Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks Thursday, April 24, 2025, at Anchor Faith Church in St. Augustine promoting Hope Florida, a state initiative First Lady Casey DeSantis started. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on April 24, 2025 at 12:45 pm
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Gov. Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis visited St. Augustine on Thursday to tout the successes of the state-run charity Hope Florida.
The visit was an opportunity for the DeSantises to promote the program amid complaints from state lawmakers that the state funneled Medicaid money into the state-created charity.
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Hope Florida works with other state agencies to connect people in need to churches, businesses and charities that can lend them a hand. Casey DeSantis said the goal of the foundation is to reduce government dependency by connecting people with community organizations they may not have known about otherwise.
“There are good things happening, but there’s little communication and collaboration to be able to help good people, good people in need of help,” she said. “There are good people who are willing to help. The question is, can you make a connection?”
Speaking before a packed house at Anchor Faith Church in St. Augustine, the couple promoted Hope Florida’s connections with faith-based organizations, something they said isn’t happening in blue states.
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“What we are doing is good. What we are doing is just,” Casey DeSantis said. “Sometimes you have to put on the full armor of God and you fight, because you know what you’re doing is righteous.”
Hope Florida has been under investigation in recent weeks by state lawmakers led by Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola. Andrade and others believe DeSantis’ staff may have broken the law when they took $10 million from a $67 million state Medicaid settlement and sent it straight to Hope Florida.
According to reporting from The Miami Herald and The Tampa Bay Times, that money was then directed to two “dark money” groups — nonprofit organizations that do not have to disclose donor information.
The groups received the grants while they were making contributions to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee that fought a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana.
DeSantis has defended Hope Florida’s receiving of the $10 million, arguing that the attacks against the First Lady’s charity are just politics.
“Don’t misunderstand,” the governor said, “when you see some of these political attacks, that’s just because people know this is effective. This is because they are threatened by this model.”
Speakers at the new conference from the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice and Department of Children and Families stressed how entwined Hope Florida is with state agencies, and how that allows, as DCF Director Taylor Hatch said, for the government to “get out of the way.”
DeSantis said that’s what the goal should be. He accused people critical of the charity of feeling threatened by a model that downplays the state government’s role — or even threatened by an effort spearheaded by his wife.
“It’s not about the actual substance of this,” DeSantis said. “And shouldn’t we, as Floridians, put aside political agenda to embrace things that actually have lifted people up, offered them hope and put them on a pathway to self-sufficiency? You should not wield a political agenda to try to kneecap something that is helping do really, really big things.”
While the DeSantises were in St. Augustine touting the $100 million they say Hope Florida saves taxpayers every year, lawmakers in Tallahassee were backing off an investigation into the charity’s finances.
The Miami Herald reported Thursday morning that while Rep. Andrade still believes that Attorney General James Uthmeier and others connected to the Hope Florida funding scandal broke the law, it is not the state Legislature’s job to investigate and potentially prosecute.
“I believe our work on this topic in this capacity as a subcommittee will be concluded,” Andrade told lawmakers Thursday.
DeSantis stood firm, saying that attacks against the charity are rooted in a “phony narrative” supported by lawmakers threatened by its success and by “lefty journalists.”
