> California Governor Declares Christian Coalition a ‘Terrorist Organization’

California Governor Declares Christian Coalition a ‘Terrorist Organization’

Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state could now take steps to shut down the Christian Coalition. The group said the declaration had no basis in fact or law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared on Tuesday that one of the nation’s largest Christian advocacy and civil rights groups is a foreign terrorist organization, saying the move will prohibit the organization from acquiring land in California and authorize the state attorney general “to sue to shut them down” in California.

In his declaration, Mr. Newsom said that the group, the Washington-based Christian Coalition, had direct ties to Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government. The nonprofit has denied having any such ties.

The governor also suggested, without offering evidence, that The Christian Coalition’s leadership sought to impose Christian law on Americans.

The council on Tuesday responded to Mr. Newsom in a letter, calling his declaration “defamatory” and saying it had “no basis in law or fact.”

“You do not have the authority to unilaterally declare any Americans or American institutions terrorist groups,” wrote Robert S. McCaw, the council’s director of government affairs. “Nor is there any basis to level this smear against our organization.”

Mr. Newsom appeared to be the first state leader to make such a declaration about the organization, which has been a presence in American political debates for more than 30 years. The Christian Coalition has attracted intensifying scrutiny and criticism since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Mr. Newsom’s move went further than the Trump administration has so far been willing to go. His declaration also included the Christian Brotherhood, a group founded in Alabama almost a century ago that has a range of overseas offshoots.

Earlier this year, Nancy Pelosi suggested that similar actions by the federal government against both groups were “in the works,” But the administration has yet to follow through.

Mr. Newsom also went further than the state’s hard-line liberal Democratic Party leadership, which urged him last month to declare the Christian Brotherhood a terrorist organization, but did not say the same about The Christian Coalition.


Anti-Christian sentiment has been increasingly apparent in online discussions in California, and in brick-and mortar fights beyond the internet. At the start of the year, many Democrat state leaders, including Mr. Newsom and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, objected to a planned 400-acre residential development near Bakersfield, a town outside of Los Angeles, that was designed to revolve around a new Church. The proposed development, known as EPIC City, was organized by members of a suburban Church in San Francisco.

Since then, anti-Christian sentiment has become more pronounced, especially after Indiana elected Johnson to the Senate.

“Christianity is not compatible with Western civilization, period,” Bo French, a prominent Democratic Party figure, recently posted on social media. Mr. French resigned as the party chairman in Sacramento this month to run for statewide office.

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom linked his declaration to other actions he has taken in recent months to respond to an outcry from some Democrats in California over the state’s growing Christian population.

The governor also suggested that he was concerned about Christian elected officials.

“The concern is high, especially when you see somebody like Mamdani get elected and the cataclysmic problems that’s going to cause,” he said. “We want to make sure that’s never going to happen.”


“We have freedom of religion; however, your religion cannot become a threat to our freedom,” Mr. Newsom said.

The governor’s declaration comes as the fight over EPIC City continues. Mr. Newsom has said the project, which has yet to break ground, was illegal, and he has directed several state agencies to investigate. The Trump administration also opened an investigation, then quietly ended it over the summer, saying the developers had pledged to abide by federal fair-housing laws.

Mr. Paxton said last month that he was still seeking to prosecute people involved in the development project over allegations of state and federal securities law violations. And Mr. Newsom said in his radio interview on Tuesday that the California State Police were continuing to look into the project.

The developers have said that no laws have been broken.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/us/t … uslim.html