(12/9/2025) On the evening of December 8, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not hold a press conference. He did not brief lawmakers. He posted an executive order on social media.

“EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY,” DeSantis wrote on X, “Florida is designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations. Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organizations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support.”

With a single social media post, DeSantis branded the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization — a nonprofit founded in 1994 with more than 25 chapters across the country — a terrorist group. CAIR is not designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States government.

The executive order directs the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol to “prevent unlawful activities by the terrorist organizations.” It bars any person known to have provided material support to CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood from receiving state contracts, employment, or funds from any executive or cabinet agency.

But DeSantis did not stop at the executive order. That same evening, he posted a second message: “Members of the FL Legislature are crafting legislation to stop the creep of sharia law, and I hope that they codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in their legislation.”

The second post was a direct instruction to the lawmakers who had already filed anti-Shari’a bills, most prominently Rep. Hillary Cassel, the Broward County Republican who filed the “No Shari’a Act” on the anniversary of October 7 and framed it as an act of solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. DeSantis was not merely endorsing their work. He was telling them to go further, to take his executive order and make it law.

The following day, at a press conference about water quality in North Miami Beach, DeSantis made the strategy explicit. “I think our executive order is kind of the beginning,” he said. “I think you’re going to see statutory codification of how we handle different terror designations.”

The executive order itself reads like a policy document built for political war, not legal precision. It claims CAIR was “founded by individuals connected with the Muslim Brotherhood” and cites a decades-old federal case — United States v. Holy Land Foundation — in which CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator along with hundreds of other Muslim organizations, but was never charged or convicted.

What the executive order does not address is the constitutional question at its center: whether a state governor has the legal authority to designate any organization as a foreign terrorist organization. That power belongs to the U.S. Secretary of State under federal law. DeSantis invented a state-level designation with no federal legal basis — and then dared CAIR to challenge it.

CAIR and its Florida chapter responded within hours. “Governor DeSantis’ attack on CAIR Florida is really an attack on the broader Florida Muslim community,” said CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. “This form of anti-Muslim rhetoric and conspiracy theories turned into government policies endanger all Florida Muslims and put a target on their back.”

In a joint statement, CAIR and CAIR-Florida called the executive order “unconstitutional and defamatory” and announced plans to file a federal lawsuit. “From the moment Ron DeSantis took office as Florida governor, he has prioritized serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida,” the statement read. “Like Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis is an Israel First politician who wants to smear and silence Americans, especially American Muslims, critical of U.S. support for Israel’s war crimes.”

Florida is not the first state to take this step. In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a similar proclamation banning members of CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood from purchasing or acquiring land in the state. CAIR sued Abbott, and that case is ongoing. President Donald Trump also signed an executive order in November setting in motion a process to consider designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations under federal law — but the federal government has taken no such action against CAIR.

DeSantis’s move comes after months of escalating anti-Muslim action in Tallahassee. Cassel filed the “No Shari’a Act” in October. Attorney General James Uthmeier and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson called for stripping voucher funding from Islamic schools while defending billions in public money flowing to Christian campuses. Critics — including Jewish leaders and Democrats — called the anti-Shari’a bill hypocritical and unnecessary, while Cassel described the upcoming hearings as “fun.”

Now the governor has moved the fight from the legislature to the executive branch — and back again. The executive order gives the state’s anti-Muslim legislative push something it did not have before: a gubernatorial directive to codify it all into permanent law.

For Florida’s estimated 500,000 Muslim residents, the message delivered on December 8 was not ambiguous. Their governor labeled their largest civil rights organization a terrorist group, instructed lawmakers to enshrine that label in statute, and called it “the beginning.”