Yeah. You know, that's the amusing thing where the current government is trying to proclaim Antifa as a terrorist group, but it's really just the idea of anti-fascist. Tell me about this Department of Homeland Security campaign.

Well, it seems like they have a bunch of social media people working on promotion and recruitment for Homeland Security. And I think they're kind of stealing images from all over the place. So they, but it came to our attention because they used some of Norman Rockwell's paintings without getting any authorization, because those works are under copyright. And they used them with text in such a way. way to make it seem like his work aligned with their values. How did you first come to find out about this use of his work?

I mean, as you know, his work appears everywhere online. Yes. And it's not really possible to control in a lot of ways, but there's, you know, there's these gray areas in copyright law, like fair use allows for parody and satire. so you see a freedom from want, the Thanksgiving painting, you know, with everybody replaced with like aliens or like members of BTS or something like that. And we can't, we can't and we don't control these things. We wanted to push back. We wanted to educate. We wanted to be clear, like we didn't want to be euphemistic about how we felt or how we felt that it was a wrong

usage of his work. Well, when I read your letter, I saw it not just as being about educating the people, educating Americans with the talents of your grandfather and where he fits into the American canon, but also I got a sense of indignation. Just the horrors that are going on right now perpetrated by that particular branch of government by Homeland Security, we are all, everybody in the family is outraged by that, like, no matter how we may differ in our opinions of various things, there's zero people in my family that approve of what Department of Homeland Security is doing. You know, it's anti-immigrant, it's racist, the human rights violations constantly happening. To have our grandfather's work used to promote that, it was just shocking and appalling

And so we wanted to fight it. Has your family had any contact with DHS over? No, but like after we published our letter and posted a notice, they put up another image like of Boy Scouts. So, like, I mean, to me that just means, yes, this is like a bunch of 11-year-old boys that are like, they're just trolls like they don't even know what they're doing yeah i know that like they're probably just hiring people that aren't even sitting in an office or anything i think when people

think of your grandfather they often think of images like this right sort of like wholesome slight slice of town right yeah yeah they do um which is actually interesting because he grew up he was a city boy oh really yeah um and so Like, a lot of this was sort of a fantasy for him. Was there a particular triggering event or moment in your grandfather's life that led him to start more actively portraying the civil rights movement? There were a combination of factors. They were both about his artistic control, but also about these values that he was seeing all around him that made him break with the post. at that time, and it was only after that that he painted what are known as his civil rights

paintings, such as the problem we all live with. So he was inspired by Ruby Bridges' solo walk to school. We know who did this, right, in a sense, but he's not putting that there. He's saying, let's just focus on her and this journey, and let's not even think about these men, because you can't see with their heads, which is sort of interesting. If you had the opportunity to talk with, let's say, Christy Noem, who's the DHS secretary or Donald Trump himself, what would you say? Donald Trump had a kind of similar mental status to my father. Only my father is more charming, obviously.

So if I could speak to Donald Trump, I wouldn't bother because I don't think anything would stick. If I could talk to Christy now, you know, there's so many things I'd say. I mean, first of all, about the dog. But just, yeah, this appropriation, trying to appropriate American images, trying to create this narrative of white supremacy. I would have many things to tell her. She probably wouldn't be interested in them, though.

Presumably part of the reason why the Department of Homeland Security was using these images without authorization is that his work has been linked with, again, a nostalgia for a wider past, a wider, more wholesome past. How do you think he would have felt about that portrayal of his work or that portrayal of his legacy?

That juncture that we're talking about, like late 50s, early 60s, I think he started to become aware of how the legacy could look. And I think it's kind of exciting to think about the problem we all live with was published in January of 1964. He turned 70 in February, 1964. And I love this. I never had thought about this before, but just when I was researching all these states,

and he was, he had just, he turned 70, right? And he was extremely famous. He was a celebrity. So he could have rested on his laurels or he could have put out statements, you know. But instead he decided to create a proof, create an archive of how he felt about this moment and to stand up and make himself counted. And so I think that's exciting both as a story about him but also about, you know, what's possible at 70 that you can, you know, you can create your best work or, you know,

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