Florida Cabinet ratifies terrorist labels for the Brotherhood and CAIR, with a 30-day clock running

On Tuesday 29 September the Florida Cabinet, with Governor Ron DeSantis, approved designations covering more than 90 organisations. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and “antifa” were labelled domestic terrorist organisations; al-Qaeda, the Houthis, the IRGC, Tren de Aragua and the Continuity Irish Republican Army were among those labelled foreign terrorist organisations. The vote was taken under HB 1471, which passed the Florida Senate 25–11 and the House 80–25, was signed in April 2026 and took effect on 1 July. The designations came in a 427-page packet prepared by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Just the News reports the packet asserted “there is substantial evidence that CAIR is engaging in terrorist activity.” The Cabinet approved the notices without discussion and with no public testimony. Florida Politics reports they carry the force of state law 30 days after publication — roughly the last week of October.

What the labels do is narrower than the language suggests. Per WFLA, the vote bars designated organisations from receiving financial support from local and state governments and removes scholarships for schools that support them; a December 2025 DeSantis executive order had already directed agencies to keep contracts, employment and funds from anyone “known to have provided material support or resources to such organization” (Florida Phoenix). At a news conference on Friday 2 October DeSantis said the state wants to target the “financial arteries” running into these movements; the ACLU alleged a lack of due process. The litigation is older than the vote. CAIR Florida obtained a temporary injunction blocking the December order on First Amendment grounds, and Attorney General James Uthmeier told the Eleventh Circuit in a 55-page brief on 20 April that the order “simply designates terrorist organizations in an effort to keep state resources from those designated entities and their material supporters.”

Assessment: Read the state layer against the federal one. Washington has been still on this file since 23 July, when OFAC sanctioned Mahmoud al-Abyari — named as Secretary General of the Brotherhood’s General Secretariat — who is UK-based. The United States has sanctioned the organisation’s most senior named officer in a jurisdiction that has not banned the organisation, and no newsroom has asked the Home Office what follows. Tallahassee’s list is a procurement and scholarship instrument dressed in counter-terrorism vocabulary; it creates no criminal exposure an FTO listing would. The date to hold is publication plus 30 days, and whether Judge Walker reaches the new designation before it bites.