On April 9, 2026, Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the Designating Hamas Affiliates in America Act, which would direct the Secretary of the Treasury to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization. If enacted, the bill would freeze the organization's assets, prohibit any American from engaging with it, and revoke its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

Set aside, for a moment, what you think about CAIR. Set aside whatever you've heard about the organization, its positions, or its history. Focus instead on what the bill actually does — and what it means for every advocacy organization in America if the precedent it establishes is allowed to stand.

A sitting member of Congress is proposing to use the federal government's terrorism designation authority to shut down a domestic nonprofit. Not through prosecution. Not through a trial. Not through any proceeding in which the organization could confront evidence, cross-examine witnesses, or mount a legal defense before the punishment is imposed. The bill directs the executive branch to designate first, then requires the secretaries of state and treasury to submit a report explaining why the designation might be justified.

That is not due process. That is a legislative directive to punish first and investigate later.

The IRS Precedent: When Government Targets Advocacy

Americans have seen this before.

Between 2010 and 2013, the Internal Revenue Service systematically subjected conservative organizations to discriminatory treatment based on their names and political viewpoints. Groups with "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12" in their names were placed on an internal "Be On the Look Out" list and subjected to extraordinary scrutiny, processing delays, and intrusive questioning about their donors, activities, and even the content of their prayers, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The IRS eventually apologized, per NPR, and paid substantial financial settlements to more than 426 affected organizations, per CBS News. The scandal produced bipartisan outrage. Conservatives rightly identified it as a weaponization of government power against political advocacy. Heritage Foundation scholars published extensively on the First Amendment implications of IRS overreach, arguing that government agencies should never have the power to suppress organizations based on their political viewpoints.

The principle was correct: when the government uses its regulatory authority to target organizations based on their advocacy, the First Amendment is under attack.

The Chip Roy bill applies the same principle — government power used to shut down an advocacy organization — but with dramatically more severe consequences. The IRS delayed Tea Party groups' applications. Roy's bill would designate an organization as a terrorist entity, freeze every dollar it holds, criminalize anyone who interacts with it, and eliminate its legal existence as a nonprofit. The Tea Party groups lost processing time. Under this bill, CAIR would lose everything.

The Legal Foundation Is Missing

Roy's bill cites CAIR's inclusion on the government's list of unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. What the bill does not mention is what happened to that list in court.

In 2009, the U.S. District Court in Dallas ruled that the Department of Justice violated the due process rights of CAIR and more than 245 other individuals and organizations by publicly identifying them as unindicted co-conspirators, according to the Charity & Security Network. The court found that the government "has not argued or established any legitimate government interest that warrants publicly identifying CAIR" on the list.

In 2010, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the DOJ's publication of the list violated Fifth Amendment due process protections for the organizations named on it.

The legal status of "unindicted co-conspirator" carries no legal consequence. It does not require the government to prove anything in court. It is, as multiple federal judges have now ruled, a label that the government applied without affording the named organizations any opportunity to defend themselves — and a label whose public disclosure itself violated their constitutional rights.

CAIR has never been charged with a crime. It has never been indicted. It has never been convicted. No federal prosecutor, in any administration — including the Trump administration — has brought criminal charges against the organization. The bill proposes to impose the most severe penalty available under U.S. counterterrorism law on an organization that has never been found guilty of anything by any court.

The Think Tank That Wrote the Playbook

The Middle East Forum explicitly claimed credit for the legislative strategy behind the Roy bill, describing the legislation as the culmination of decades of its own research and activism. MEF's press release states that the organization was "founded in 1994 — the same year as CAIR" and has "systematically exposed CAIR's origins as a Hamas front, spoiling its relationship with government officials and corporate partners."

This is not a case of a think tank providing research that a legislator independently decided to act upon. This is a case of a think tank publicly declaring that it engineered the legislative outcome. MEF did not merely provide analysis. By its own account, it built the political infrastructure — the research pipeline, the media narratives, the relationships with lawmakers — that produced the bill.

MEF does not disclose its donors. The organization operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which means it is not required to publicly identify its funders. The public has no way of knowing who paid for the decades of advocacy that culminated in a congressional bill to designate a domestic civil rights organization as a terrorist entity.

The Daily Signal — the Heritage Foundation's media platform — published the exclusive announcement of Roy's bill. RAIR Foundation USA, which has testified before Congress on related issues, immediately amplified the legislation to its audience with a call for activist support. The coordination between the think tank that built the strategy, the media outlet that broke the story, and the activist organization that mobilized support was seamless.

The Precedent Problem

The constitutional concern is not whether CAIR is a good organization or a bad one. Reasonable people disagree about CAIR's positions, its leadership decisions, and its political alliances. That disagreement is protected by the First Amendment.

The constitutional concern is what happens when Congress establishes the precedent that a domestic advocacy organization can be designated as a terrorist entity — not through prosecution, not through trial, not through any adversarial proceeding — but through a legislative directive that bypasses the entire judicial system.

If this bill passes, the mechanism exists. Any future Congress could use the same template to designate any domestic nonprofit as a terrorist entity. The NRA. The ACLU. Planned Parenthood. The Heritage Foundation itself. The National Right to Life Committee. Any organization that a future congressional majority finds politically inconvenient could face the same treatment: asset freeze, criminal penalties for association, revocation of tax-exempt status — all without a trial.

Conservative legal scholars have made this argument for decades. The Federalist Society's position on government power is that enumerated rights exist precisely to prevent the government from targeting disfavored groups. The Cato Institute's position on First Amendment protections is that political advocacy — especially unpopular political advocacy — is the core of what the First Amendment was designed to protect. These are not progressive arguments. These are arguments that the conservative legal movement has made, correctly, for generations.

The question is whether those principles apply only when the government targets organizations that conservatives support — or whether they apply universally.

What the Bill Actually Accomplishes

Roy's bill does not address a gap in existing law. The Treasury Department already possesses the authority to designate organizations as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities under Executive Order 13224. The State Department can designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. If the evidence exists to support a designation, the executive branch can act without legislation.

The bill's function is not legal. It is political. It directs the executive branch to designate a specific, named organization — transferring the designation decision from the intelligence and legal professionals who evaluate evidence to a congressional vote driven by political considerations. It transforms a national security determination into a political one.

Senator Roy has stated that "for thirty years, CAIR has exploited America's openness to serve as Hamas's most effective lobbyist." That is a political characterization, not a legal finding. No court has found CAIR to be a lobbyist for Hamas. No prosecutor has charged CAIR with acting as a foreign agent. The bill treats a political accusation as a legal conclusion and proposes to impose criminal penalties on the basis of that accusation.

Why It Matters

The IRS Tea Party scandal taught Americans an important lesson: when the government uses its regulatory power to target organizations based on their political activities, every advocacy organization is at risk. Conservatives understood this instinctively when the target was their organizations. The question is whether they will apply the same principle when the target is an organization they disagree with.

The First Amendment does not protect only popular speech. The Fourth Amendment does not protect only popular people. The right to organize, to advocate, and to petition the government for redress of grievances is not conditioned on whether the majority approves of your cause.

If Congress can designate a domestic advocacy organization as a terrorist entity without a trial, without charges, without a conviction — on the basis of a legislative directive driven by a think tank's decades-long campaign — then the principle that protects every American's right to organize and advocate has been fatally compromised.

The bill number is H.R. 4097. Read it. Not the press releases about it. The bill itself. Then ask whether this is a power you want any government — this one or the next — to hold.

This analysis draws on the text of H.R. 4097 as filed with Congress, the Middle East Forum's own public statements claiming credit for the legislative strategy, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling on the Holy Land Foundation unindicted co-conspirator list, the Treasury Inspector General's findings on IRS targeting of conservative organizations, and the Heritage Foundation's published analysis on First Amendment protections against government overreach. VALOR Institute's forthcoming pipeline analysis of the think-tank-to-legislation pathway behind this bill will publish on April 22.