The near-blackout of the universal symbol of freedom was invested with great meaning on the Internet, with a consensus settling, more or less, on two interpretations.

Lady Liberty was either protesting President Trump generally and, more specifically, his travel ban just a day after he signed the revised executive order limiting entry to the United States from six Muslim-majority countries.

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Or she was signaling her solidarity with #DayWithoutWomen, a strike scheduled for Wednesday that asks women to skip work to show the world what life would be like without them.

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“Give me your tired your poor your huddled masses but later. We’re closed,” one tweet said. Her lights were out because “Trump has plunged our country into darkness,” said another.

“I’ve been wondering how long before France asks @realDonaldTrump for the statue of liberty back as he clearly doesn’t respect its symbolism,” tweeted Jason Rumble.

Perhaps when her lights came back on, her forearm would display a “Nevertheless, she persisted,” tattoo, another social media user suggested.

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Could it be that Lady Liberty — one of the nation’s most recognizable female figures — was participating in the “Day Without a Woman?”

Indeed, Women’s March, organizers of “A Day Without a Woman,” were quick to thank the statue for “standing with the resistance and going dark” for the event.

“Lady Liberty got the memo,” the organizers added.

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“That’s ONE MORE woman America CANNOT do without,” another Twitter user wrote.

On the other hand, someone else suggested, perhaps Russian hackers were to blame.

Ultimately, the lights came back on at about midnight.

Hours later, the National Park Service explained that “power and a lighting system controller had been switched off in order to change out faulty lighting equipment.”

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“Upon completion of that project, power was restored, but the outage was a result of a failure to properly reset the lighting system controller,” the NPS said in a statement.

“While this was an unplanned outage, there will be some planned outages related to the installation of new emergency backup generator for Liberty Island. We anticipate those outages will take place over the next few weeks.”

Just after the outage, park officials indeed suspected it was related to ongoing work on the new emergency backup generator, according to Jerry Willis, a public affairs officer for the NPS. To activate the generator — a replacement for a generator damaged in Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — staff members had prepared for a lighting outage later in the week, Willis told The Washington Post.

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Willis insisted it was “not in any way” related to the “Day Without a Woman.”

“We don’t use the lighting system to back any particular cause,” he said.

Even after the truth came out, the quips continued.

Lady Liberty’s lights last went off for a prolonged period during Hurricane Sandy, when about 75 percent of the island’s 12 acres was underwater, causing serious damage that would keep the island closed for eight months for repairs. Although the statue was unscathed, its lights turned off when the island lost electricity. It was later illuminated by temporary floodlights powered by a generator.

In July 2015, a new light-emitting diode (LED) light system was installed to do the job.

“We know how important it is that she stays lit, so we do our very best to keep it that way,” Willis said.

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He said that given recent news, the symbol of Lady Liberty has been used “quite a bit as of late” and is “at the forefront of a lot of what’s going on in the world.”

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Last month, activists unfurled a banner with the words “Refugees Welcome” on the statue’s observation deck after the Department of Homeland Security began implementing Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The sign was removed more than an hour later.

The New Yorker’s anniversary issue last month featured “Liberty’s Flameout,” a cover image of Lady Liberty lifting up an extinguished torch, in response to the opening weeks of the Trump administration.

“It used to be that the Statue of Liberty, and her shining torch, was the vision that welcomed new immigrants. And, at the same time, it was the symbol of American values,” said the artist, John W. Tomac. “Now it seems that we are turning off the light.”

This story has been updated.