Orlando residents and Florida public officials are decrying the state’s removal of a rainbow crosswalk memorial honoring the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. Late Wednesday evening, August 20, state officials reportedly paved over a multicolored street crossing on Orange Avenue that stood for nearly a decade as a tribute to the 49 people killed in the Orlando mass shooting, who were primarily LGBTQ+ and Latine. The pave-over follows the passage of new legislation in June that prohibits pavement surface signage and art that “is associated with social, political, or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.” State Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, who was the first openly gay Latino official elected to the Florida legislature in 2016, called the erasure of the crossing a “disgusting betrayal” in an X post. Hours after the removal, Smith and other residents used chalk to recolor the street memorial. “Of course they did this in the mid...