Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) reportedly plans to veto a bill earmarking $35 million for a Tampa Bay Rays facility days after the team went on an anti-gun tirade on social media alongside the New York Yankees.
The decision, first reported by OutKick, would have the governor nixing “$35 million legislation for a Pasco County facility that’s earmarked for the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring training,” according to the outlet, which asserted that the move is in response to the Tampa Bay Rays’ recent display of anti-Second Amendment virtue-signaling on social media.
Last week, on May 26, the Tampa Bay Rays released a statement in response to the tragic shooting in Uvalde proceeded by an anti-gun blitz on Twitter.
“This cannot become normal. We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes,” the statement read in part, adding that it was offering $50,000 to the Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety’s Support Fund:
“In lieu of game coverage and in collaboration with @Yankees, we will use our channels to offer facts about the impacts of gun violence,” another tweet read, opening up the platform to a series of anti-gun statistics:
“Every day, more than 110 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and injured,” the first fact read as administrators deemed guns the “leading cause of death for American children and teens in 2020″ with no further context in the tweet itself:
It also included woke terminology in its anti-gun blitz, stating that “Each year, more than 4,100 Latinx people die from gun violence in the U.S. and 13,300 are shot and wounded”:
This would not be the first time DeSantis has taken action against woke organizations advancing anti-freedom ideas in his state, taking on Disney after it vowed to fight against the Parental Rights in Education bill, which bars classroom-led discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity for children in kindergarten through third grade.
“And so in Florida, our policies got to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of woke corporations,” the governor said in March.