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Abbott Runs Risk of Alienating President
with Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Label
Capitol Inside
November 19, 2025
Apparently fed up with foot-dragging at the White House, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization on Tuesday in a move that President Donald Trump has seriously considered but refused to take despite intense pressure from his MAGA base.
Abbott escalated an unprecedented attack on Islamic influence in the Lone Star State on Wednesday when he told state and local officials in Dallas and Collin counties to launch investigations into so-called Sharia courts that the governor believes to be in business in those targeted locations.
The Republican governor suspects that Muslims are conducting tribunals that aren't part of the official state and federal judicial systems in Dallas and the suburban county that's its northern neighbor. Abbott voiced his concerns and demands for probes in a letter that he fired off to the district attorneys and sheriffs in Dallas and Collin, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin.
Abbott led the push for legislation that he signed in June and "ceremonially" in September as a ban on the establishment of residential developments like EPIC City, which the East Plano Islamic Center planned to build north of Dallas on a 408-acre spread in Collin and Hunt counties. The governor said the development would be a threat to religious freedom in Texas by limiting property ownership to Muslims. Abbott claimed that residents would be subject to Sharia law and restrictions on the sale of property if they chose to leave.
But Abbott's foray into the terrorist designation arena with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as his targets may run the risk of alienating the president he's worked so hard to impress in light of Trump's own high-profile inaction in that regard for most of the past decade.
The governor declined to call out the president for failing to slap the terrorist tag on the Muslim Brotherhood after indicating at the outset of his first term in the White House that he was inclined to do so. Abbott - by the same token - did not question in an executive order that took aim at the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR why Trump had refused for years to designate the organization as a terrorist group.
Conservatives who pressed Trump for such a designation like activist Laura Loomer believe the president as gone soft on the Muslim Brotherhood as a consequence of the close ties that he's cultivated with Qatar and its top leader, the Emir Sheikh Tamim. The emir in Qatar, in turn, has been closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump took the initiative in late September to formally recognize Qatar as an an ally in an executive order that vowed to help secure the Middle Eastern country with the promise of "diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military" assistance in the event of an attack there by a foreign enemy. The formal decree came four months after Qatar donated a Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner to the U.S. as an "unconditional gift" that's being refitted for a conversion to Air Force One.
Loomer, once regarded by the president as a close adviser, turned up the heat on Wednesday in a post on X.
"Admin source tells me that the plan to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization was a done deal 2 weeks ago, but it was killed off because the Qataris asked the Trump administration to release a senior Muslim Brotherhood terrorist from Egypt and ultimately decided it wouldn’t be good for Qatar for the US to designate the Muslim Brotherhood," Loomer contended. "This is outrageous and the truth is going to come out about this foreign lobby effort by the Qataris to endanger our national security."
The Texas governor could be sticking his nose in the president with the terrorist designation for the Muslim Brotherhood that Trump has considered since the outset of his initial term in the White House in 2017 as an action that he could have resisted as a result of the new alliance with Qatar.
The group CAIR, which had sued the state of Texas over crackdowns on protests on college campuses, blasted the governor in a statement that Newsweek published on Tuesday.
"Although we are flattered by Greg Abbott's obsession with our civil rights organization, his publicity stunt masquerading as a proclamation has no basis in fact or law," the group asserted. "By defaming a prominent American Muslim institution with debunked conspiracy theories and made-up quotes, Mr. Abbott has once again shown that his top priority is advancing anti-Muslim bigotry, not serving the people of Texas."
more to come ...
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