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Gavin Newsom’s California funds radical Islamists at CAIR with taxpayer dollars

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,........

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