Dozens of major corporations—including Comcast, CVS, Elevance Health, and T-Mobile—have made PAC donations to Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine, even after he has repeatedly called for the starvation and mass killing of Palestinians and told Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to “leave” before his arrival in Washington.
Since taking office in April following a special election, Fine has used his congressional platform to promote explicitly violent rhetoric targeting the Palestinian people. On May 2, Fine referred to Rep. Tlaib as a “Muslim terrorist” and responded to images of starving Palestinian children with the hashtags #StarveAway and #KeepOnStarving. Later that month in a Fox News interview, Fine said that Israel should “nuke” Gaza, comparing Palestinians to Japan in World War II. “We did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender,” Fine said. “That needs to be the same here.”
In June, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) officially designated Fine an anti-Muslim extremist, citing his “unceasingly violent rhetoric.” The group said that for years Fine “has invoked Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian stereotypes and incited violence against Muslims and Palestinians at home and abroad with impunity.” The group has called on him to be censured and have his committee assignments stripped.
In December 2023, before his election, Fine called for halting humanitarian aid and food to people in Gaza, writing on X: “Stop the trucks. Let them eat rockets. There are plenty of those. #BombsAway.” A few weeks later, he said Republicans needed to “solve America’s #MuslimProblem,” echoing an antisemitic trope.
Despite this, more than 40 corporate and trade PACs have donated to Fine’s campaign committee, according to Federal Election Commission records. A few of his top donors are the PACs of defense firms like Boeing, General Dynamics, and Israeli defense company Elbit Systems, a prime contractor for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Healthcare insurance such as Elevance, Centene, and Cigna are also PAC donors, presumably hoping to curry favor with Fine due to his seat on the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, which has jurisdiction over areas like employment-related health plans and benefits. He is also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a position he was appointed to on the same day that he posted “starve away” on X in response to an article about people in Gaza dying of malnutrition.
Genocidal Rhetoric, Corporate Silence
Sludge contacted every corporate PAC that has contributed this year to Fine and asked if his statements align with their values or if they would reconsider future donations. None responded.
