The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, America’s premier “anti-woke warrior,” seems to have set its sights on a new target: color displays on Florida’s bridges.
As part of DeSantis’ “Freedom Summer” initiative, the state’s transportation secretary, Jared W. Perdue, announced earlier this month that bridges in the state will have no choice but to be illuminated in red, white and blue from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
“Thanks to the leadership of @GovRonDeSantis, Florida continues to be the freest state in the nation,” Perdue wrote on X.
The order bars any bridges from carrying rainbow colors for Pride Month — or any other colors to commemorative other occasions. As The Washington Post reported:
The Ringling Causeway Bridge over Sarasota Bay usually lights up in rainbow colors for a week in June, and also marks other causes during the summer, such as orange for National Gun Awareness Month and yellow for Women’s Equality Day.
Florida’s Department of Transportation, which has purview over the state’s bridges, issued the order mandating the strict color display after the chair of the Manatee County Commission objected to changing the lights to honor Pride Month and Gun Violence Awareness Day, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
It’s unclear how lighting bridges in certain colors asserts Florida’s status as “freest in the nation,” as Perdue claims, or what the term even means — it’s certainly no longer the freest state in its options for illuminating roadways over bodies of water. (Ironically, “Freedom Summer” was the name of a 1964 voting registration drive in Mississippi that helped to spur the passage of the Voting Rights Act.) But this new rule is demonstrative of the lengths to which DeSantis’ administration is willing to go to fluff his reputation as an anti-woke champion.
And while some of his efforts in that vein appear, like this one, to lean more toward posturing than anything else, not all of his policies are as frivolous. As governor, DeSantis has enacted truly harmful restrictions on LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, education and voting rights.
