As C&L reported last month, former Fox News host and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urged governors to get rid of rainbow crosswalks, even though he had to admit that traffic fatalities had declined in 2024.
Duffy pretended he did so in the name of safety but, like everything else the Trump administration does, it’s always MAGA politics first and American safety wherever it’s most expedient afterwards. Duffy barely tried to hide that in his social media post when he wrote, “Political banners have no place on public roads ... Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks." Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund vaccines, medical research, and national parks, too, and to be told why our president is in the FBI files of sex-trafficking pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, too. But I digress.
It was no surprise that Gov. Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis jumped at the opportunity to erase a memorial to the 49 people killed in a 2016 mass shooting at the gay Pulse nightclub, in Orlando.
But Orlandoans responded by refusing to allow that piece of history and commemoration to be erased. They showed up in large numbers, many caped in rainbow flags, to restore the rainbow crosswalk with chalk.
Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause said about fighting Trumpism, “I would argue that it is often the small acts of resistance and defiance that move us towards change and help ignite and inspire others to act.”
Hooray, Orlando!
