By Michelle DeMarco
Well before it takes effect July 1, preparation for legislation granting top Florida officials broad powers to brand select organizations and their supporters as domestic terrorists appears to be already underway.
In remarks made in April as he signed HB1471 into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis outlined the initial groups law enforcement was gearing up to target, which included the Muslim Brotherhood, the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR), the Venezuelan-based crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, and “antifa,” a sweeping catch-all term for loosely knit, unorganized groups of left-leaning U.S. citizens with no centralized leader, no formal organization, and no chain of command.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) was “going to be working already on formulating the folks that we are going to designate,” DeSantis said. “And I had mentioned the Brotherhood and CAIR. But you also have antifa that needs to be taken care of…Expect us to be very zealous and robust in how we approach dealing with these groups.”
The announcement means Florida state government will join the Trump Administration in designating anti-fascists as domestic terrorism organizations, opening any group or organization designated as embracing the left-leaning ideology, along with any alleged supporters, to a host of potential penalties and sanctions.
The legislation “could undermine free speech by pressuring individuals to avoid speaking, organizing, or engaging with viewpoints that officials could construe as ‘promoting’ terrorism,” wrote Pen America Florida, an advocacy group for human rights and free expression in a statement just before the bill was signed. “The guidelines, sparse as they are, could invite abuse to shut down dissent and target those critical of the state government.”
Since introduction for the 2026 legislative session, HB1471 “Systems of Law and Terrorist Organizations,” sponsored by state Rep. Hillary Cassel (R-Hollywood), and its companion, SB1632 “Ideologies Inconsistent with American Principles” by state Sen. Erin Grall (R-Fort Pierce), were criticized for potential violations of both free speech and due process in the name of pursuing vaguely defined terrorism groups and supporters. The bills were also viewed as a way to shut down student protests on Florida campuses against what protesters saw as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Republican lawmakers defended the legislation, claiming the measures protected Floridians’ rights. “The bill targets conduct, not belief,” said Grall, “and protects free speech, religious liberty, and due process.”
Religion was a key element of the legislation, in particular barring the enforcement of the Islamic code known as Sharia law. But the bills also allowed the designation of certain groups as “domestic terrorist organizations,” a provision echoing an executive order targeting as “terrorist organizations” Islamic groups including CAIR, a prominent Muslim civil rights organization, issued by the governor just weeks before the legislation appeared on the Senate floor. The designation of CAIR was blocked as unconstitutional by a federal judge; the state has appealed.
“We are the scapegoat right now,” Megan Amer, CAIR Florida’s policy director, told the Florida Trident. “The government knows they can’t get these organizations through traditional methods. With this new law, there is no burden of proof…Just five people decide.”
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The domestic terrorism law gives unprecedented legal power to the executive branch of Florida’s government. It authorizes the head of FDLE to recommend designation of a group or organization as “domestic terrorists” after determining it engaged in “terrorist activity,” defined in the bill analysis as a violent act or dangerous to human life, or a violation against “users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices,” and an ongoing threat to the security of Florida or the United States. FDLE’s recommendation is then passed to the governor and the three-member Cabinet for approval. Once designated, and once any judicial challenge is exhausted, an organization can be dissolved by the state. No public entity, including public schools, may accept any funds from the designated group (other than certain funds such as taxes), and no state funds can be expended on behalf of the organization. Association with a designated group can result in felony charges. Support on a university campus triggers expulsion.
How that designation recommendation is made is largely cloaked in secrecy if state officials decide releasing such details constitutes a threat to national or state security. And challenging such a designation requires a court proceeding in Tallahassee.
There are no requirements for an individual or individuals to be convicted of a crime associated with terrorism in order for a group or organization to qualify for designation, as lawmakers discovered earlier this year during debate on the measure. “This bill does not speak to individuals being labeled as domestic terrorists,” said Grall, after conceding that individual convictions were not required. “It’s about the domestic terrorist organization.”
The sudden inclusion of antifa by DeSantis mirrors a similar move by the Trump administration in the fall of 2025. After Charlie Kirk was killed, Trump issued an Executive Order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” describing it as “an organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation.”
Three days later, on Sept. 25, Trump issued his “National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” or NSPM-7, ordering the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI-led network of federal, state, and local law enforcement, to devise and execute investigations, prosecutions, and disruptions of “entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation.” Pointing specifically to anti-fascism, NSPM-7 identifies the “common threads animating this violent conduct” as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” along with “hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
In February, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told the House Judiciary Committee the FBI had compiled a secret database of domestic terrorist organizations established under NSPM-7, and that “antifa is part of that.” Video shot by a protestor in Portland, Maine captured an ICE agent conceding that the information he was gathering was intended for a domestic terrorism database.
In both the federal and state actions, the designation of domestic organizations as terrorists has not only raised fears of the government trampling basic rights, especially free speech and due process, but the ease with which political enemies could find themselves as targets.
The Trump administration routinely called last year’s “No Kings” rallies “Hate America” protests tied to antifa. Earlier this year, both Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, were initially declared “domestic terrorists” by Trump administration officials after being fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis during protests against the surge of federal immigration enforcement agents. Officials backpedaled after video surfaced refuting their characterizations.
In Florida, there is no mention of “antifa” in either the draft or final version of the bill. In a press release announcing his signing of the legislation, DeSantis wrote the measure established “new safeguards against terrorist organizations operating in Florida.” No specific group information or specific methods by which organizations will be chosen for investigation and designation was included.
DeSantis has used “antifa” to describe certain protestors, such as during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 when a group marched to the front of the governor’s mansion. DeSantis, whose wife was at the mansion while he was away with Elon Musk, claimed that protestors were becoming violent, chanting “no justice, no peace,” he said. ”We had an antifa jump the fence. He got arrested, and he got prosecuted.”
The term “antifa” is short for “anti-fascism,” a movement which began in the last century to fight the growing threat of fascism in Europe. Neo-nazis and white supremacists have more recently been among the key groups targeted by antifa-aligned protestors in the United States as a right-wing resurgence began during the first Trump administration.
But in declaring “antifa” domestic terrorists, its amorphous nature which is neither centralized nor structured, has given both the federal and state government wide latitude to make “antifa” into a catchall for whatever it wants “antifa” to be.
Repeatedly asked to clarify how “antifa” is defined, who it considers “antifa” to be, and whether surveillance of potential targets for designation was already underway, a spokeswoman for DeSantis said the questions were being referred to FDLE, which has not responded.
Likewise, neither the governor’s office nor FDLE responded to a question of whether the law could be used for political purposes.
“Anti-fascism could describe my anti-Nazi investigations in the 1990’s” said Mike German, a former FBI special agent who went undercover to infiltrate right-wing groups and wrote a book about his experiences and research.
German, who is also a former fellow of the Brennan Center, noted in “Policing White Supremacy” the Trump administration’s role in using the nickname “antifa” and employing it to help them “avoid the self-identification as fascists that calling anti-fascists your enemy logically produces.”
Following the January 6 insurrection, Florida had the dubious distinction of leading the nation in the number of arrests of individuals who participated in the attack, including the assaults on police officers defending the U.S. Capitol.
The majority of Floridians arrested were members of or associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two right-wing organizations known for political violence and ties to law enforcement and the military. Many of those arrested were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by Trump following his 2024 election, including those convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers.
In his failed campaign for president, DeSantis, who had initially condemned the attacks, did an about face, insisting that national security was not threatened and promising to review the sentences if elected, including those of Proud Boys leaders. “They may have been violent, but to say it’s an act of terrorism when it was basically a protest that devolved into a riot, to do excessive sentences,” DeSantis said. “And as we know a lot of people with the [Black Lives Matter] riots, they didn’t get prosecuted at all.”
Among those who were pushing for a pardon commitment from DeSantis was a former Proud Boys “thought leader” and organizer Joseph Biggs of Ormond Beach who was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 17 years in prison, a sentence later commuted by Trump.
The attorney for Biggs claimed in court documents that for months before the Capitol siege, Biggs had been an informant for the FBI, recruited to supply information on antifa networks, which Biggs had sought to have labeled “domestic terrorists.”
In remarks during his April bill signing, DeSantis made no mention of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys or any organized domestic group associated with right-wing extremism in connection with designating domestic terrorism organizations.
Just last year, the U.S. Department of Justice abruptly scrubbed from its website a report showing that right-wing violence was responsible for the bulk of “ideologically motivated deaths,” despite claims by Trump and others that the “radical left” posed the greatest danger.
Mike German, the former FBI special agent who infiltrated neo-Nazi groups, wrote in his book that while “anti-fascist violence exists, it is typically reactive to fascist mobilizing, is rarely deadly, and is vanishingly infrequent in comparison to white supremacist violence.”
A non-partisan 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service noted that “much antifa activity involves nonviolent protests such as hanging posters, delivering speeches, and marching.”
Critically, the report also stated that while “the FBI has confirmed that antifa and other extremists are the subject of ongoing domestic terrorism investigations, it declines to designate any organization a ‘domestic terrorism organization.’” Doing so may “infringe on First Amendment protected speech – belonging to an ideological group in and of itself is not a crime in the United States.”
The U.S. government has no federal statute allowing for the designation of a domestic group as a terrorist organization, yet last October, one month after Trump’s NSPM-7 was issued, federal prosecutors for the first time filed terrorism charges against a group of protestors alleged to be members of a “North Texas Antifa Cell.”
The individuals were arrested following a July 4, 2025 protest in front of the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, during which fireworks were set off. Many of those arrested were not in attendance. A police officer was injured by a single protester’s gun shot as the demonstration was winding down. Nine defendants were found guilty earlier this year of providing material support to terrorists, and rioting, among other charges.
The case drew considerable controversy because of prosecutors’ classification of the protestors as members of a coordinated enterprise, suggesting a premeditated criminal effort by an actual organization, even though many of the protestors had never met prior to the demonstration. One defendant was convicted for concealing evidence after moving a boxful of “zines” prosecutors claimed were antifa “insurrectionary materials” and faces up to 40 years in federal prison. “We’re not looking at prosecuting terrorism. We’re looking at prosecuting ideology,” said Seth Stern, Chief of Advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, during a discussion of the trial at rightsanddissent.org, echoing similar fears observers have expressed about Florida’s pending domestic terrorism law.
Many average Floridians would agree let’s go after terrorists, said Megan Amer of CAIR-FL. But the vagueness of the Florida law means “it can go after whoever the government wants” to pursue.
“It’s going to become a template across the United States,” she said. “Florida is a test case.”
Michelle DeMarco is an award-winning investigative reporter who returned to journalism after more than two decades in public service. Contact her at [email protected].
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