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The United States has signaled that it wants to take a fresh look at the legal tools used to identify and prosecute terrorist groups. Its most recent move concerns the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational organization that — despite the violent and destabilizing activity of some of its national branches — would not usually be designated in its entirety as a terrorist organization. Rather than announcing a decision outright, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the secretaries of treasury and state to examine whether specific national chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan should be placed on the government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations or treated as specially designated global terrorists. But this move is not a mere procedural exercise. It reflects a broader trend in which the administration has pushed terrorist designation authorities into new and sometimes untested territory, raising questions about how far these tools can be stretched before they lose coherence.

Over the past few years, the U.S. government has designated several groups as terrorist organizations that would once have been considered unlikely candidates for the label — from domestic self-proclaimed anti-fascist activists to powerful drug cartels. These decisions carry legal and political consequences that extend far beyond the act of designation itself. Once a group is named, the machinery of criminal prosecution begins to grind forward, which is where the risks sit. The most troubling implications do not lie in the symbolic act in designating a new group as a foreign terrorist organization or as specially designated global terrorists, but in the cases that follow in federal court, where prosecutors must apply a statutory framework built for national security threats to actors that do not fit the traditional mold.

The recent consideration to expand terrorist designations on select national chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood fits within this broader context. It also exposes the difficulty of trying to apply a single terrorism label to a movement across the Middle East with different forms, histories, and levels of state repression faced. The government has already designated Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, as both a foreign terrorist organization and as specially designated global terrorists. It remains unclear what practical value would come from adding other national chapters, or what such a step would mean for the future of the designation process itself.

What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?

The Muslim Brotherhood began in Egypt in the late 1920s as a religious and social movement that sought moral renewal, political reform, and resistance to foreign influence. From its inception, the group combined preaching, charitable work, and political activism to achieve its goals. Over several decades, it grew into a decentralized network of national branches, political parties, and affiliated entities with varying levels of activity across the Middle East and North Africa, but it never became a single unified body.

Each national chapter has developed its own leadership, priorities, and relationship with the state. In some countries, Muslim Brotherhood chapters have engaged in political life through lawful means and participated in elections. In others, chapters have been accused of supporting violence and working through clandestine networks, sometimes even operating underground in the face of harsh repression.

This wide variation makes it difficult to speak of the movement as if it were a single organization with a clear chain of command. It also makes any broader effort to designate the Muslim Brotherhood in its entirety as a foreign terrorist organization or as specially designated global terrorists both legally and conceptually fraught, since the movement’s identity depends heavily on where it operates and how the surrounding government treats it.

What Authorities Can the Government Use?

The United States uses two principal authorities to identify groups involved in terrorist activity: the foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorist designations. The first triggers broad criminal and immigration consequences, while the latter focuses on economic isolation. The government can use both together or select only one. Understanding how each designation works is essential to judging any proposal to widen their use.

In 1996, Congress established the Department of State’s authority to identify a foreign group that engages in terrorism and threatens U.S. national security. To meet the legal criteria for designation under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a group must be a foreign organization, engage in terrorist activity or retain the capability and intent to do so, and such activity must threaten the security of U.S. nationals or national security of the United States.

Once a group is labeled a foreign terrorist organization, criminal penalties are triggered that make it more difficult for terrorists to plan or carry out an attack in the United States. One such penalty is the material support statute, which makes it a federal crime to provide support, resources, or services to a foreign terrorist organization. Additionally, after being designated as a foreign terrorist organization, its members are barred from entering the country, and financial institutions must block any funds that fall under American jurisdiction. This combination is what gives the foreign terrorist organization designation its force. Without the label, the penalties do not apply.

The specially designated global terrorist authority is used to disrupt the financial support network for terrorist organizations. Derived from Executive Order 13224 and issued after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, this tool empowers the Department of the Treasury — through the Office of Foreign Asset Control — to identify individuals or entities as specially designated global terrorists and exert increased financial pressure. This terrorist designation authority freezes associated assets in the United States and prohibits nearly all financial dealings with associated groups, with civil and criminal penalties for violations — though they arise from the sanctions regime itself instead of the material support statute, and operate through financial law rather than immigration or membership rules.

Understanding how these tools operate — and the consequences they trigger — is essential to assessing proposals to widen their scope.

How Authorities Have Been Applied

In his first and second term, Trump has sought to apply terrorist designation authorities in new and unconventional ways. In particular, the Trump administration has sought to broaden the scope of the kinds of groups that can be targeted using the material support statute, including state entities, transnational criminal organizations, and domestic extremists.

As someone who spent 25 years at the Justice Department working with the material support statute — including overseeing the nationwide terrorist financing enforcement program from 2001 to 2008 — I am often asked for thoughts on these developments.

From my perspective, the history of the material support statute has been one of general government success. Since the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality over First Amendment challenges in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), it has been an indispensable counterterrorism tool. Using the foreign terrorist organization designation and the material support statute, the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted supporters of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State for supporting terrorist activity.

Virtually every terrorism indictment returned today includes a material support count. These successes reflect a statutory scheme carefully tethered to foreign terrorist organization designation authority — an anchoring principle that risky expansions now threaten.

We should be wary of efforts that stretch these authorities beyond their intended national security purpose.

So What About the Trump Administration?

Before turning to the Muslim Brotherhood, it is worth reflecting on how terrorist designation authorities have been used in recent years. The most consequential developments have not involved traditional foreign terrorist groups but efforts to extend designation authorities to actors that sit at the margins of the statutory framework, including state militaries, transnational criminal organizations, and loosely defined domestic movements. Each of these cases tests a different boundary built into the designation system, and each illustrates the same underlying risk: When tools designed for clearly defined foreign terrorist organizations are stretched to cover entities that do not fit that model, the legal coherence and prosecutorial reliability of the system begin to fray. It is against this backdrop that the current debate over the Muslim Brotherhood should be understood.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

In April 2019, the first Trump administration designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, despite the fact that it was not a subnational entity but rather an instrumentality of the Iranian state. To be sure, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been directly involved in funding and supporting terrorist activity that threatens U.S. national security around the world, but its official status as a branch of the Iranian military makes it a nontraditional foreign terrorist organization.

Recall that the Taliban’s quasi-state character, for example, has prevented its foreign terrorist organization designation despite efforts to do so, as concerns arose it would complicate U.S. and Afghan efforts to make diplomatic contact with the group, if needed. However, the Taliban are considered a specially designated global terrorist group.

The practical effects of this expansion are already visible. Following its designation as a foreign terrorist organization, federal prosecutors brought a material support case against individuals affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, something we would not otherwise have seen without the designation. The United States. v. Pahlawan case is a key example of this. The typical material support prosecution involves private persons who are accused of providing support to subnational groups that are designated, rather than instrumentalities of a country, which makes this an atypical case involving official Iran.

Drug Cartels as Terrorists?

On Feb. 20, 2025, the State Department designated certain Mexican and Venezuelan drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood review, there was no “pause and consider” stage — the cartels were designated through standard procedures.

There is nothing standard, however, about sweeping drug trafficking into the traditional counter-terrorism apparatus. Doing so takes foreign terrorist organization designations further away from their national security focus and into unchartered territory.

The issue is not spoiling the U.S. terrorism designation “brand name” by including drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which I don’t see as a realistic concern. In many ways, the shoe fits — these cartels plainly use violence against relevant civilian populations. The problem instead lies with the notion that opening material support liability to drug traffickers risks pulling unrelated criminal activity into a system designed for more traditional threats to U.S. national security.

These cases raise practical concerns as well. Will these cases be handled by lawyers in the Justice Department’s National Security Division? Will they be fed by intelligence generated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Material support cases are typically handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys and National Security Division attorneys who have gone through exhaustive training and have security clearances, because the cases are so complex and difficult. They often involve the Classified Information Procedures Act, a federal statute that governs how classified information is handled in criminal prosecutions — allowing cases involving national security secrets to proceed while protecting sensitive intelligence from public disclosure — as well as experts who are difficult to find once one gets away from the National Security Division.

Broadening the statute in this direction strains the institutional infrastructure that has made material support prosecutions to date so effective.

Antifa

Perhaps the furthest reach the Trump administration has taken to apply terrorist designation authorities is in its labeling of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, which set aside the whole machinery of terrorist designation authorities in favor of this expedient move. The designation, made on Sept. 22, 2025, was issued via a standalone executive order rather than the standard legal framework traditionally used by the secretary of state under the Immigration and Nationality Act. This aspirational legal tool was described in the Trump administration’s Strategy on Domestic Terrorism, highlighting the broadening scope of what it deems to be terrorist entities.

This case matters because terrorist designation authorities are designed to operate against identifiable foreign organizations, not fluid domestic ones — raising First Amendment concerns. Part of the problem is defining the group. Is Antifa a true ideology, as some have claimed? Is it sufficiently organized for prosecutors to define as a terrorist designee? The answers to these questions will be revealed in court, assuming the Trump administration takes the next step of charging individuals with Antifa associations, but it raises serious questions about whether it is sufficiently organized to qualify as a prosecutable entity.

If this occurs, the charges will presumably will not be for material support to a foreign terrorist organization, since Antifa is a domestic organization. The administration could rely on Section 2339A of the material support statute, which criminalizes providing material support for specific terrorist acts, rather than Section 2339B, which makes it a crime to provide support to a designated foreign terrorist organization as such.

But the case highlights a central risk underpinning recent designation efforts: When terrorism authorities are extended beyond the organizational and statutory limits that give them legal coherence, they invite constitutional challenge and weaken the prosecutorial reliability upon which the counter-terrorism system depends.

The U.S. Government Considers the Brotherhood

This brings us back to the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. government has debated how to handle the Muslim Brotherhood for years. This is definitely the closest it has come to formally designating the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, but it is not the first time groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood have been in Washington’s crosshairs.

In what was perhaps the single most successful terrorist financing case in the “Global War on Terror,” federal prosecutors succeeded in convicting several charitable fundraisers raising money in the United States for Hamas — the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. These crimes were committed with the help of a Texas-based charity known as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. In the course of the trial, the history of Hamas and its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood (and the corresponding history of the Holy Land Foundation) was treated extensively. The Holy Land Foundation case, which culminated with a 2008 jury conviction of the charity’s top officials as well as the charity itself, was based on years of FBI surveillance that was predicated on the theory that the Holy Land Foundation was a U.S.-based front for Hamas. Much of the investigative take consisted of official communiques between the various Muslim Brotherhood offices located in the United States and around the World, which could strengthen the case to designate additional Muslim Brotherhood national chapters as foreign terrorist organizations. The prosecutors submitted in court an extensive list of unindicted co-conspirators, which included the U.S.-based Council for Islamic American Relations, which was founnded as a Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front.

Looking back, one can say that the prosecution of a Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States was a high-water mark for U.S. counter-terrorism financing efforts. But as we think about possible designation actions against the organization, we must recognize that the United States has a history of being tough with Hamas, and thus the Brotherhood itself. Further designation of certain Muslim Brotherhood national offices might not be such a radical step after all.

The Trump Administration Targets the Brotherhood … Maybe

The process adopted by the Trump administration — directing two cabinet members to consider wider designation action — perhaps reflects the conceptual challenges inherent in the Muslim Brotherhood case, given the difficulty of designating such a large and far-flung organization. Although the United States has designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997, it’s unclear what these additional Muslim Brotherhood designations would add operationally. That may explain the announcement of this working group rather than announce immediate designations for additional Muslim Brotherhood chapters.

To be sure, taking steps to designate the Muslim Brotherhood is not the only sign that the Trump administration is engaging in aggressive terrorist designation actions.

The Muslim Brotherhood-related designations, if they occur, will not be as radical of a step that, for example, designating the Global Muslim Brotherhood would be. If opting for the latter, the United States would be accepting a conceptual challenge: It is far from clear whether the Global Muslim Brotherhood, like Antifa, has a definable existence that could make it subject to designation. Experts claim that the Muslim Brotherhood operates differently depending on where it is located and levels of repression faced, which would complicate claims of that a top-down command exists across the movement.

The United States might also only target the Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, which would be akin to the designation of Hamas, and not nearly as far-fetched as designating the Global Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization would be.

Conclusion

These are some of the challenges that might be faced by the Trump administration as it continues to engage in adventurism in the designation process. Eleven years ago, I described the material support statute as “an indispensable counter-terrorism tool.” There is no reason to doubt that assessment today, although we may be critical of efforts to stretch it too far in further terrorism designations. Meanwhile, the administration appears poised to treat fentanyl as weapon of mass destruction, which is really a loose fit, and should be a wake-up call for those who worry about mixing apples and oranges in terrorism designations.

Jeff Breinholt retired from the National Security Division of the Department of Justice in January 2024 following a distinguished 34-year career. Between 2001 and 2008, he served as nationwide coordinator for terrorist financing nationwide criminal enforcement. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School. The opinions in this article are his own.

Image: Justice Department