There's a new terrorist organization in Florida--at least according to Ron DeSantis

News and views for independent-minded Floridians and other discerning Americans

Getty Images

There’s a new terrorist organization in Florida.

So says Gov. Ron DeSantis, who, with a swipe of his pen this week, declared the civil rights group known as CAIR to be a threat to Florida democracy.

Not a threat to American democracy, mind you. The federal government actually doesn’t consider CAIR to be a danger. But Florida keeps its own enemies lists, evidently. Or at least DeSantis does.

And it becomes clear why when you realize the “I” in CAIR stands for Islamic. The full name is the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It is a Muslim civil rights group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices around the nation.

In a weird twist of life imitating art, Wikipedia notes that it was founded partly in response to the 1994 Arnold Schwartzeneger film True Lies, in which Arabs and Muslims were depicted as villains.

CAIR is hardly the only faith-based advocacy group in the United States, of course, among the foremost being the Anti-Defamation League, which was formed to fight antisemitism.

But why has CAIR suddenly become a threat to Florida when the federal government has not added it to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations?

Apparently, because Texas Gov. Greg “Hot Wheels” Abbott has issued a similar declaration, and DeSantis famously loves copying Abbott.

You will recall that when the Texas governor started flying immigrants to faraway locales, such as Martha’s Vineyard, to teach liberal states the evils of undocumented immigrants, DeSantis also leaped into action.

He commandeered taxpayer dollars designated for COVID relief, leased some airplanes, and flew them to Texas to join the fun.

DeSantis seems to have a habit of grabbing taxpayer money for pet projects without authorization. A grand jury has been meeting in Tallahassee investigating how $10 million of those dollars, which should have gone to help pay medical bills for poor people, ended up in the coffers of one of his pet projects to fight a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana.

But we digress.

The New York Times notes that the governor usually holds big press conferences when he announces major initiatives like this. For instance, when he decided to eliminate the mandates for childhood vaccinations, it was a big press spectacle.

Not this time.

He simply posted it on Twitter (currently called X), which the Florida chapter of CAIR called a “stunt.”

“Governor DeSantis knows full well that CAIR-Florida is an American civil rights organization that has spent decades advancing free speech, religious freedom and justice for all, including for the Palestinian people,” the statement said.

DeSantis’ executive order notes that CAIR was founded by people who also had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has connections to Hamas, and therefore guilt by association applies.

CAIR has filed a lawsuit against Texas over its order, and they may file a similar suit in Florida.

According to a report in Al Jazeera:

CAIR General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement … announcing the joint lawsuit with the Muslim Legal Fund of America, that the group had won three cases against Abbott for his efforts to “violate the First Amendment by punishing critics of the Israeli government”.

“The lawsuit we have filed today is our first step towards defeating Governor Abbott again so that our nation protects free speech and due process for all Americans,” Masri said.

“No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure,” she said.

DeSantis’ executive order also covers the Muslim Brotherhood, although it, too, is not considered a Foreign Terrorist Organization overall in the United States, although some affiliates, such as Hamas, are.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are no records of CAIR having ever sponsored a terrorist attack in the United States. Not even in the Free State of Florida.

---

J.C. Bruce, journalist and author, is the founder of Tropic Press. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida.

---

More online

Thank you for reading the Tropic Press newsletter. You also have access to the Tropic Press website for additional and previous posts, an archive of posts from our advice columnist, Miss Mingo, occasional guest commentaries, and information about The Strange Files series of mysterious adventures and other books.

---

Thanks to our sponsor

Today’s report is brought to you by Tropic Press Books, home of The Strange Files. You can find more information about these hilarious stories here:

---

It’s good to share

Tropic Press is a reader-supported publication. Here’s a big shout-out to all our loyal subscribers. Feel free to forward this email to your friends so they can enjoy it too. The more people we reach, the greater community of like-minded people we build. This is your chance to be part of all that. Thank you.