On Dec. 8, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a close co-thinker of President Donald Trump, issued Executive Order 8, which designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, a “terrorist organization” under Florida state law. The designation prevents the organization from “receiving any contract, employment, funds or other benefit or privilege,” and bars them from certain events.
On March 4, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction against the Governor’s actions related to CAIR. Walker wrote, “The First Amendment bars the Governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others’ constitutional rights.” He continued, “The Governor’s decree coerces third parties, under threats of losing [Florida] government benefits, to disassociate from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (‘CAIR’), thereby closing avenues of expression and suppressing CAIR’s protected speech.”
In framing his legal opinion, Judge Walker cited President George Washington’s famed 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Rhode Island, as the bedrock for American safeguards of religious minorities: “The Constitution protects Plaintiff’s speech just as it protects any other organization’s lawful speech from suppression by government coercion of third parties,” the judge wrote.
For the moment, DeSantis’ attempt to incite America along anti-Muslim lines has been repulsed.
