MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he had signed an executive order declaring the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy and civil rights groups, a foreign terrorist organization.
DeSantis appears to have followed another Republican governor, Greg Abbott of Texas, who issued a similar declaration last month against the Washington-based nonprofit organization, known as CAIR. The group has sued Texas over the terrorist designation in federal court.
DeSantis, who often holds public events to announce executive orders, published this one Monday in a post on the social media platform X without further comment. In a joint statement, CAIR and its Florida chapter called the order a “stunt” and vowed to also sue Florida.
“Governor DeSantis knows full well that CAIR-Florida is an American civil rights organization that has spent decades advancing free speech, religious freedom and justice for all, including for the Palestinian people,” the statement said.
Like in Texas, the Florida order also applies to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt almost a century ago and has a range of affiliated groups overseas.
The Florida order says that CAIR was “founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.” And it ties the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested that similar actions at the federal level are “in the works.”
The 2023 attack on Israel heightened scrutiny of CAIR, which has denied any ties to Hamas. More recently, Muslim Americans around the United States felt heightened tension after the shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan immigrant last month and a recent fraud scandal involving a group of Somali Americans in Minnesota.
Unlike the Texas declaration, the Florida order does not appear to prohibit CAIR, which has an office in Tampa, or the Muslim Brotherhood from buying land in the state.
The Florida order calls on state agencies to prevent CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, and anyone known to have “provided material support or resources” to them, from receiving contracts, jobs, funds or any public benefit or privilege from the agencies.
It also empowers a state domestic security council made up of agency heads to conduct a review of existing authorities, regulations and policies “for addressing threats” by the two organizations, and to recommend any additional action.
The suit that CAIR filed in Texas argues that calling the group a terrorist and criminal organization without due process is a violation of federal law.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
