Republican lawmakers press the administration to name CAIR a foreign terrorist organisation

The Center Square, the news service of the free-market Franklin News Foundation, reported on 22 September — syndicated the same day across Sinclair Broadcast stations — that several congressional Republicans are pressing the administration to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a foreign terrorist organisation. According to that report, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called for an FTO designation in the preceding week and raised the matter with FBI Director Kash Patel at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday; the syndicated text does not carry Patel’s answer. Representative Randy Fine of Florida, who introduced H.R.4097, the “Designate CAIR as a Terrorist Organization Act,” on 24 June 2025, told the outlet: “It is a foreign terrorist organization,” adding that “CAIR was founded as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s the front for Hamas.” Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter of Georgia said: “It’s something that needs to happen.”

Every quote in that account comes from one outlet’s own interviews and has not been matched by a wire; the portion retrieved carries no comment from CAIR, and the copy attributes Fine’s remarks to “Wednesday” while carrying a Tuesday timestamp, so no firm interview date can be stated. The legislative vehicles are not new. H.R.4097 was referred to House Judiciary and directs the Secretary of State to review whether CAIR meets FTO criteria, its findings section opening with CAIR’s naming as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation prosecution. A separate bill by Representative Chip Roy of Texas, directing Treasury to designate CAIR and its affiliates as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, has 16 cosponsors, all Republican, as of 22 September. The sub-federal version is already in court: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR and its Austin, Houston and DFW chapters in Collin County District Court on 5 February 2026, seeking to bar them from operating in the state.

Assessment: The architecture built since Executive Order 14362 has been carefully offshore. State designated the Lebanese chapter and Treasury the Egyptian and Jordanian branches on 13 January; the Sudanese chapter followed in March. All of it reaches foreign entities, which is what makes the designation authorities legally comfortable. CAIR is a US-incorporated 501(c) organisation, and an FTO or SDGT action against it would be the first attempt to point this machinery at a domestic American body — which is precisely where First Amendment and due-process litigation starts. Watch the courts, not the press conferences: the only test so far of a state designation’s practical reach came on 3 February, when a judge ruled Laura Loomer must resume payments to CAIR that she had stopped citing Florida’s executive order.