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(02/27/2026) A bill advancing through the Florida Legislature would give the state something no state in the country has: its own spy unit — with the power to target people based on their views. HB 945, sponsored by Rep. Danny Alvarez (R-Riverview), would create a state-level counterintelligence and counterterrorism unit inside the Florida Department of […]
After SB 1632 and HB 1471 cleared their final committees, the ACLU of Florida warned the bills would let the government brand its critics as terrorists. Meanwhile, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops confirmed that amendments had addressed their concerns about Canon Law — a carve-out that revealed exactly who the bill’s religious law provisions were designed to target, and who they were designed to protect.
Florida’s domestic terrorist designation bill barely survived its second Senate committee hearing on February 25 — a grueling three-hour session in which approximately 95% of public testimony opposed the bill, the committee chair voted yes but couldn’t guarantee future support, and the bill’s sponsor struggled to explain how it wouldn’t be weaponized. Senate leadership’s response: pull the bill from its third and final committee and send it straight to the floor, bypassing one more opportunity for scrutiny.
Florida’s bill to let state officials brand organizations as domestic terrorists advanced in both chambers in a single week. The House Education & Employment Committee approved HB 1471 on a 16-4 vote — with two Democrats crossing over — while the Senate Judiciary Committee passed its companion, SB 1632, 8-3. The bills are now moving faster than the opposition can organize against them.
When Florida Muslims came to Tallahassee for the annual Muslim Day at the Capitol, Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on social media calling for “heightened alert for any possible security threats.” Armed police filled the rotunda. Then former House Speaker Paul Renner, now running for governor, vowed to “take any legal means” to remove Muslim groups from the state.
A Florida House subcommittee voted 14-3 to advance HB 1471, which gives the state the power to designate organizations as domestic terrorists, cut off their funding, and expel students who support them. The bill was filed one month after Gov. DeSantis asked lawmakers to codify his executive order targeting CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
On January 9, Rep. Hillary Cassel withdrew her “No Shari’a Act” and filed HB 1471 — a sweeping bill that absorbs the anti-Shari’a provisions and adds the power to designate domestic terrorist organizations, expel students, cut off school vouchers, and prosecute supporters. A companion bill makes the process secret. It is exactly what DeSantis called for one month earlier.
Eight days after Gov. DeSantis branded CAIR a “foreign terrorist organization” by executive order, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group filed a federal lawsuit challenging the designation as unconstitutional. DeSantis welcomed the suit, saying he looked forward to “discovery — especially the CAIR finances.”