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Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa told The Washington Post she will remove the terrorist designation Gov. Greg Abbott placed on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in November 2025, in an interview published on November 14, 2026. The pledge drew immediate attacks from critics who accuse her of siding with Islamic extremists and point to the group's support for her campaign, while CAIR denies any links to terrorism and is challenging the designation in a federal court in Austin.
The designation carries real consequences, not just a label. It bars CAIR from buying or acquiring land in Texas, exposes the group to state organized-crime charges under a 2023 Texas law, and was followed by Abbott asking the U.S. Treasury to strip the group's tax-exempt status and asking Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to strip its nonprofit status. Removing it would lift the state's most severe official branding of the country's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization — and hand Hinojosa's critics a ready-made charge that she is undoing a public-safety measure on her way into office, a fight she will have to carry into a Texas Senate where Republicans still hold a 19-12 majority.
The Washington Post reported that Abbott "had embraced Islamophobia, vowing to 'ban sharia law,' blocking Muslim housing developments and designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, a terrorist group. Hinojosa said she would remove that designation." Asked about the use of public-safety powers, she said: "We have to use public safety measures for public safety," dismissing what she called "nonsense happening with power that should be used for public safety, money that should use for public safety, that is not being used for safety."
Abbott imposed the designation by proclamation on November 18, 2025, using powers from Senate Bill 1900, a 2023 law that gave Texas its own authority to name foreign terrorist organizations. The bill passed the Texas House 93-51 on May 22, 2023, with Hinojosa voting no, and Abbott signed it on June 9, 2023. A second law, House Bill 4211, passed the House 104-41 on May 8, 2025 — Hinojosa again voted no — and Abbott signed it on June 20, 2025. The proclamation named both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations. Abbott then pressed further: on December 2, 2025, he wrote to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging an investigation of CAIR and the suspension of its tax-exempt status, and on January 28, 2026, he wrote to Paxton demanding the attorney general use every available tool to strip CAIR of its nonprofit status and stop it operating in Texas. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on November 24, 2025, starting the federal designation of Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
The criticism of Hinojosa over CAIR began before the election and has now resumed with her pledge. CAIR's political arm, CAIR Action, rated Hinojosa "PREFERRED" for governor in its 2026 Texas voter guide, and Abbott's campaign seized on it on October 20 in a release headlined "Foreign Terrorist Organization Supports Gina Hinojosa's Campaign." Nine days before the election, Abbott went on Fox News' The Sunday Briefing and said: "Gina supports that endorsement that she got from them because she supports Sharia law, she supports Sharia communities," adding: "What I'm focused on doing is making sure that we ban Sharia law, Sharia cities, Sharia compounds." Hinojosa, a practicing Catholic, had not publicly answered the charge by that Sunday night. The attack did not decide the race: on November 3, she defeated Abbott by more than seven points.
CAIR's answer to the designation has been denial and a lawsuit. The group says it unequivocally condemns all acts of terrorism, denies any links to terrorist groups, and on November 20, 2025, its Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters sued Abbott and Paxton in federal court in Austin (CAIR Texas Dallas Fort Worth v. Abbott, No. 1:25-cv-01878), arguing the designation violated federal law; the case is still pending. The group's history is contested ground: the FBI suspended formal outreach to CAIR in 2008, and federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial, in which five leaders were convicted in 2008 — but CAIR itself was never charged. Texas is not the only state to act: Florida designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood under a new law, a federal judge in Florida, Allen C. Winsor, refused to block the designation, and CAIR suspended its Florida operations in early November 2026 while it appeals.
The pledge came in the same Washington Post interview in which Hinojosa, Texas' first Latina governor-elect and the first Democrat to win the office since Ann Richards in 1990, vowed to trade the culture wars for moderation, telling the Post: "Trump and I won the same border communities: I won them this time, he won them last time." She takes office on January 19, 2027, after naming a bipartisan transition team on November 5 led by former Republican state Rep. Ernest Bailes and labor leader Ryan Pollock. Two limits on the pledge are worth stating plainly: the Post's report focuses on the CAIR designation and does not clearly establish an explicit pledge to reverse the Muslim Brotherhood designation as well, and nothing in the interview or in contemporaneous coverage says anything about eliminating a state office connected to the designation.
For now the designation remains in force. Hinojosa has not said on which day she will act, and the CAIR lawsuit continues in the Austin federal court. She takes the oath on January 19, 2027, and the first test of her promise will come in her opening days in office, with the Republicans who spent the campaign warning that she would side with the group watching for the moment she does it.