In a sneak peak from our new Florida issue, we are sharing senior reporter Alex Kane’s deep dive into the trends shaping Jewish politics within the GOP—including growing Christian nationalism and neo-isolationism—through the figure of the up-and-coming state representative, Randy Fine. You can read the article below; subscribe here to get the issue in print!

Randy Fine sat back in his office chair, preparing for another meeting on an April day full of them. Flanked by the American and Floridian flags, the Republican state representative and former gambling industry exec opened his laptop to discuss Brevard County’s child welfare services with a staffer from Family Partnerships of Central Florida. But before getting down to business, the two made small talk. “I always wanted to know,” the staffer said, “did you get a notification, ‘yup, it was delivered’?” “It was delivered,” Fine replied happily. “I did get notifications on it.”

The “it” in question was a 155-mm artillery shell—an unguided weapon loaded with TNT that bursts into 2,000 metal fragments upon impact, indiscriminately killing everyone within a 160-foot radius. Right after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7th, a Fine supporter with connections to the Israeli army arranged to have the representative’s name scrawled on one such shell headed for Gaza. On October 10th, Fine posted a Facebook image of the shell, with the text “Regards from Randy Fine” written on it in black marker. “Special delivery from me to Hamas. May G-d rain this down in a hellfire to avenge the burned and beheaded Children of Israel,” he wrote in his post, referring to a false story about the Hamas attackers beheading babies, and adding the hashtag “#AvengeThem.” “I thought it was kind of a cool thing,” Fine told me in his matter-of-fact, folksy tone. He said that he had gotten two more artillery shells inscribed: one bearing the name of a lobbyist friend who canceled his wedding in Israel because of the war on Gaza, and one with the name of Fine’s teenage son, who the representative said was dealing with antisemitic bullying. “I said [to my son], ‘Look, next time you get hassled, show the kids a picture of this and say, be careful.’”

Florida politics is suffused with staunch pro-Israel sentiment from Republicans and Democrats alike; it’s not uncommon for the state’s Democrats to co-sponsor hardline pro-Israel measures with Republican colleagues they sharply disagree with on other issues. But even in this landscape, Fine’s gleeful embrace of Israeli violence stands out. In June 2021, after the previous Israeli assault on Gaza, a critic posted a photo of what appears to be a dead Palestinian child and asked Fine how he slept at night. “Quite well, actually!” Fine replied, “Thanks for the pic!” “I don’t personally feel bad when human shields are killed,” Fine told me when I asked him about these remarks. Since October 7th, his prolific social media posts have been filled with calls for Israel to starve or bomb Gaza, as well as the agencies that support its people; one post claimed that “the UN is a terrorist organization,” and included the hashtag “#BombsAway.” Upon meeting Fine in his Brevard County, Florida, office in April, I regularly heard him voice such positions. “I don’t think you feed the enemy,” he said to the child welfare staffer, referring to the admission of aid into Gaza. Instead, he said, Israel should make conditions in the enclave “so miserable [that fighting back] is just not worth it.” In the same meeting, he mused aloud that the Israeli military should charge people for the privilege of getting their names on bombs that detonate in Gaza. “I gave the IDF the idea for a fundraiser: For $500, they’ll put your name on the bomb, for an extra 1,000 you can get a video of watching your bomb land,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who would have done it,” he later told me.

Fine has brought this bombastic persona—some call him “the Bully of Brevard”—to the Florida House of Representatives, where he pursues a viciously anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant agenda with gusto. But Fine has a particular enthusiasm for what he sees as Jewish issues—an umbrella under which he seamlessly fuses anti-antisemitism and pro-Israel efforts. Though Fine told me he recognizes there is a difference between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, stating that “there’s nothing wrong with criticizing Israel the same way you criticize other countries,” this is rarely borne out in practice. Last November, for example, when the Florida legislature debated an eventually unsuccessful ceasefire resolution introduced by Democratic representative Angie Nixon, Fine argued that voting for the bill meant “putting my child and every Jewish child in this state at risk,” asserting that “if you vote for this, you’re an antisemite.” “I am the sole voice for Florida Jews at the state level in the Republican Party,” Fine told me, referring to his position as the only Jewish Republican in the 160-member state legislature. “There is no one else to do it.”

Over his eight years in office, Fine has pioneered some of the country’s most hardline pro-Israel legislation. Since 2019, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the self-styled “most pro-Israel governor” in the country, has signed a series of bills aggressively conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel—all of which Fine was a lead sponsor on. “Somebody used to joke, ‘DeSantis is standing up, and he’s going through the book of Randy,’ because every bill would be one that I had sponsored,” Fine told me. The representative said that each year, he reserves at least one of his seven bill slots for “something Jewish, whether it was recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel, or the no tolerance of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] bill, or reform of Holocaust education.” “I would come up with these ideas, and I’d get them through, and [DeSantis] would sign them,” Fine told me. These ideas included a 2019 measure that appended the International Holocaust Remembrance Act (IHRA) definition of antisemitism—which critics say equates anti­semitism with anti-Zionism—to the public school system’s anti-discrimination policy, a move that led free speech groups PEN America and the National Coalition Against Censorship to warn of a “serious threat to the free speech rights of Floridians” that could be used to “silence political activists.” (Fine’s bill had been championed by the Israeli–American Coalition for Action, whose executive director said that the legislation should be a model; nine other state legislatures have since written IHRA into state law.) Fine also amended an older bill in order to strengthen a state ban on contracting with any company or individual that boycotts Israel: Most states’ anti-boycott laws only apply to contracts above a certain value, but Fine’s bill applies to any contract, no matter its cost. “No amount of Jew hate is OK,” Fine told me when explaining the measure.

In the process of establishing this legislative record, Fine has become a force to be reckoned with in Florida politics—and a coveted ally for top Republicans. According to a Brandeis University analysis, 32% of Florida Jews identify as or lean Republican, a few points above the national rate. “Over the past few years, Jewish Republicans have become an important part of Florida’s emerging Republican majority,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, adding that Fine is “one of the more important political leaders” in this community. Fine himself is eager to highlight his influence. “If you put me in front of [Jewish voters in Florida], as I have done for President Trump in 2020, and as I did for Governor DeSantis in 2018, I have the ability to convince them,” Fine boasted to me. Jewett said that Fine’s vocal support did help DeSantis “with some Jewish swing voters in 2018, when the election was very close—DeSantis only won by 0.4%.”

But as Fine’s reputation as a standout Jewish conservative voice has grown, he has also come up against the limits of Jewish right-wing politics inside Donald Trump’s tent. “Someone like Randy Fine is in a tough spot,” said Ben Lorber—a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates who focuses on white nationalism and anti-semitism—because Jewish politics “is in flux for the MAGA movement. Large portions of the movement would still love to instrumentalize the fight against antisemitism to suppress criticism of Israel. At the same time, it’s by no means guaranteed that MAGA Republicans will condemn obvious antisemites in their coalition.” Fine has confronted this dynamic directly over the past few years, as DeSantis has ignored calls to condemn the rise of neo-Nazi activity in Florida. Though Fine publicly defended the governor for years, he eventually broke with DeSantis last October, at least in part due to the governor’s silence. “[DeSantis’s] actions have broken my heart,” Fine wrote in the Washington Times op-ed where he announced that he was switching his presidential endorsement from DeSantis to Trump. “There is no choice—we must return Donald Trump to the Oval Office.”

Given the prevalence of white nationalism in Trump’s own circles, Fine’s switch may represent an exceedingly subtle distinction. “Antisemitism and white Christian nationalism course through today’s right, no matter the candidate,” said Lorber. Meanwhile, an emerging current in the Trump camp is beginning to endanger the other key prong of Fine’s politics: absolute support for Israel. In recent months, neo-isolationism—a tendency critical of NATO and of US support for Ukraine and Israel (but nevertheless militarist on China)—has gained ground among conservatives, with some popular right-wing influencers and politicians questioning the US’s exorbitant spending on, and staunch support of, Israel. Trump himself has criticized Israeli military strategy as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a figure normally beloved in the GOP, and Trump’s selection of Ohio senator and “America First” proponent J.D. Vance as his running mate suggests that this current is now gaining a stronger foothold on the right. Facing this changing conversation in the Re­publican Party on his pet issues, Fine may eventually find himself with less room to maneuver.

For now, however, Fine’s timely endorsement of Trump—who is by far the most popular Republican politician in Brevard County and the state of Florida as a whole—has paid dividends. Fine is term-limited out of his house seat and running to become the next state senator for Florida’s 19th district, and on February 29th, he became the first Florida state legislator endorsed by Trump during the 2024 election cycle. “Randy Fine is a MAGA Warrior who will stand up to anyone to advance the America First agenda!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “I need him in the Florida Senate.” Fine’s campaign materials are now emblazoned with Trump’s words and image, even if they also carry the words “America First”—a sign of the tensions Fine must navigate within an increasingly Israel-skeptical, and often antisemitic, MAGA right. Despite these challenges, the representative is confident that he will be able to continue advancing his uncompromising pro-Israel agenda in the years to come. As he is fond of saying, “I wouldn’t bet against me.”