Every American action against CAIR remains state-level, eleven months after Trump’s Brotherhood order

The federal layer under the Florida ruling is narrower than the rhetoric around it. Executive Order 14362, signed in November 2025, directed State and Treasury to begin designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters. On 13 January 2026 Treasury designated the Jordanian and Egyptian branches as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and the State Department designated the Lebanese branch as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, citing alleged support for Hamas. All three are overseas chapters. Neither CAIR nor any other US entity has been federally designated. The action has therefore run through states: Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR and the Brotherhood as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organisations under Texas law on 18 November 2025, and Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Brotherhood, CAIR and its Austin, Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth chapters on 5 February 2026, calling CAIR “undeniably the American face of an international terrorist organization.” CAIR called the suit “another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt.”

Florida’s route was legislative, and it was built after a defeat. DeSantis issued an executive order designating CAIR and CAIR-Florida in December 2025; a federal judge blocked it in March 2026, holding the governor could not impose the designation unilaterally. The Legislature then passed HB 1471, signed in April and effective 1 July, vesting designation authority in the Chief of Domestic Security — FDLE Commissioner Larry Keefe — subject to approval by the Governor and Cabinet. On 29 September the Cabinet designated CAIR, CAIR-Florida and the Muslim Brotherhood. Accounts of the full tally differ: News Service of Florida reports 90 groups labelled domestic or international terrorist organisations at that meeting, while JNS, relayed by Israel National News, describes two domestic designations plus more than 90 additional foreign ones. Texas Public Radio reported that Paxton’s office had previously argued the local chapters were not covered by Abbott’s order.

Florida has now produced something the other tracks have not: a statutory template that a federal judge declined to enjoin. Designation authority housed in a law-enforcement commissioner, ratified by elected officials, with downstream consequences written into the statute — public universities and colleges are barred from spending state or federal funds on programmes promoting a designated organisation. By our count, four separate state or federal designation instruments touching the Brotherhood or CAIR have issued in twelve months: Abbott in November 2025, EO 14362 in November 2025, the Treasury and State actions in January 2026, and the Florida Cabinet vote in September 2026.

Assessment: The federal-state asymmetry is not an oversight; it is the whole legal argument. Washington has designated only foreign chapters because the evidentiary and constitutional bar for designating a domestic US organisation is high and the litigation would be brutal. States face a lower bar and a friendlier political return. The Florida template now exists, has been tested once and did not break — expect it to be copied in legislatures that convene in the new year. The variable that would moot all of it is a federal designation of a US entity, which has not come in eleven months. Treat the 90-versus-90-plus discrepancy as unresolved; nobody has published the FDLE list.