Florida approves the machinery for terror designations, but names no one yet

Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet approved an emergency rule on Friday 11 September establishing how the Florida Department of Law Enforcement designates organisations as domestic or foreign terrorist groups. Reporters present described a vote that took under two minutes; the meeting fell on the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks. The rule operationalises HB 1471, signed on 6 April 2026, which empowers the FDLE chief to apply statutory criteria including engagement in terrorist activity. Under the approved procedure, the state’s Chief of Domestic Security notifies the governor and Cabinet of an intent to designate. “We’ve obviously been keen on this issue for a long time,” DeSantis said at the meeting, per the News Service of Florida account carried by NBC 6 South Florida. Mitch Perry of Florida Phoenix filed the base report, syndicated to WUSF, WLRN and WUWF.

No designation has been issued. On 1 July DeSantis said Florida had received FDLE recommendations covering more than 90 foreign organisations — among them Tren de Aragua, two Mexican cartels and the IRGC — and three domestic targets: CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and antifa. More than two months later, Friday’s vote approved only the process. Florida Phoenix’s own earlier headline, from 14 July, read: “DeSantis, FDLE delay designating CAIR a domestic terrorist group.” The litigation runs alongside. CAIR Foundation and CAIR Florida sued DeSantis in the Northern District of Florida, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and later joined by the ACLU; on 4 March 2026 the district court preliminarily enjoined a 2025 executive order, finding CAIR likely to succeed on a First Amendment theory that the order coerced third parties into suppressing its speech. DeSantis appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. NBC 6 reports HB 1471 is itself being challenged.

Assessment: Partisan aggregation is already collapsing “cleared the way” into “designated” — Slay News ran the elision on 12 September. Hold the distinction. The more interesting question is what a state designation of the Muslim Brotherhood would actually operate on: the movement has no Florida corporate presence to sanction, no assets to seize, no registration to revoke. CAIR does. The Brotherhood’s presence on the July list reads as framing; the enforceable target is the American advocacy organisation that already holds a federal injunction against the predecessor order. Watch two things next: whether FDLE’s Chief of Domestic Security files the notification step, and whether the Eleventh Circuit rules before he does.