**TALLAHASSEE, Fla.** — Gov. Ron DeSantis moved swiftly on Tuesday to designate several groups as terrorist organizations under a new state law that took effect on the same day.
Nocatee, a master-planned community 20 miles southeast of Jacksonville in St. Johns County, has approximately 25,000 residents. The PGA TOUR headquarters is located nearby.
The designations include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood, the anti-fascism movement antifa, and more than 90 foreign organizations already designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government, including the Venezuelan crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“We’ve got to draw a very strong line in the sand here,” DeSantis said at the Attorney General’s Tampa Office of Statewide Prosecution. “We’ve seen this creep throughout the country over many, many years.”
The designations still require approval from Cabinet members: Attorney General James Uthmeier, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson. All three are Republicans up for re-election in November.
The law, House Bill 1471 from the 2026 regular session, allows the state’s Chief of Domestic Security — currently Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass — to designate domestic or foreign terrorist organizations. It also bars courts from enforcing religious or foreign law provisions and requires expulsion of Florida College System students who “promote” designated terrorist organizations.
