Florida Governor Designates CAIR/Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organizations

Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis has des­ig­nat­ed CAIR and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. On 9 Decem­ber 2025, The Hill report­ed that DeSan­tis issued an exec­u­tive order titled Pro­tect­ing Florid­i­ans from Rad­i­cal Islam­ic Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions fol­low­ing Tex­as­’s sim­i­lar step last month. The arti­cle begins:

Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis ® on Mon­day des­ig­nat­ed the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, fol­low­ing the lead of Texas, which took a sim­i­lar step last month. DeSan­tis post­ed the exec­u­tive order, “Pro­tect­ing Florid­i­ans from Rad­i­cal Islam­ic Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions,” to social plat­form X. The order directs Flori­da law enforce­ment and high­way patrol to “under­take all law­ful mea­sures to pre­vent unlaw­ful activ­i­ties in Flori­da by the ter­ror­ist organizations.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5640129-desantis-cair-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-organizations/

Key Points

• Exec­u­tive order directs Flori­da law enforce­ment and high­way patrol to under­take all law­ful mea­sures to pre­vent unlaw­ful activ­i­ties, with Exec­u­tive and Cab­i­net agen­cies pre­vent­ing CAIR, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, or any­one pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port from receiv­ing con­tracts, employ­ment, funds, or ben­e­fits from state government.
• CAIR, the largest Mus­lim civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group in the US, vowed to sue the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion over the pol­i­cy. We look for­ward to defeat­ing Gov­er­nor DeSan­tis’ lat­est Israel First stunt in the court of law, encour­ag­ing Florid­i­ans to speak up against the attempt to shred the Con­sti­tu­tion for the ben­e­fit of a for­eign government.
• Nei­ther CAIR nor the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is list­ed as a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the US accord­ing to the offi­cial list, but the White House took the first steps late last month to des­ig­nate cer­tain Mus­lim Broth­er­hood chap­ters as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions under the Trump administration.
• DeSan­tis stat­ed the orga­ni­za­tion was found­ed by per­sons con­nect­ed to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which order con­nects to Hamas, say­ing peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with CAIR were con­vict­ed of pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port to des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, while CAIR denies any Mus­lim Broth­er­hood con­nec­tion and con­demns all forms of vio­lence against civilians.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has pub­lished report titled “Impli­ca­tions of the Pres­i­den­tial Direc­tive to Review ‘Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Chap­ters’ for Pos­si­ble FTO Des­ig­na­tion.” Accord­ing to the syn­op­sis of the report:

The pres­i­den­tial direc­tive to review “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood chap­ters in the Mid­dle East” cre­ates imme­di­ate ambi­gu­i­ty, as the procla­ma­tion describes the Broth­er­hood as a transna­tion­al move­ment with var­ied struc­tures. Mid­dle East­ern chap­ters are for­mal orga­ni­za­tions, while West­ern MB-linked networks—the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood—are legal­ly sep­a­rate but con­nect­ed through ide­ol­o­gy and per­son­al ties. U.S. and UK reviews have his­tor­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed only spe­cif­ic vio­lent off­shoots such as Hamas, HASM, and Liwa al-Thawra, not the broad­er move­ment. For GIOR, the direc­tive rein­forces the need to dis­tin­guish clear­ly between for­mal chap­ters, glob­al net­works, and splin­ter groups to avoid ana­lyt­i­cal or legal conflation.

Read the full report here.

Trump Administration Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation: Texas and Florida Follow Federal Action

Pres­i­dent Trump signed an exec­u­tive order on 24 Novem­ber 2025 direct­ing a review of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood chap­ters in Egypt, Jor­dan, and Lebanon for poten­tial ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tion. The direc­tive marks one of the most sig­nif­i­cant shifts in U.S. pol­i­cy toward the Islamist move­ment in decades, requir­ing the State and Trea­sury depart­ments to sub­mit a joint report with­in 30 days. Rather than pur­su­ing a blan­ket des­ig­na­tion of the entire orga­ni­za­tion, the admin­is­tra­tion adopt­ed a chap­ter-by-chap­ter approach that experts at the Wash­ing­ton Insti­tute for Near East Pol­i­cy call legal­ly pru­dent, avoid­ing poten­tial judi­cial over­turn­ing of a des­ig­na­tion that might not meet legal thresholds.

The exec­u­tive order fol­lowed Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbot­t’s unprece­dent­ed state-lev­el des­ig­na­tion of both the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions on 18 Novem­ber 2025. Abbot­t’s procla­ma­tion autho­rized height­ened law enforce­ment mea­sures and blocked prop­er­ty acqui­si­tion in Texas. CAIR respond­ed with a fed­er­al law­suit, its fourth legal chal­lenge against Abbott over First Amend­ment issues. CAIR Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Nihad Awad reject­ed the des­ig­na­tion, stat­ing Abbott oper­at­ed accord­ing to an “Israeli agen­da par excellence.”

Doc­u­ments intro­duced dur­ing the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al estab­lished that CAIR’s founders par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, cre­at­ed to sup­port Hamas. A 2009 fed­er­al court rul­ing found evi­dence estab­lish­ing CAIR’s asso­ci­a­tions with the Holy Land Foun­da­tion and Hamas. The Jus­tice Depart­ment con­vict­ed HLF lead­ers in 2008 on charges of pro­vid­ing approx­i­mate­ly $12.4 mil­lion in mate­r­i­al sup­port to Hamas through com­mit­tees in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries. Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Pales­tine, which con­demned Abbot­t’s des­ig­na­tion, has itself faced scruti­ny, with a Vir­ginia court order­ing the orga­ni­za­tion to pro­vide inter­nal doc­u­ments as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into poten­tial Hamas funding.

Exter­nal References:

• The lim­i­ta­tions of Trump’s exec­u­tive order tar­get­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood – Jew­ish Insider
• Fed­er­al Judge Hands Down Sen­tences in Holy Land Foun­da­tion Case – U.S. Depart­ment of Justice
• Des­ig­na­tion of Cer­tain Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Chap­ters as For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions – The White House

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