After years of acknowledging the targets of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre — the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities — Gov. Ron DeSantis has omitted them from his official state description of Pulse Remembrance Day.
This year’s omission is notable largely because of what DeSantis did in 2019, his first year as governor, when he also didn’t include the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities.
That year, DeSantis shifted course less than 24 hours later. His office issued a statement that it said corrected the omission, blamed the staff, and said DeSantis himself directed that the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities be added.
In intervening years, his annual memorandum directing flags be flown at half staff in commemoration of Pulse Remembrance Day include the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities.
Thursday is Pulse Remembrance Day marking the anniversary of the June 12, 2016, massacre that took place on Latin Night at the LGBTQ club in Orlando. The gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53.
DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday about why this year’s memorandum from the governor, “Flags at Half-Staff in Honor of Pulse Remembrance Day” left out the wording “against the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities” that has been used since.
State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith D-Orlando, the state’s first openly LGBTQ Hispanic senator, said there is no way it was accidental.
“The omission was as intentional as it was a slight against the impacted LGBTQ and Hispanic communities. The governor’s lack of consistency here shows he cares more about scoring political points in the moment than authentic solidarity with his own constituents,” Smith said.
The senator said he didn’t want to “focus on the governor’s bigotry and exclusion. That’s already known.” Instead, he said, Thursday should be “about remembering the 49 lives taken by gun violence” and their families.
State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Miami Gardens Democrat and the first openly LGBTQ member of the Florida Senate, said the omission was “deeply disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising. Governor DeSantis continues to erase or attempt to erase the very communities most impacted by the Pulse tragedy. To remember Pulse without naming the LGBTQ+ and Hispanic lives lost is to rewrite history.”
This year’s change comes as the national political environment has changed rapidly since President Donald Trump was elected to a second term in November and took office in January. Trump has instituted a nationwide pullback of efforts to acknowledge or promote, diversity, equity and inclusion, which includes the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities.
Trump and his MAGA movement view DEI efforts as discriminatory against white people.
Unlike DeSantis, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., included both communities in his statement on Thursday.
“It’s been nine years since the tragic attack at Pulse Nightclub, where 49 innocent lives were taken in an act of terror targeting Orlando’s LGBTQ and Hispanic communities,” Scott began.
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Now the state’s senior senator, Scott was governor at the time of the Pulse massacre. “I still remember the days and weeks that followed, sitting with grieving families and loved ones, feeling the heartbreak and loss that will never fully heal. That horrible night was meant to spread fear and hatred, but instead, it united Floridians.”
A formal Senate resolution, introduced by Scott and joined by U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., referred to it as an “attack on the LGBTQ community, the Hispanic community, the City of Orlando, the State of Florida, and the United States.”
But Moody, who DeSantis appointed to fill a Senate vacancy this year, was closer to the governor than Scott in her statement, which referred to the “49 innocent victims killed in the despicable attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.”
Smith and Jones both pointed to Senate President Ben Albritton, a Republican. Albritton reposted Smith’s social media post, as did the official social media account of the Republican-controlled Florida Senate, that marked “9 years since 49 angels were taken at Pulse nightclub and Orlando’s LGBTQ and Latino community were shattered by grief.”
The 2025 DeSantis memorandum ordering lags at half staff to commemorate Pulse Remembrance Day was virtually identical to what he issued almost every year since he took office, with one exception.
Last year’s memorandum begins: “Eight years ago, on June 12, 2016, a shooter claiming alliance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant committed a horrific act of terrorism against the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.”
This year’s memorandum begins: “Nine years ago, on June 12, 2016, a shooter claiming alliance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant committed a horrific act of terrorism at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.”
After the 2019 omission, the governor’s office announced that, “Governor Ron DeSantis has issued a corrected version of today’s proclamation (see attached). Staff made an error in the previous version. The Governor has directed that the proclamation be re-issued, including a direct reference to our LGBTQ and Hispanic communities.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.