Under instructions from Donald Trump’s administration, Florida officials have painted over a rainbow crosswalk in Orlando serving as a memorial to 49 people who were murdered in the deadliest attack against LGBT+ people in U.S. history.
An ISIS-inspired gunman’s 2016 attack at Pulse nightclub, which at the time was the largest mass shooting in modern American history, was also the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.
A rainbow-painted crosswalk on Orange Avenue was paved over in the early morning hours on Thursday, blindsiding state and local officials, LGBT+ advocates and Pulse survivors.
In a letter to governors last month, Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed states to “eliminate distractions” on public roads.
“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” he wrote on X at the time. “Political banners have no place on public roads. I’m reminding recipients of [Department of Transportation] roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else. It’s that simple.”
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer called the move a “callous” and “cruel political act.”
“We are devastated to learn that overnight the state painted over the Pulse Memorial crosswalk on Orange Avenue,” Dyer said in a statement. “This callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation’s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety data, or discussion, is a cruel political act.”
The crosswalk was approved during the administration of former Governor Rick Scott, a Republican.
But Governor Ron DeSantis — whose administration has approved naming roads after Trump and the late right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh — said “we will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”
Will Watts, an assistant secretary for the Florida Department of Transportation, issued a memo in June prohibiting “surface art” on crosswalks and other public rights of way, ordering the removal of “social, political or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.”
Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, whose district includes the Orlando area, said the crosswalk “was never a political statement, and caring about people of all backgrounds is not meant to be a political statement.”
“But what is political, what is authoritative, and what is disrespectful to the 49 lives murdered and our entire community, is sneaking into the city in the middle of the night to literally erase a rainbow crosswalk that was originally established with [Florida’s] approval!” she wrote.
The Independent has requested comment from the Department of Transportation and the governor’s office.
Civil rights groups have characterized the crosswalk’s removal as yet another attack against LGBT+ people in the state.
“This cowardly abuse of power, carried out under the cover of night, is a dangerous escalation of DeSantis’s campaign to erase LGBTQ visibility and censor our history,” according to Nadine Smith, director of Equality Florida.
Brandon Wolf, who survived the Pulse attack on June 12, 2016, accused the administration of trying to “erase our show of solidarity, our declaration that we will never forget.”
“The cowards who feel threatened by our lives should feel lucky they didn’t have to bury the ones they love — then watch the state come [and] desecrate their memory,” he wrote.
The DeSantis administration has faced an avalanche of criticism over state policies that target LGBT+ students and faculty as well as transgender young people and their access to gender-affirming healthcare.
Trump has also escalated attacks against LGBT+ Americans with sweeping executive orders designed to eliminate federal recognition of trans people, deny access to gender-affirming care, and remove trans people from sports that align with their gender.
In a video on social media showing the paved-over crosswalk, Florida state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, who is gay, said “we will not be erased.”
“There will be a rainbow mural nearby that is even bigger, queerer, and more colorful than they ever imagined,” he said.
