Florida’s 2026 budget is about to define a record that is years in the making.
This year carries a different weight. Term limits mean the choices Gov. Ron DeSantis makes when he signs the General Appropriations Act are the ones the history books actually keep. There’s no do-over on a legacy.
On one front, that legacy is already mostly written.
No Governor in America has done more to protect Jewish residents than DeSantis, and he has never been shy about saying so. The record earns the swagger. When organized hate showed up on Florida’s streets, he pointed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at it. When it showed up on campus, he went after the groups cheering a terrorist attack.
— In 2019, he signed a first-in-the-nation law rooting antisemitism out of public schools — fittingly, with the Florida Cabinet meeting in Israel.
— In 2023 came the toughest antisemitism statute in the country, signed in Jerusalem.
— In 2024, Florida wrote the IHRA definition of antisemitism into law on a near-unanimous, bipartisan vote, and put $20 million toward hardening Jewish institutions — on top of the $25 million the year before that reached 134 schools.
— In 2025, he funded a first-of-its-kind pilot at three Florida universities to show how a campus can protect Jewish students while preserving free speech.
The through-line is unmistakable: DeSantis decided Jewish families would be safe here, then spent real money and real political capital making it true.
And it worked. Florida became a destination for Jewish students precisely because the alternative — the campus where you tuck your Star of David under your shirt and walk the long way around an encampment — has existed almost everywhere else.
The numbers tell it better than I can: The share of Florida college students who report being targeted, excluded or harassed in the past year runs close to half the national figure. That gap isn’t an accident. It’s a reflection of firm state leadership.
That brings us to the pen, and to the items now sitting in front of it.
Among what the Legislature sent up is the Florida Hillel Jewish Student Safety Initiative, carried by Sen. Alexis Calatayud and Rep. Allison Tant. It would extend proven security upgrades to seven universities — the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of South Florida, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Central Florida and the University of Miami — and fund the harder work of building campuses where Jewish students aren’t singled out in the first place.
The same budget carries line items for Jewish day school security — the program DeSantis has championed from the start — for Florida’s Holocaust museums, and for UF research into how police should be trained to investigate and prosecute hate crimes.
The return on these investments is the exact thing DeSantis has spent years earning the right to brag about: Florida standing out as the state that refuses to let pro-Hamas or neo-Nazi harassment become the background noise of daily life.
That record is under pressure now — not only from the usual keffiyeh cosplayers who couldn’t find Gaza on a map, but from members of his own party who seem to hope Florida’s leadership on Jewish safety was a phase, and who’d rather make it someone else’s problem.
The good news is that the choice — sign or veto — is entirely his. I hope, and believe, that the pen about to sign the last chapter of the DeSantis legacy will keep faith with the first seven.
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Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team.
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