Florida crosswalk wars take DeSantis's 'war on woke' to street level

Abattalion of transportation workers armed with cans of black paint has been deployed to open a new front in Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke”, while young students trying to make their schools safer have joined the LGBTQ+ community as targets of Florida’s Republican governor.

The saga began with the state moving in the dead of night to paint over a rainbow-colored crosswalk outside Orlando’s former Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting. The city’s mayor, Buddy Dyer, called the erasure of the memorial to the mostly LGBTQ+ victims “a cruel political act”.

Since then, DeSantis’s crosswalk wars have spread across Florida. The governor has ordered the removal of about 400 “non-standard” pieces of street art, even though they all received state approval as a condition of installation. A growing number of municipalities has pledged to fight him.

The state’s declared intent, acquiescent to a national directive by the Trump administration last month, is to “keep our transportation facilities free and clear of political ideologies”, Florida’s transport secretary, Jared Perdue, wrote in a post to X.

Perdue has also said painted roadways are a safety hazard, despite research showing improved driver behavior and a “significantly improved safety performance” at sites that have art installations.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/florida-crosswalks-ron-desantis-lgbtq

DeSatan appears ever more stupid.