Presidential candidate and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wants Florida to investigate its investments in the company that makes Bud Light because of conservative backlash over a transgender social media influencer marketing the beverage.
DeSantis said Thursday in a letter to the State Board of Administration that “all options are on the table” in its response to Dylan Mulvaney's Instagram post of a video of her opening a Bud Light with her face on the can.
The governor said that due to the the backlash over the post, Anheuser-Busch InBev has suffered sales losses that could affect state investments. He added that the beer manufacturer's “radical social ideologies” have turned Bud Light into a “social pariah” and losses have been “staggering.”
DeSantis has previously made headlines by battling Walt Disney World over its opposition to a Florida law banning discussion of gender identity and sexuality orientation in schools, and has targeted other companies that promote social issues that don’t match his beliefs.
DeSantis, who sits on the adminstration board, asked its executive director, Lamar Taylor, to review the state’s holdings, questioning whether they violate Florida law, and suggested a shareholder action may be needed against the company.
“We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling,” DeSantis wrote.
Anheuser-Busch InBev didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
New York Film Fest Preview: “The Brutalist,” “Nickel Boys,” “April,” “All We Imagine as Light”
When you think of blockbusters, the first thing that comes to mind might not be a 215-minute postwar epic screening for the first time at Lincoln Center. But that was the scene last week when the New York Film Festival hosted a 70mm print of Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist." The festival hadn't then officially begun — its 62nd edition opens Friday — but the advance press screening drew long lines — as some attendees noted, not unlike those at Ellis Island in the film — and a packed Walter Reade Theatre. Word had gotten around: "The Brutalist" is something to see. Corbet's epic, starring Adrian Brody as a Jewish architect remaking his life in Pennsylvania, is the kind of colossal cinematic construction that doesn't come around every day. Shot in VistaVision and structured like movements in a symphony (with a 15-minute intermission to boot), "The Brutalist" is indeed something to behold. It's arthouse and blockbuster in one, and, maybe, a reminder of the movies' capacity for uncompromising grandeur — and the awe that can inspire. It's been fashionable in recent years to wonder about the fate of the movies, but it can be hard to placate those concerns at the New York Film Festival. The festival prizes itself on gathering the best cinema from around the world. And this year, the movies are filled with bold forays of form and perspective that you can feel pushing film forward. This is also the time Oscar campaigns begin lurching into gear, with Q&As and cocktail parties. But, unlike last year when "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" were entrenched as favorites, the best picture race is said to be wide open. In that vacuum, movies like "The Brutalist" and the NYFF opener, RaMell Ross' "Nickel Boys," not to mention Sean Baker's "Anora" and Jacques Audiard's... Read More