Gavin Newsom’s California helps fund CAIR radical Islamists

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as an innocuous Muslim civil rights group. But CAIR finds itself under increasing scrutiny for its past alleged connections to radical Islam, and for its ongoing rhetorical support for Hamas.

Last November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The following month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed suit, citing CAIR’s being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism financing case two decades ago.

But as other states move to sideline CAIR, California is embracing it.

CAIR-CA, the organization’s largest statewide affiliate, is flush with taxpayer cash. In the last five years, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has sent at least $41 million in combined state and federal grants to the group, according to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based nonprofit.

Much of that money, it turns out, comes from the federal government. And last year, it was confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review was investigating whether CAIR-CA should remain eligible for taxpayer funds.

This report — based on a trove of documents provided to us by IAN — reveals good reason for the DOJ to be digging into CAIR-CA.

It also raises serious questions about why Gavin Newsom’s government is funding such a radical organization.

CAIR was founded in 1994 with the ostensible aim of advancing Muslim-American civil rights. The organization claims that it “is not and never has been an agent” or affiliate of “any militant group.” But the historical record offers justification to question that characterization.

CAIR’s co-founders, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, were leading members of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. That committee oversaw the creation of three other organizations that “effectively became the US-based Hamas infrastructure … to achieve the goal of supporting Hamas with media, money and political support,” according to a George Washington University Program on Extremism report.

In an October 1993 meeting planned by the Palestine Committee — secretly monitored by the FBI — participants allegedly discussed how to support Hamas’s efforts as well as how to help derail the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

A year later, CAIR was born, with Ahmad and Awad assuming leading roles. For 11 years, Ahmad served as CAIR’s national chairman. Awad remains CAIR’s national executive director.

Some of this information came to light during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, which saw five of that charity’s leaders convicted for collectively funneling more than $12 million to Hamas. The investigation uncovered a network of Hamas-linked organizations.

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While CAIR was not prosecuted, the court found “ample evidence to establish” that it was associated with the Palestinian terror group. An FBI Special Agent reportedly testified at trial that CAIR was a “front group for Hamas.”

CAIR-CA leaders have also engaged in incendiary rhetoric. On October 7, 2023, the day of Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, posted to social media: “We are witnessing decolonization.” On November 12, 2023, Hussam Ayloush, the CEO of CAIR-CA, likened Israel to Nazi Germany and said, given the Jewish state’s “occupation” of Palestine, that “Israel should be attacked.”

One would think that CAIR’s record would make government agencies pause before providing it with public funds. But under Governor Gavin Newsom, California’s state government has seemingly never met a “marginalized group” it did not want to shower with other people’s money. CAIR-CA is rolling in tax dollars.

In 2022, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) awarded CAIR-CA $7.2 million in federal funds via a state program to provide immigration-related legal assistance. For its part, CAIR-CA pledged to serve approximately 1,800 people through September 2024, and earlier this year, claimed to have fulfilled that promise “across . . . various subgrantees.”

According to IAN, a public records request submitted to the CDSS did not confirm how many legal cases have been handled as part of the grant; in its most recent annual report, CAIR-CA said that it had helped “dozens of Afghan families” through the same project. In September 2025, CDSS rubberstamped an additional $23 million in federal funds for CAIR-CA.

In 2024, CAIR-CA’s IRS filings revealed that it had distributed more than $4 million in subgrants to 39 organizations. Among these sub-grantees were various groups with Islamist ties.

For example, CAIR-CA sub-granted roughly $185,000 to California chapters of the Muslim American Society (MAS). George Washington University’s Program on Extremism identifies MAS as an open “Brotherhood legacy group” in the U.S. In 2004, a top MAS official estimated that nearly half of the organization’s activists were Muslim Brotherhood members. (MAS, which did not respond to our request for comment, claims to have “no affiliation” with the Muslim Brotherhood.)

CAIR-CA also sub-granted $30,000 to the Islamic Society of Orange County, which has ties to an individual connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1992, ISOC’s director invited Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh,” to deliver a lecture, during which he reportedly “dismissed” nonviolent interpretations of jihad. A year later, Rahman was charged with seditious conspiracy for his connection to the attack. (ISOC did not respond to our request for comment.)

In 2024, CAIR-CA sub-granted $117,000 to California “relief” chapters of the Islamic Circle of North America. ICNA was originally established as a U.S. affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami movement, whose founder’s ideology influenced the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, in 2000, a former ICNA president penned an article that seemingly endorsed the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the U.S. (ICNA did not respond to our request for comment.)

CAIR-CA has claimed, however implausibly, that it has no control over the selection of its sub-grantees. In January 2026, the director of CAIR-CA, Hussam Ayloush, wrote to a congressional committee claiming that his organization “had no input or role” in determining the sub-grantees. Instead, he suggested that CDSS had selected them. 

“Ayloush personally signed every one of these ALSP grants as executive director of CAIR-LA,” a spokesman for the Network Contagion Research Institute and IAN told the New York Post. “[A]n entity contractually charged with administering funds and subgranting services necessarily plays a role in identifying subgrantees and their performance under the grant.”

In response to our request for comment, a CAIR-CA spokesman called allegations against the organization “baseless” and “part of a broader defamation campaign.” “All contributions and grants that CAIR California receives are fully reported, accounted for, and used strictly for their intended purposes,” he said, “subject to rigorous internal and external auditing and reporting. This transparency is why both private and public funders have worked with us and continue to do so.”

In March 2025, IAN requested that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launch an investigation into CAIR-CA, stating that a “forensic audit” was needed to determine the scope of the organization’s “financial misconduct, compliance [breaches], and support for terrorism.” Three months later, the DOJ confirmed that an investigation was underway, in correspondence with IAN.

The failures of California’s state government present an opportunity for the Trump administration. If the DOJ were officially and permanently to revoke CAIR-CA’s accreditation with the Executive Office for Immigration Review — a status that the group relies on to receive federal immigration funds — then tax dollars currently flowing into its coffers would be halted.

In other words, the solution is simple: turn off the taps.

Ryan Thorpe is an investigative reporter at the Manhattan Institute. Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution.