Florida’s terrorist-designation machinery turns on, with the Brotherhood named alongside CAIR

WGCU, the PBS and NPR affiliate for Southwest Florida, published a critical examination of the state’s designation process on 25 September, describing the framework built by HB1471 and crediting the Florida Trident with earlier reporting on the target list. The sequence behind it is documented across outlets: Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order in December 2025 branding the Council on American-Islamic Relations a terrorist organisation; US District Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida blocked enforcement on First Amendment grounds in early March 2026, an order the ACLU called a response to something “blatantly unconstitutional”; HB1471 took effect on 1 July, when DeSantis announced in Tampa a recommendation from FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass to designate. CAIR and CAIR-Florida sued in Tallahassee in early July, represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida and the Southern Poverty Law Center, arguing the regime “vests unbridled discretion in Florida’s executive branch to punish, ostracize, and silence.”

The state then slowed down. It sought more time to respond in mid-July and put the list on hold pending FDLE rulemaking. On 11 September, DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet approved the rule — in a procedure the Florida Phoenix timed at under two minutes — clearing the path to designate CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and antifa. WGCU’s framing is editorial and should be read as such, but its factual spine holds: two of the three named targets are registered non-profit civil rights advocacy organisations, and the third, as the piece describes it, is a loosely defined set of individuals with no formal organisation, structure or leadership. As of 26 September no designations had been issued under the approved rule.

Assessment: The slowness is the tell. Ten weeks between the statute taking effect and a two-minute rule vote, with no names published since, is the behaviour of a state whose counsel expects to lose in front of Judge Walker again. Watch what happens if FDLE actually designates: the state would have to defend, on a record, a definition of “the Muslim Brotherhood” that survives cross-examination. Washington has never been forced to do that — Executive Order 14362 designated nobody, and State and Treasury have proceeded chapter by chapter against named entities. Florida is the one venue where the abstraction could be made to stand up in court, or fail to.