DeSantis Vetoes $35M for Tampa Bay Rays After Team’s Gun-Control Tweets About Uvalde Massacre

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has vetoed the state budget’s $35 million that would have funded a new training facility and youth complex for the Tampa Bay Rays after the Major League Baseball team tweeted its support for gun control in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting. DeSantis’ 12-page veto list shows he rejected about $3.1 billion of the state’s $109.9 billion budget on Thursday. His spokeswoman Christina Pushaw tweeted that the governor’s office “generally does not give reasons for line-item vetoes,” including the Rays veto. But she retweeted several news articles that suggested it was due to the organization’s comments on gun-violence prevention. On Thursday, she also tweeted, “As a general principle, taxpayer funds should not be subsidizing partisan political activist organizations. Corporations do not have the right to get corporate welfare, turn around and ‘donate’ taxpayer dollars to communist progressive causes nobody voted for.”