Crews began demolishing Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday to make way for a memorial that will pay tribute to the 49 people killed in the attack at the LGBTQ-friendly club nearly a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Construction workers began tearing down walls in the long-shuttered venue that were still scarred by bullet holes from the June 12, 2016, attack, when a gunman opened fire during a Latin night celebration, killing dozens and wounding 53 other people before police killed him following a standoff.<\/p>\n
The city of Orlando purchased the Pulse property in 2023 for $2 million and plans to build a $12-million permanent memorial that will open in 2027. Those efforts followed a botched multiyear attempt by a foundation run by the club\u2019s former owner to buy the property.<\/p>\n
The plan for the memorial comes at a fraught time for monuments to LGBTQ+ history since President Trump\u2019s second term began. The federal government removed a pride flag outside of Stonewall National Monument last year, following a National Park Service memo that prohibits the agency from flying any flags besides the U.S. flag and the flag of the Department of the Interior. <\/p>\n
A similar battle played out in Orlando last year, when local officials clashed with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis because workers painted over a rainbow mural on the crosswalk in front of Pulse. The move came after the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memo that prohibited \u201csurface art\u201d associated with \u201csocial, political or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pulse attacker had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
Riddle writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crews began demolishing Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday to make way for a memorial that will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15288,86918,11853,4059,91251,21152,4738,139,141,140,992,6688,53365,8309,91252,41068,4825],"class_list":["post-196670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-attack","tag-construction-worker","tag-department","tag-front","tag-lgbtq-friendly-club","tag-mass-shooting","tag-memorial","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-people","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-pride-flag","tag-pulse-nightclub","tag-pulse-property","tag-republican-gov-ron-desantis","tag-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}