1. Rebekah Jones was born on July 25,1989 and is an American geographer, data scientist, and activist.
57 Facts About Rebekah Jones
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Rebekah Jones is known for her COVID-19 activism in Florida, allegations against the Florida Department of Health and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, an unsubstantiated whistleblower complaint after being fired, and several legal issues.
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Rebekah Jones was referred to as a whistleblower and awarded with several honors, but many public officials and media outlets labeled her a conspiracy theorist after investigation into her and her allegations.
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In May 2020, Rebekah Jones was terminated from her position managing the team that created Florida's ArcGIS COVID-19 dashboard after being repeatedly reprimanded for sharing the department's work online without authorization.
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Rebekah Jones alleged instead that she was told to manipulate the dashboard's data and that her firing was retaliation for her refusal.
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Rebekah Jones later posted on social media a forgery of the dismissal letter from the Florida Commission on Human Relations, such that it appeared that her complaint had been validated.
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In 2023, Rebekah Jones pled no-contest to a 2019 charge of cyberstalking a former Florida State University student.
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Rebekah Jones has a popular Twitter account where she is a controversial figure and activist.
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Rebekah Jones has used her Twitter account to make unsupported statements on a variety of topics, including COVID-19 and DeSantis, one of which NBC News called a conspiracy theory.
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Rebekah Jones instigated fights with academics, journalists, and public officials.
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Rebekah Jones was suspended from Twitter in 2021 for platform manipulation and later reinstated.
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Rebekah Jones grew up poor, often housing and food insecure.
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Rebekah Jones attended Stone High School, where she missed months of school during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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Rebekah Jones says her experiences in Katrina made her interested in natural disasters.
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Rebekah Jones graduated from Chestnut Ridge Senior High School in 2007 after moving to Bedford, Pennsylvania to live with her grandparents.
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Rebekah Jones was a graduate student in the Department of Geography at Florida State University from 2016 through 2018, where she worked on a doctoral dissertation until she was dismissed from the PhD program in 2019 due to misconduct in her teaching position.
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Rebekah Jones performed analysis and modeling of mapping and surveillance data to provide information to the public and state officials used to coordinate disaster response, like the organization of patient movement to open beds between interstate hospitals.
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In March 2020, Rebekah Jones used Esri's ArcGIS software to create Florida Department of Health's COVID-19 dashboard.
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Rebekah Jones opposed the use of federal guidelines to make low-population areas more resilient to small, containable spikes in cases and disagreed with the epidemiologists on her team about methodology by which the state evaluated readiness to reopen.
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Rebekah Jones opposed the way the state computed test positivity rates and believes that positive results for antibody testing should be included in cumulative case totals, which outside epidemiologists don't recommend, as they can skew results.
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Rebekah Jones sent an email to a public listserv suggesting her removal from the dashboard team should cast doubt on the data's integrity, inferring it was punishment for her commitment to accessibility and transparency.
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The spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Rebekah Jones was dismissed for making unilateral decisions about the dashboard without consulting others on the team, to which her superiors testified.
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Rebekah Jones alleged she was fired because she refused to manipulate data to indicate reopening readiness in rural counties to align with the governor' reopening plan.
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Rebekah Jones filed a formal complaint in July 2020 for wrongful termination and misconduct of DOH officials.
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Rebekah Jones was granted formal whistleblower protections by the Florida Office of Inspector General in May 2021 while investigation into her claims was ongoing.
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Rebekah Jones alleged that deputy health secretary Roberson ordered Rebekah Jones to manually change the data to support reopening.
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On October 26,2022, Rebekah Jones posted an altered image of a letter from the Florida Commission on Human Relations on her Instagram account, which she said proved that her whistleblower claims were validated.
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Rebekah Jones subsequently deleted the post, but maintains that the version Caputo received from FCHR was the forgery.
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In March 2023, Rebekah Jones filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health, the state Surgeon General and a former deputy secretary seeking reinstatement, back wages, compensation for emotional distress and punitive damages for being fired in May 2020.
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On February 25,2025, Judge Angela Dempsey granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment, ruling that Deputy Secretary of Health Shamarial Roberson and the Florida Department of Health acted lawfully in terminating Rebekah Jones for documented insubordination, and that in the eyes of the court, Rebekah Jones is not a legitimate whistleblower, despite her claims.
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Rebekah Jones alleged that the governor's office was micromanaging the health department and for misleading the public about the state's vaccination data.
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In May 2021, Rebekah Jones announced that she would not run for congress, either in Maryland where she was living at the time, or in Florida, stating that she did not feel safe running in Florida, and that she was not well-enough prepared to run in Maryland.
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Rebekah Jones launched her campaign for Florida's first congressional district in July 2021.
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In Louisiana in 2016 Rebekah Jones was arrested and charged by the LSU Police Department with one count each of battery on a police officer and remaining after forbidden, plus two counts of resisting arrest after refusing to vacate a LSU office upon being dismissed from her staff position.
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Rebekah Jones's viral tweets of home security footage of the encounter, which prompted the characterization that it was a raid, helped raise more than $200,000 of more than $500,000 on one of her GoFundMe campaigns.
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Rebekah Jones turned herself in on January 18,2021, two days after an arrest warrant was issued for Rebekah Jones by the FDLE following a finding of probable cause that she breached the system, sent the unauthorized message, and illegally downloaded the confidential information of more than 20,000 state employees.
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Rebekah Jones posted online that the charges had been dropped, that she never admitted to guilt, and referred to the fine as extortion.
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Rebekah Jones raised more than $10,000 of $352,668 on a GoFundMe campaign in the five days after the agreement was made.
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Rebekah Jones filed a lawsuit on December 20,2020, against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Commissioner Rick Swearingen alleging that the police obtained a "sham" search warrant whose true purpose was to retaliate against her.
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Rebekah Jones's suit claimed that one of the FDLE agents grabbed her "without consent, authorization, or legitimate basis" while searching her home.
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Rebekah Jones alleged that the FDLE violated her First Amendment free speech rights, and had performed an unlawful search and seizure when they confiscated computers and her personal cell phone.
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On June 7,2023, Rebekah Jones pled no-contest to a 2019 misdemeanor cyberstalking charge.
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Rebekah Jones is a controversial figure and activist who has used the account to make unsupported statements about issues such as COVID-19, DeSantis, and other topics and people.
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Rebekah Jones frequently instigated fights with public officials, politicians, and academics.
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Rebekah Jones tweeted that Shamarial Roberson, Florida's deputy secretary for health, was a fraud and a murderer.
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Rebekah Jones attacked epidemiologists Natalie Dean and Jason Salemi for disputing the accuracy of Rebekah Jones' claims.
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Rebekah Jones engaged in a feud with Christina Pushaw, who wrote an article critical of Rebekah Jones.
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Rebekah Jones emailed Daniel Gropper, the College of Business dean, who escalated the report to the vice president of the university and the chief of the university's police department.
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Rebekah Jones later deleted the tweets and denied engaging in the defamation.
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In June 2021, Rebekah Jones was suspended from Twitter for violations of the Twitter rules on spam and platform manipulation.
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DeSantis's office commented upon the suspension, with a spokesperson calling it "long overdue" and accusing Rebekah Jones of spreading "defamatory conspiracy theories".
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Rebekah Jones had turned her son voluntarily into police after the issuance of a valid arrest warrant.
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Rebekah Jones used GoFundMe to raise at least $7,000 through her viral twitter posts.
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Also in April 2023, Rebekah Jones tweeted unsubstantiated statements about a private citizen of Kokomo, Indiana being a cyber terrorist.
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In 2020, Rebekah Jones was recognized by Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40 in Healthcare for founding Florida COVID Action.
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Rebekah Jones was named Forbess 2020 Technology Person of the Year for creating alternative Florida COVID-19 tracking dashboards.
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Rebekah Jones won Constantine Cannon's 2020 Whistleblower of the Year award.