The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks gave the Council on American-Islamic Relations enough confidence to show its true colors. Certainly anyone paying attention saw CAIR regularly uncork its leaders’ anti-Semitism for public consumption, but until Oct. 7, the political class mostly downplayed those incidents or ignored them altogether in the name of ideological unity. The shocking barbarity of the Hamas-led Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians that day made it impossible for CAIR to keep up its mainstream, moderate façade.

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7,” crowed CAIR director Nihad Awad weeks after the attacks. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”

Grotesque, indefensible stuff. The Biden White House, which had previously (and incomprehensibly) recruited CAIR to its anti-Semitism task force, finally put some daylight between the president and the terror supporters. “We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms,” a Biden spokesman said. “The horrific, brutal terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 were, as President Biden said, ‘abhorrent’ and represent ‘unadulterated evil.’”

Yesterday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took it a step further by designating CAIR, which had been named an unindicted coconspirator in a 2007 terrorism-financing case, as a terrorist organization. CAIR responded on X with a post that paraded the morally degraded hallmarks of the organization for all to see:

“Greg Abbott is an Israel First politician who has spent months stoking anti-Muslim hysteria to smear American Muslims critical of the Israeli government… Unlike Mr. Abbott—who unleashed violence against Texas students protesting the Gaza genocide to satisfy his AIPAC donors—our civil rights organization is an independent voice that answers to the American people.”

CAIR doing its best Nick Fuentes impression is as good an example of the “horseshoe effect” as one will find.

But the real icing on the cake came just a few hours later. According to the New York Post, a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Intelligent Advocacy Network, two anti-extremism groups, reveals that CAIR has been subsidizing pro-Hamas violence on campus. As the Post reports:

“In California, the largest arm of the CAIR web of nonprofits, affiliates in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised more than $100,000 in donations for campus radicals, while the main group solicited $64,000 in donations, records show.

“The money was then offered as interest free loans in grants of $1,000 to students who lost ‘scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy,’ according to CAIR’s website.

“In October 2024, CAIR-CA awarded $20,000 in loans and scholarships to 20 student protestors from the ‘Champions of Justice Fund.’”

Such punishments were so rare, of course, that to qualify for CAIR’s apparent subsidies, one would have had to be among the students causing real harm to those around them.

Anti-Semitism alone has rarely been enough to cost groups like CAIR their political influence. Perhaps now they have finally crossed too many lines.