Brian Mast

Civilian career After his honorable discharge from the Army, Mast was hired as an explosives specialist for the United States Department of Homeland Security. and as an instructor of homemade explosives for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

U.S. House of Representatives Elections

2016

Mast first considered running for office while recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Medical Center.

On June 8, 2015, Mast announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. representative in Florida's 18th congressional district. He defeated five opponents in the August 30, 2016, primary with 38% of the vote. Mast faced Democratic businessman Randy Perkins in the November 8 general election.

Mast won the general election with 53% of the vote.

In 2016, Mast was briefly linked with World Patent Marketing, a company the Federal Trade Commission shut down as an invention promotion scam. World Patent Marketing donated money to Mast's campaign fund and said in a press release that he sat on their advisory board. Mast claimed no knowledge of being given a position on the board and said he had only a couple encounters with members of the company.

In 2018, Anthony Bustamante, a campaign consultant who had worked on Mast's 2016 campaign, told The Wall Street Journal that he had used data hacked from the Democratic National Committee by Guccifer 2.0, a front for Russia's GRU military intelligence service, to adjust Mast's campaign strategy. Guccifer 2.0 had leaked the hacked data to the HelloFLA blog.

2018

On April 25, 2018, physician Mark Freeman announced a primary challenge to Mast, focusing on his promise to "defend the Second Amendment" and be an "unwavering partner" to President Donald Trump. Freeman called Mast an "establishment candidate" and complained about Mast's shift on gun control issues after the Parkland school shooting.

Mast defeated Freeman in the Republican primary. In the general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Lauren Baer, an attorney and foreign policy expert who served as an official in the Obama administration, with 54% of the vote.

During the 2017–18 election campaign, Mast's largest donors were Duty Free Americas and Amway/Alticor (run by the DeVos family). Between March and June 2018, Mast's campaign received thousands of dollars from Soviet-born Igor Fruman, one of two business associates of Rudy Giuliani who later faced charges of violating federal campaign finance laws. After this allegedly illegal contribution was discovered and reported by the press, Mast's spokesman said he would disburse the funds to the Treasury Department, but less than two weeks later, Mast said, "I think we donated it to charity."

2020

Mast ran for reelection in 2020 against Democratic nominee Pam Keith. In August 2020 he apologized for what he called "disgusting and inappropriate jokes" that he made on Facebook in 2009 and 2011 responding to a friend and subsequent campaign manager about sex with 15-year-old girls in South Africa and an end-of-the-world pick-up line involving rape or murder. Mast won re-election with 56.32% of the vote, against Keith's 41.5%.

2022

In the 2020 United States redistricting cycle, Florida's district 18 was renamed district 21. Mast was renominated in the Republican Primary with 78.1% of the vote. He defeated Democrat Corinna Robinson in the general election, winning 63.5% of the vote.

2024

Mast ran for reelection and defeated Democrat Thomas Witkop in the general election, winning 61.8% of the vote.

Tenure

Mast was sworn in on January 3, 2017. He was a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership and the Climate Solutions Caucus.

After voting in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, he had a 40% approval rating among his constituents; 45% said they were disappointed with his work in Congress.

In May 2018, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration was considering Mast for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

STOCK Act violations In August 2021, an analysis by Business Insider found that Mast had violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, a federal transparency and conflict-of-interest law that requires members of Congress to report certain types of financial transactions within 45 days, by failing to disclose on time a purchase of stock in Virgin Galactic worth up to $100,000 that Mast made in July 2021. In August 2022, Business Insider reported that Mast had again violated the STOCK Act after he sold stock in Ideal Power worth up to $50,000 in February 2021, but which he failed to report until August 2022. Business Insider also found that Mast violated the STOCK Act a third time when, in October 2022, he reported an exchange of shares in Aphria, Inc. for shares of Tilray Brands, Inc. more than a year after the federal deadline.

Committee assignments For the 118th Congress: Committee on Foreign Affairs (Chair) Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment

Caucus memberships Congressional Cannabis Caucus Rare Disease Caucus

Political positions In the first session of the 115th United States Congress, Mast was ranked the 32nd most bipartisan member of the House by the Bipartisan Index, a metric published by the Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy to assess congressional bipartisanship.

During Trump's presidency, Mast voted in line with the president's stated position 90.6% of the time. As of September 2021, Mast had voted in line with Joe Biden's stated position 19.4% of the time.

Abortion Mast believes abortion should be illegal except in cases where the woman's life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest. Mast accepted over $15,000 in campaign donations from the owners and executives of the sugar company Florida Crystals.

Cannabis In December 2020, Mast was one of only five House Republicans to vote for the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. The act aimed to "correct the historical injustices of failed drug policies that have disproportionately impacted communities of color"; it included provisions to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, impose a federal tax on cannabis products, and use the proceeds of the tax to fund restorative justice programs. A month before the vote, Mast invested between $15,000 and $50,000 in the cannabis company Tilray. He disclosed the purchase on December 1.

In November 2021, Mast was one of four original cosponsors of the Republican-led States Reform Act to legalize cannabis federally and regulate it similarly to alcohol. In April 2022, after Representative Don Young died in office, Mast was named to replace him as a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

Donald Trump

In June 2016, Mast said he supported President Donald Trump "unanimously and wholeheartedly" in the 2016 presidential election. After the 2005 Access Hollywood recording of Trump making crude remarks about sexually assaulting women became public, Mast called Trump's remarks "inexcusable and disgusting". In February 2017, he voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session.

On December 18, 2019, Mast voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump. Of the 195 Republicans who voted, all voted against both impeachment articles.

On January 6, 2021, following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Mast and 146 other Republican members of Congress voted against certifying the election of President Joe Biden.

LGBTQ+ rights Mast believes it was a mistake for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. However, Mast voted against final passage on December 8, 2022.

Free speech In September 2025, Mast co-sponsored proposed legislation which would grant the U.S. Secretary of State the ability to revoke passports from Americans who criticize Israel. Media sources compared the proposal to the Thought Police. Mast later filed an amendment to remove this provision from the proposed legislation, without comment.

Gun control In 2018, Mast wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but said "it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms." He supports a ban on assault weapons, citing his military background: "I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill the children I swore to defend."

After the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Mast announced his support for prohibiting the sale of assault and tactical firearms without confiscating such weapons that are already owned; ensuring that all firearm purchasers undergo a background check; improving background checks; banning the sale of gun accessories that enhance the firing rate of weapons, such as bump stocks; preventing those who have been detained for mental illnesses from purchasing firearms; ensuring that those on the Terror Watch List cannot purchase firearms; and placing anyone who makes threats of violence against schools on an FBI watch list for "a long time". In March 2017, he voted for the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act.

During his 2015–16 election campaign, Mast accepted $4,950 in campaign donations from the NRA Political Victory Fund.

Healthcare Mast is in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act. On May 4, 2017, he voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass the American Health Care Act.

Immigration In June 2018, commenting on the Trump administration family separation policy, Mast said: "It is our duty as an American government to deal compassionately with any child from any nation, just as it is the responsibility of foreign families seeking asylum in the U.S. to choose only legal means to enter our nation so they can avoid family disruption. I am confident this process will be improved." Citing his own Mexican grandparents, he said, "The way that they got to work, the way that they assimilated to the American way of life and became a part of our system is not what we're seeing across the board."

Foreign policy Mast said he would support a Republican proposal to cut U.S. funding to the United Nations. Following the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Mast wore his IDF uniform in Congress.

On November 1, 2023, in arguing for a bill to reduce humanitarian funding to Gaza during the Gaza war, Mast compared Palestinian civilians to the civilians of Nazi Germany during World War II, saying:

In February 2024, Code Pink protesters confronted Mast outside his Congressional office over his support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza. When a protester asked Mast "You haven't seen the pictures of all the babies being killed?", Mast replied "These are not innocent Palestinian civilians." Mast said that "It would be better if you kill all the terrorists and kill everyone who are supporters." Mast said that the "half a million people starving to death" should remove Hamas from power and install a pro-Israeli government in Gaza.

Following the fall of the Assad regime, Mast advocated for maintaining the Caesar Act rather than repealing it because of the Islamist nature of the new Syrian government. He also expressed his support for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan within what is currently Syrian territory, in recognition of the Kurds' role in the fight against ISIS. During a November 2025 meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Mast discussed the future of Syria, emphasizing the need for peace, the defeat of ISIS and extremism, and heard al-Sharaa outline Syria's desire for economic reconstruction and foreign investment as a path to stability, though Mast did not change his position on sanctions after the meeting.

In February 2026, as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mast headed a full committee hearing titled "Syria at a Crossroads: U.S. Policy Challenges Post-Assad," where he outlined ongoing security and political challenges facing Syria and U.S. interests in the region after Assad's overthrow.

Ukraine In April 2024, Mast opposed legislation to grant additional military aid to Ukraine.

Military and veterans affairs

Mast, who sits on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, was the first member of Congress to open an office inside a federal agency. The office in question, which opened in 2018, was in the West Palm Beach Veterans Affairs facility. In 2018 he introduced a House bill that would make it easier for other House members to do the same. In 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs evicted Mast from the West Palm Beach office.

Taxes and budget In October 2017, Mast voted against the original version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 due to "out of control" federal spending, fear of the national debt growing, and a desire to see lower tax rates with loopholes closed. In December 2017, he voted for the final version of the bill, saying it "provides a lot of confidence to a lot of people" and is "a great moment for our country and our community".

Personal life

Mast lives in Palm City, Florida, with his wife Brianna and their four children. As recently as 2016, he attended the evangelical Calvary Chapel.