Freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., admitted that he should not have voted against a resolution condemning support for Hamas on college and university campuses.
“After days of reflection, multiple conversations with my constituents and local leaders, and a difficult, but important listening session with students at UCF Hillel’s chapter — I have come to realize that I should have voted differently on H.Res. 798, to send a clear message that I stand against antisemitism,” Frost said in a statement earlier this week.
The resolution, a symbolic piece of legislation, criticized “the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
It overwhelmingly passed in a bipartisan 396-to-23 vote last week. Only 22 Democrats, including Frost, and one Republican voted against it.
Frost said he was wary of “a few of the falsehoods” he said were in the Republican resolution and that he was hoping to be able to “vote on the Senate resolution condemning antisemitism, that passed unanimously, but didn’t include those falsehoods.”
“I truly worried that this would open the door for Republicans to infringe on the free speech of students and young people. Which is why I chose to support and co-sponsor the House version of that same Senate resolution,” Frost said.
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“I now realize that I did not properly prioritize the message this resolution was intended to send — that antisemitism has absolutely no place on college campuses or anywhere in our communities. A sentiment I have and always will firmly believe in.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Central Florida’s Hillel branch to find out more about its students’ conversation with Frost.
Frost was the only member of Florida’s House delegation to vote against the resolution. The 26-year-old former gun safety activist is the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress.
His district, anchored in Orlando, is not listed in the American Jewish Population Project’s 2020 report naming the 10 Florida Congressional districts with the highest Jewish populations.
However, the Sunshine State has the U.S.’s third-largest Jewish population after New York and California, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.
Frost, a progressive, told Jewish Insider in 2022 while he was running for Congress that he was both “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinan.”
Israel has proven to be a thorny issue for Democrats in the wake of an Oct. 7 surprise attack on the Jewish Middle Eastern country by Hamas militants.
Left-wing hardliners have grown increasingly bold about bucking the party’s traditional stance on supporting Israel, which has put them publicly at odds with members of their own party.