A Hope Florida board meeting held online Thursday was hijacked by trolls who broadcasted Nazi symbols and pornography during the Zoom video conference on an initiative championed by Florida first lady and possible gubernatorial candidate Casey DeSantis.
"We apologize for the earlier disruption to the public meeting," the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) wrote in a note posted online after the 10 a.m. meeting was abruptly paused. "The Department of Children and Families is actively working to address the incident."
The Florida Politics news site reported that the Hope Florida board was allowing public comment on the program when trolls began to bombard the stream with racist and lewd content.
The outlet reported an official said, "It looks like some of the public are trying to take over," shortly before the meeting cut out. The meeting resumed shortly after 4 p.m. with added content controls.
What is Hope Florida?
Hope Florida is a DCF-led program spearheaded by DeSantis and backed by her husband Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as a conservative alternative to traditional welfare. It aims to connect people with nongovernmental organizations, including faith-based groups, as a front line for assistance.
Casey DeSantis explained her vision for the effort in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2022.
"Instead of creating more bloated bureaucracies, we must unite communities and work together to put parents and their children on a path to prosperity," she wrote. "In Florida, instead of overrelying on government, we’re organizing the generosity and goodness of neighbors to help one another."
State employees who work for Hope Florida, called "Hope Navigators," link people with charities, faith-based groups and other outside sources, depending on their individual circumstances.
"For the first time in Florida, we identified a scalable way to activate the state’s faith and community-based organizations to meet the immediate needs of citizens who might otherwise rely on government," DeSantis wrote in her Journal piece.
Scrutiny mounts
The welfare assistance initiative has come under bipartisan scrutiny in recent weeks, amid questions about the aligned Hope Florida Foundation and its finances — notably a hefty lump sum it received through an unrelated state legal settlement.
The foundation's executive director, Erik Dellenback, publicly announced his resignation Wednesday, telling the Tampa Bay Times in an email that he accepted a new job last month as the CEO of Florida Family Voice, an influential conservative Christian organization.
Health care giant Centene agreed to pay the state $67 million last fall to settle an issue over Medicaid managed care billing. Under the agreement reached by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), $10 million of the settlement went to Hope Florida, the Tampa Bay Times reported earlier this month.
Republican state Reps. Alex Andrade and Michelle Salzman have been among the most vocal in questioning the arrangement.
But Ron DeSantis has defended the portion for Hope Florida as a "cherry on top" of the money the state was receiving.
"When you do settlements, you can try to get as much money as you can, but this was in addition to what they were getting. This is kind of like a cherry on top where they agreed to make an additional contribution, and so we were served well by what AHCA did,” DeSantis told reporters at a news conference last week.
The governor also accused fellow Republicans of trying to "manufacture smears" to tarnish his reputation as he ends his second term. DeSantis, who unsuccessfully ran against President Trump for the GOP's 2024 nomination, cannot run for reelection because of term limits, prompting speculation that his wife may launch a gubernatorial bid.
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