Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to formally designate more than 90 organizations as foreign terrorist organizations under a new state law that creates criminal penalties for material support and bars every dollar of public funding from reaching the listed groups. The move, reported by Just the News, follows DeSantis's signing of HB 1471 and comes roughly three months after a federal judge struck down his earlier executive order targeting two of those same organizations.
The list is broad. It includes the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood, Antifa, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and several of the most violent drug trafficking operations in the Western Hemisphere, the Sinaloa cartel, the Gulf cartel, and the del Noreste cartel. The Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, already designated at the federal level by the Trump administration, is also on the roster.
DeSantis said the legislation creates "a permanent statutory framework to combat terrorism while protecting the constitutional rights of Floridians." Once his cabinet confirms the designations, they will carry the full force of state law, a step beyond the executive order a federal judge tossed earlier this year.
The new law routes the formal designation process through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It authorizes the governor and his cabinet to issue designations and builds enforcement teeth around them.
State and local governments would be prohibited from providing taxpayer funding, contracts, or any other public support to groups on the list. Public colleges, universities, school districts, and other publicly funded institutions could not use public resources to support or promote designated organizations. Groups carrying the designation may face dissolution. And individuals who knowingly provide material support or resources to a designated group would face criminal penalties.
The law also ensures that foreign or religious legal codes cannot override the U.S. or Florida constitutions, a provision aimed squarely at preventing any domestic accommodation of legal frameworks tied to designated organizations.
DeSantis has separately prohibited Florida colleges and universities from entering agreements with institutions affiliated with foreign countries of concern, and he has restricted the use of taxpayer funds for programs that benefit foreign adversaries. HB 1471 extends that same philosophy into the terrorism space, giving the state a statutory tool rather than relying on executive action alone.
This is not DeSantis's first attempt. Last December, he issued an executive order directing state agencies "to eliminate the influence of radical terrorist ideologies and organizations operating in Florida." That order designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and directed agencies to deny them taxpayer funding, contracts, employment, and other public support.
CAIR sued. A federal judge granted the organization's motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that CAIR had shown a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the merits. The ruling struck down the executive order, notably, the case had proceeded without discovery or hearings at that point.
The new legislation appears designed to build a sturdier legal foundation. By routing designations through a formal statutory process with FDLE involvement and cabinet confirmation, DeSantis is betting that a law passed by the legislature will withstand the kind of challenge that felled his executive action. Whether it does remains an open question.
Florida is not the only state testing this ground. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began making his own foreign terrorist organization designations roughly four years ago, starting with Mexican cartels. He designated Tren de Aragua members as FTOs about two years ago and also labeled CAIR a foreign terrorist organization. CAIR sued Abbott as well, but in that case, a federal judge handed Abbott a win in May, a sharply different outcome from the Florida ruling.
The divergent court results highlight the legal uncertainty around state-level terrorist designations. The federal government has long maintained its own FTO list, and the Trump administration has moved aggressively against groups like Tren de Aragua at the national level. Whether states can run parallel designation regimes, with their own enforcement mechanisms and criminal penalties, is a question the courts have not yet settled uniformly.
The full roster of more than 90 organizations has not been publicly detailed, but the named groups reveal the scope of DeSantis's ambitions. The inclusion of Mexican drug cartels and Tren de Aragua reflects the border security and transnational crime priorities that have driven Republican governors for years. DeSantis has already signed separate legislation printing immigration status on Florida driver's licenses, signaling that the state intends to use every available lever on immigration enforcement.
The inclusion of CAIR is the most legally contested piece. CAIR describes itself as a civil rights organization. DeSantis and Abbott have treated it as something else entirely, tying it to the Muslim Brotherhood and arguing it should be barred from public support. That dispute has already produced one injunction and one favorable ruling, in different federal courts, on different legal records.
Antifa's inclusion raises a different set of questions. Unlike a cartel or a foreign military unit, Antifa has no single organizational structure, no headquarters, and no membership rolls. How FDLE will define the entity for designation purposes is unclear from the available details of HB 1471.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by contrast, is a recognized state military force already designated by the federal government. Its inclusion on a state list is less controversial but underscores the breadth of the approach, DeSantis is casting a wide net that covers foreign state actors, transnational gangs, drug cartels, domestic extremist networks, and advocacy groups under a single statutory framework.
DeSantis's move fits a broader pattern of Republican governors and legislators using state power to address threats they argue the federal government has handled too slowly or too softly. Abbott's four-year head start on state-level FTO designations set the template. The Trump administration's own designations of cartels and gangs provided federal-level validation.
In Congress, Republican lawmakers have pursued their own aggressive posture on security and oversight questions, from blocking FISA reauthorization over warrant protections to pressing for accountability on foreign policy decisions. Florida's own congressional delegation has pushed back on Democratic members who sought foreign assistance for adversary nations.
HB 1471 takes that energy and codifies it at the state level with real consequences: criminal penalties, funding cutoffs, and potential dissolution of designated groups operating within Florida's borders.
The designations are not final yet. DeSantis needs his cabinet to confirm them before they carry the full force of state law. That step is pending.
Once confirmed, the legal challenges will almost certainly follow. CAIR has already demonstrated its willingness to litigate in both Florida and Texas. The preliminary injunction against DeSantis's executive order shows that at least one federal judge found serious constitutional concerns with the approach. Whether HB 1471's legislative framework, with its formal FDLE process and cabinet sign-off, addresses those concerns is the central legal question ahead.
The Texas experience offers some reason for optimism. Abbott's designations survived a federal court challenge in May, suggesting that the right legal structure can withstand judicial scrutiny. But federal courts are not monolithic, and the Florida judge's reasoning may prove durable on appeal.
For the more than 90 organizations on the list, the practical consequences are significant even before any court weighs in. The designation itself sends a signal to every state contractor, every public university administrator, and every local government official in Florida: association with these groups now carries legal risk.
The broader debate over executive power and oversight will shape how these designations are received, and whether other states follow Florida and Texas down this path.
DeSantis tried the executive order route and a judge swatted it down. Now he has a statute, a process, and a list. The courts will have their say again. But the governor is making one thing clear: Florida intends to name its enemies and cut them off, and this time, he brought the legislature with him.
