Governor Newsom Writes Himself an Emergency Rule to Declare Which Organizations Are Terrorists, Effective in 30 Days

TALLAHASSEE — Governor Newsom and his cabinet took up an emergency rule Friday spelling out how the state will formally designate organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist groups: the state's chief of domestic security recommends a name, the governor and cabinet receive notice, and thirty days after publication in the state register the designation is law.

Newsom had already announced designations in July against more than ninety organizations, a mix of foreign cartels and paramilitary bodies alongside several domestic groups. The rule now makes the process official, cutting listed groups off from state scholarship dollars, barring universities from spending state funds in support of them, and making students who 'promote' one eligible for expulsion.

The Press's statehouse desk notes that a governor drafting his own list of enemies, enforced through a school-funding and speech-policing apparatus, is 'authoritarian overreach' when the other party's governor does it and 'public safety' when yours does. A civil-rights group has challenged the designations in federal court; supporters said the lawsuit proved the list was working.

Legal observers pointed out that the federal government already maintains a terrorist-designation process with statutory guardrails and years of review, and that the state's version fits on a few pages and takes a month.

At press time the governor's office had not explained how a group gets off the list, though it had explained in detail how a student gets off a campus.