DeSantis targets ‘jihad’ with hardline Florida terror crackdown

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday creating a state process to designate terrorist organizations and penalize universities that support them, part of what he described as a crackdown on Islamic extremism in Florida.

DeSantis, standing behind a sign denouncing Sharia law, said during the bill signing Monday that the legislation was designed to protect Floridians and their tax dollars.

"We’ll do millions for public safety, millions for education, but never one red cent for jihad," DeSantis said, noting that "the federal government does this all the time … but we need to be doing that here."

The bill, HB1471, reaffirmed that Florida courts cannot enforce any sort of foreign or religious law, including Sharia law. The bill also gave the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the ability to declare domestic terrorist organizations, which would subject the organizations to numerous prohibitions, including barring them from receiving any sort of public funding.

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"The legislation we’ll sign today is the strongest action Florida has ever taken to protect its people from this influence, and obviously it spans finance, it spans political, it spans culture, and then of course it can be overt acts like we’ve seen at Old Dominion," DeSantis said.

The bill also bars Florida universities from receiving public funds if they show support for any group designated a terrorist organization. It requires the schools to expel any students who promote the groups.

"If there is a school that is aligned with [the Council of American Islamic Relations], should you have any of your money going to things like that? I think not," DeSantis said.

Last month, a gunman opened fire in a classroom of Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing an instructor, who was an Army veteran, and injuring two others before being fatally stabbed by students. Authorities said the attacker shouted "Allahu Akbar" at the time of the shooting and that the incident was being investigated as a likely act of terrorism.

The shooting came in the wake of the U.S. and Israel launching joint strikes against Iran in February, sparking war and escalating concerns about retaliatory actions on the part of Iranian proxies in the United States.

Campuses, meanwhile, became a hotbed for anti-Israel protests and riots in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel that was perpetrated by Hamas, an Islamic militant group.

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Critics said the Florida bill went too far by encroaching on the First Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida called it "dangerous."

"This legislation attempts to create a system where the government can unilaterally label individuals and organizations as ‘domestic terrorists’ and trigger sweeping consequences without meaningful standards, transparency, or constitutional guardrails," ACLU Florida's Bacardi Jackson said in a statement.

The bill came after DeSantis also recently designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations in an executive order. The order has been held up in court proceedings after a federal judge temporarily blocked it from taking effect.