A day after Gov. Ron DeSantis designated a leading Muslim civil rights organization as a “foreign terrorist organization,” leaders of the group's Florida chapter on Tuesday promised a lawsuit and said the state had no legal basis for such a declaration.
The governor's executive order against the Council on American-Islamic Relations was an attack based on conspiracy theories, similar to those aimed in past decades at other minority groups like Jewish, Irish and Italian Americans that created fear and division, Hiba Rahim, the Florida chapter's deputy executive director, said at a news conference in Tampa.
“We are very proud to defend the founding principles of our Constitution, to defend free speech,” Rahim said. “We are proud to defend democracy, and we are proud to be America first.”
