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What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president
(JTA) – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for Israeli West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment.
Two weeks later, his education department rejected two new textbooks on the Holocaust as part of a clampdown on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”
Those two developments may anchor the Jewish arguments for and against DeSantis as he stands on the cusp of announcing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Supporters paint him as a steadfast ally of Israel who speaks to the pocketbook concerns of Jewish families. In the years since he became Florida’s governor in 2019, the state has seen an influx of Orthodox Jews, drawn both by lax pandemic policies and the promise of discounted day school tuition.
But DeSantis’ opponents portray him as a cultural reactionary whose anti-“woke” politics are inhibiting education on the Holocaust and antisemitism — along with teaching about race, gender and sexuality. He has repeatedly condemned George Soros, the progressive megadonor who is an avatar of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surveys show that his near-total restriction of abortion rights is unpopular with Jews nationally.
And hanging over the campaign is the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term, is leading in the polls — and shares much in common with DeSantis even as he has attacked him.
While DeSantis’ allies have played up some of their differences (such as DeSantis’ youth and military service), when it comes to their respective records on issues of interest to Jewish voters, Trump and DeSantis are less distinct.
Each has sought to cultivate Jewish support by focusing on Israel and erasing church-state separations that, Orthodox Jewish leaders argue, inhibit religious freedoms. And both have attracted white nationalist supporters while leaning into the culture wars.
DeSantis is set to officially announce his campaign in a chat with Elon Musk, who was just condemned by a wide range of Jewish figures (and defended by a handful of others) for tweeting that Soros “hates humanity.”
Here’s what you need to know about DeSantis’s Jewish record:
He has been an outspoken booster of Israel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Jerusalem Post conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
DeSantis, a Catholic, has a visceral affinity for Israel, and has framed his support for the country in religious terms.
“When I took office, I promised to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the United States, and we have been able to deliver on that promise,” he said this week, addressing evangelical Christians at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Orlando, The Jerusalem Post reported.
He likes to tell audiences that on his first visit to Israel as a U.S. congressman, his wife Casey scooped up water from the Sea of Galilee into an empty bottle to save for baptisms. The couple had yet to have children.
The water came in handy for the baptisms of their first and second children, but after DeSantis was elected governor, staff at his residence cleared away the unremarkable bottle (which was still half full) after their second child was baptized in 2019. Not long afterward, DeSantis mentioned the minor fiasco in passing at a synagogue in Boca Raton, and before he knew it people were sending him bottles of water from Israel.
The gesture still moves him. “I was sent, all the way from Israel, this beautiful big glass jar filled with water from the Sea of Galilee that sat on my desk in the governor’s office in Tallahassee until our third child was born and baptized, and we used that water to do it,” DeSantis said last month when he visited Israel.
DeSantis made Israel a focus when he was congressman, taking a leading role in advocating for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among a group of lawmakers who toured Jerusalem in March 2017 and was bold enough to pick out what he said would be the likeliest site.
In November of that year, as chairman of the House national security subcommittee, he convened a hearing on what he called the necessity of moving the embassy. The following month, Trump announced the move, and the site the Trump administration chose was the one DeSantis had identified.
In May 2019, just months after becoming governor, DeSantis convened his state cabinet in Jerusalem and gave a definition of antisemitism favored by the pro-Israel community the force of law. The same year, he banned government officials from using Airbnb after the vacation rental broker removed listings in West Bank settlements. DeSantis’ blacklisting of the company was seen was key to Airbnb reversing the decision.
He’s garnered allies — and enemies — among Florida’s Jews.
DeSantis has done much to cultivate support in Florida’s growing Orthodox community, which shares his enthusiasm for bringing faith into government.
In 2021, DeSantis came to a Chabad synagogue in Surfside to sign two bills, one affording state recognition to Hatzalah, the Jewish ambulance service, and the other tasking all Florida public schools with setting aside a daily moment of silence, long a key initiative of the Chabad movement.
In his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, DeSantis campaigned on steering state money to religious day schools. This year he made good on the promise, signing a law that makes $7,800 in scholarship funds available annually to schoolchildren across the state, regardless of income, and to be used at their school of choice.
DeSantis also has plenty of Jewish enemies in a state where the majority of the Jewish community votes for Democrats.
In his first term, he had a contentious relationship with Nikki Fried, a Democrat who, as agriculture commissioner, was one of the four ministers in the Cabinet who had a vote. DeSantis maneuvered to freeze her out of the decision-making process.
Fried, who describes herself as a “good Jewish girl from Miami,” now chairs the state’s Democratic Party. She routinely calls DeSantis a fascist. In April, she was arrested at an abortion rights protest outside Tallahassee’s City Hall.
Under DeSantis, Florida has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That stance has set him up for clashes with other prominent Jews in the state as well. Last year, he suspended Andrew Warren, a Jewish state attorney, because Warren pledged not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban in 2022, citing religious freedom arguments. Daniel Uhlfelder, a Jewish lawyer who drew attention when he dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest DeSantis’s reopening of the beaches during the pandemic, signed on as an attorney for the synagogue.
His “war on woke” has had implications on Holocaust education.
Recently, much of DeSantis’ tenure has been defined by what he calls the “war on woke,” a term originated by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial inequity but now more often functions as shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. DeSantis has enacted multiple pieces of legislation restricting what can be taught in schools and has also limited transgender rights, banning gender-affirming medical care for children.
While most of the books challenged under DeSantis’ education laws have focused on race and gender, the study of the Holocaust has been affected as well. In addition to the education department’s rejection of the Holocaust textbooks this month, Florida laws that make teachers liable for teaching inappropriate content to students have led multiple school districts to take Holocaust novels off the shelves, including a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
DeSantis calls claims that he’s chilling Holocaust education “fake narratives.” He and his defenders point to his requiring all Florida public schools to certify that they teach about the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity has increased under his watch.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups — some of whom have gone to bat for DeSantis in the past.
DeSantis has been dogged by accusations that he caters to the far right. One of the most stinging exchanges in the 2018 election season came when Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the race, accused DeSantis of not being forceful enough in renouncing the white nationalists who expressed support for him in robocalls.
“First of all, he’s got neo-Nazis helping him out in this state,” Gillum said. “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” DeSantis flinched.
DeSantis eked out a victory a few weeks later, and was soundly reelected last year, but he remains sensitive on the issue. Last year, when neo-Nazis intimidated Orlando’s Jews with signs and shouts at an overpass, politicians in the state reflexively condemned them. A reporter asked DeSantis why he had not done so, and after calling the neo-Nazis “jackasses,” the governor said the question was a “smear” and added, “We’re not playing that game.” (Several months later, the leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League moved from California to Florida, saying he thought the Sunshine State would be more hospitable to his efforts.)
DeSantis has also called liberal prosecutors “Soros-funded”. It’s not an unusual political gambit — the billionaire Jewish liberal donor does fund progressives running for prosecutor. But Soros has also been the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that antisemitism watchdogs say are antisemitic, casting the Holocaust survivor as a malign influence with excessive power.
Some Jewish donors are already supporting him.
DeSantis appeared last year at a conference in New York of Jewish conservatives, where he talked to a friendly audience about his war against the “woke” and was also conveniently in the room with some of the most generous Republican donors.
He is reportedly working some of those donors, who gave generously to his gubernatorial runs. He was a star last November at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas confab, and Axios reported that he met with Miriam Adelson, the widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, as well as other Jewish donors when he was in Jerusalem last month.
A number of them are hanging back, not wanting to alienate Trump while he remains influential in the party. (Adelson has said she does not want to weigh in on the primaries.)
Among the Jewish donors and fundraisers said to be in DeSantis’s camp: Jay Zeidman, a onetime Jewish White House liaison who is now a Houston based businessman; Gabriel Groisman, a lawyer who is the former mayor of Bal Harbor; and Fred Karlinsky, a leading insurance lawyer.
Last week, Jewish conservative political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted that DeSantis would bring “Freedom, sanity and competency” to the country. Groisman shared the tweet with the word “This.”
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ADL Ranks Grok as the Worst AI Chatbot at Detecting Antisemitism, Rates Claude as the Best
A 3D-printed miniature model of Elon Musk and the X logo are seen in this illustration taken Jan. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Wednesday released its AI Index, which ranks popular large language model (LLM) chatbot programs according to their effectiveness at detecting antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and other forms of extremism.
The watchdog group found a wide variability in performance among the six models it analyzed. Researchers applied a variety of tests to xAI’s Grok, Meta’s Llama, Alphabet’s Gemini, Chinese hedge fund High Flyer’s DeepSeek, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and the clear winner of them all on recognizing hate, Anthropic’s Claude.
The ADL created an “overall performance model” which combined the results of multiple forms of testing. The group awarded Claude the highest score with 80 points, while Grok sat at the bottom with 21. ChatGPT came in second with 57, followed by DeepSeek (50), Gemini (49) and Llama at 31.
Researchers tested the apps between August and October of last year, striving to explore as an “average user” would utilize the programs, as opposed to a bad actor actively seeking to create harmful content. They performed more than 25,000 chats across 37 sub-categories and assessed the results with both human and AI evaluations.
The report also distinguished between anti-Jewish, traditional antisemitism directed at individual Jews, and anti-Zionist antisemitism directed at the Jewish state. A third category of analysis focused on more general “extremism” and considered questions about conspiracy theories and other narratives which run across the political spectrum.
Among its key findings, the ADL discovered that each app had problems.
“All six LLMs showed gaps in their ability to detect bias against Jews, Zionists/Zionism, and to identify extremism, often failing to detect and refute harmful or false theories and narratives,” the report said. “All models could benefit from improvement when responding to the type of harmful content tested.”
Researchers also found that “some models actively generate harmful content in response to relatively straightforward prompts, such as YouTube script personas saying ‘Jewish-controlled central banks are the puppet masters behind every major economic collapse.’”
The AI Index “reveals a troubling reality: every major AI model we tested demonstrates at least some gaps in addressing bias against Jews and Zionists and all struggle with extremist content,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “When these systems fail to challenge or reproduce harmful narratives, they don’t just reflect bias — they can amplify and may even help accelerate their spread. We hope that this index can serve as a roadmap for AI companies to improve their detection capabilities.”
Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, explained that the new research “fills a critical gap in AI safety research by applying domain expertise and standardized testing to antisemitic, anti-Zionist, and extremist content.” He warned that “no AI system we tested was fully equipped to handle the full scope of antisemitic and extremist narratives users may encounter. This Index provides concrete, measurable benchmarks that companies, buyers, and policymakers can use to drive meaningful improvement.”
Grok — the chatbot ranked lowest on the ADL’s list and directed by its billionaire owner Elon Musk to offer “anti-woke” and “politically incorrect” responses — has faced considerable criticism for last year’s expressions of antisemitism which included answers self-declaring the program as “MechaHitler.”
More recently, Musk and Grok have come under fire from government officials around the world objecting to a recent upgrade which enabled users to create “deepfake” sexualized images which stripped people featured in uploaded images.
The European Union opened an investigation this week with a goal of determining “whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU. This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”
Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, decried the fact that Grok can be used for sexual exploitation.
“Sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” Virkkunen said. “With this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA [Digital Services Act], or whether it treated rights of European citizens – including those of women and children – as collateral damage of its service.”
On Monday, a bipartisan group of 35 attorneys general sent a letter to xAI demanding the disabling of the image undressing feature.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday led the effort.
“The time to ensure people are protected from powerful tools like generative AI isn’t after harm has been caused. You shouldn’t wait for a car crash to put up guardrails,” Sunday said. “This behavior by users was all too predictable and should have been addressed before its release. Tech companies have a responsibility to ensure their tools cannot be used in these destructive ways before they launch their product.”
France also opened an investigation into Grok in November 2025, following outputs promoting Holocaust denial in the French language, a criminal violation of the country’s strict laws against promoting lies about the Nazis’ mass murder of 6 million Jews.
Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), has long raised the alarm about the threat of LLMs fueling antisemitism and terrorism. He warned that “over two years later, the problem is demonstrably worse, not better, raising a fundamental question about trust.”
Stalinsky stated that “assurances from AI companies alone are insufficient.”
In response to the ADL’s latest report, Danny Barefoot, senior director of the group’s Ratings and Assessments Institute, said in a statement that “as AI systems increasingly influence what people see, believe, and share, rigorous, evidence-based accountability is no longer optional — it’s essential.”
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Palestinian Authority Leader Attacks PA’s ‘Rampant Corruption’
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
When even Tawfiq Tirawi — a senior leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s ruling party, Fatah, and the former director and co-founder of its General Intelligence Service — says the system is rotten to the core, it is a stark indication of just how deeply corruption is embedded in the PA.
In a public letter posted on January 20, 2026, Tirawi accused the Palestinian Authority of systemic, institutionalized corruption so entrenched that it now enjoys “security and immunity.”
Addressing PA ruler Mahmoud Abbas, Tirawi described years of futile appeals to the PA leadership regarding “numerous cases of corruption and injustice rampant in our institutions.” According to Tirawi, even when Abbas personally referred these cases to PA prime ministers or the attorney general, nothing happened.
Tirawi cited various issues, namely that corruption had spread across the PA government and the judicial system; that a corruption network now operates with protection and immunity; that influential figures are involved in the takeover of public and private lands and assets; that experts and senior public employees who documented these crimes faced threats and intimidation; and that institutions meant to protect the public interest have become a “protective umbrella for the corrupt.”
Even more striking is Tirawi’s threat that if the situation continues, he will expose names and details of corrupt officials to the Palestinian public and international media, calling for a “public, national, and moral trial” to replace a judiciary that no longer functions.
Posted text:“An open letter to [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas
For many years, I have repeatedly approached you with an open heart and demanded your intervention in numerous cases of corruption and injustice that are rampant in our institutions… Some of these cases were referred by you to the [PA] prime ministers and others to the attorney general, but the result unfortunately remained the same: A lack of any concrete action to protect the people or put an end to this severe negligence.
The hands of the influential and the thieves have spread and reached all parts of the PA, at the level of the government and the judicial system, to the point that the corruption network now operates with security and immunity. Its deeds have reached severe levels of threat and intimidation, to the point of threatening senior [PA] public employees, experts, and scholars who have prepared documented reports proving the involvement of influential figures in the takeover of public and private lands and assets, amid criminal behavior that harms the national dignity and core moral values…
While I believe that part of the truth has been conveyed to you, the fact that it has not been fully and clearly told remains a responsibility that cannot be ignored.
In light of the severe collapse of the judicial system’s role, the paralysis of the system of accountability, and the transformation of some institutions that were supposed to protect the public interest into a protective umbrella for the corrupt, I declare clearly that the era of silence is over. If this situation continues, I will not hesitate to expose all the documented issues and cases, including names and details, to the Palestinian public and through local and international media outlets, to enable a public, national, and moral trial of the corrupt, given that the judicial system is not fulfilling its national and constitutional duties.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi, Facebook page, Jan. 20, 2026]
While Tirawi’s letter is intriguing, as it reveals what the PA truly is on the inside, do not be fooled. Even if it triggers limited administrative changes, Tirawi himself remains fully committed to the PA’s terror-promoting worldview.
And as Palestinian Media Watch has frequently explained, real reform can only begin when the PA completely ends its support for terrorism by halting incitement, funding, rewards, and the glorification of murderers.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a researcher at Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.
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Chicago Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Chicago, United States, on Aug. 22, 2024. Photo: J.W. Hendricks/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The City Council of Chicago, Illinois, voted on Tuesday to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, becoming one of many governments and municipalities to affirm its utility as a reference tool for identifying antisemitic hate crimes and a safeguard of Jewish civil rights.
The measure was passed on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorated the 81st anniversary of the day when Jewish prisoners were liberated from Auschwitz, the Nazis’ deadliest extermination camp during World War II.
“Chicago now proudly joins a global consensus of more than 1,200 entities worldwide, including the United States, 37 US state governments, and 98 city and country bodies who have adopted this definition,” city council member Debra Silverstein, alderman of the 50th Ward, said in a statement praising the adoption. “At a time when antisemitic hate crimes are surging locally, this unanimous City Council action sends an unmistakable message that anti-Jewish hate has no place in Chicago.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Chicago’s embrace of the definition comes amid a historic surge in antisemitic incidents across the US and the world.
In 2024, as reported by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest annual audit, there were 9,354 antisemitic incidents — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, creating an atmosphere of hate not experienced in the nearly thirty years since the ADL began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The ADL also reported dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
Illinois alone saw the eighth most antisemitic incidents in the country with 336, a 59 percent increase from the previous year which led the nation.
The ADL’s “Heat Map,” which tracks hate crimes in real time, shows 105 antisemitic hate incidents recorded in 2025.
In one disturbing incident in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago, an antisemitic letter threatening violence was mailed to a resident’s home. So severe were its contents that the FBI and the Illinois Terrorism and Intelligence Center were called to the scene to establish that there was no imminent danger, according to local news outlets. Later, the local government shuttered all religious institutions as a precautionary measure.
With Tuesday’s measure, Chicago became the second largest US city to adopt the IHRA definition. However, it is now the largest to have it on the books as New York City under its new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, recently revoked it along with a series of other executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism
US Jewish groups sharply criticized the move.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry similarly lambasted the reversal as an invitation for intensified bigotry against Jewish New Yorkers, saying, “On his very first day as New York City mayor, Mamdani shows his true face: He scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel. This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire.”
The definition could have been problematic for Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A supporter of boycotting all entities tied to Israel, he has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; routinely accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; and refused to clearly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.