The secretary of health and human services has launched a terrorism investigation into an organization that has never received a dollar from his department.

"Not even a penny. Kennedy would know that if he had spent any amount of time doing research before he decided to publicly attack us in this way."

— Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of CAIR

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over the Department of Health and Human Services to revolutionize American medicine. Or at least that was the official line. What he has not been briefed on apparently includes the basic function of the federal grant system, which tracks exactly which organizations receive money from which agencies.

CAIR national, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has never received federal funding from HHS. Not in this administration. Not in the last one. Not ever. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the organization's national deputy director, told The Intercept that Kennedy's public announcement last month that his department was investigating CAIR for "ties to designated terrorist organizations" and "misuse of federal grant funds" could have been avoided with five minutes of due diligence.

What Kennedy actually did was respond to a letter from Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, the man who founded the "Sharia-Free America Caucus" and is currently running for Texas attorney general. Roy's letter to Kennedy made allegations without evidence, accusing CAIR and its California and Washington affiliates of having ties to Hamas and misusing federal funds intended to help Afghan refugees settle in the United States.

Kennedy posted about it on X. He did not open an investigation. He did not issue a subpoena. He did not ask his own office to verify whether CAIR had ever received HHS money. He simply amplified a congressional letter from a politician whose entire brand is Islamophobia and called it a federal action.

The distinction matters because CAIR California and CAIR Washington, which operate independently from the national organization, have received federal health dollars. Not from HHS directly, but through state-mediated programs designed to help Afghan evacuees after the Taliban retook power in 2021. Both state chapters said their use of those funds was fully accounted for, transparent, and compliant with legal obligations.

CAIR California's executive director, Hussam Ayloush, described the HHS inquiry as an attempt to "create smear and destruction, to silence the most important American Muslim voices in the country." He noted that he did receive a letter from HHS's Office for Civil Rights director, Paula M. Stannard, who wrote on Kennedy's behalf. The letter was what Ayloush called "amicable" and "reassuring." It contained boilerplate about protecting all Americans from discriminatory barriers and did not commit to any investigation.

Then a few days later, Kennedy posted on social media announcing an investigation into CAIR national, CAIR California, and CAIR Washington. The disconnect between the reassuring private letter and the public terrorism accusation left all three organizations wondering which version of events was real.

Translation: this was not an investigation. It was a campaign ad.

The timing is not accidental. Saher Selod, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, pointed out that anti-Muslim rhetoric tends to spike during election cycles. "Saying we need to investigate CAIR national is following a playbook of trying to motivate a base to come out to vote, and Muslims have become the bait in this moment," he said.

Roy thanked Kennedy in a press release for "investigating CAIR's alleged ties to groups such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood." The wording was deliberate: he used the present participle to imply an active inquiry even though no such inquiry had materialized.

At the state level, the pattern has been even more overt. Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott both formally designated CAIR as a "foreign terrorist organization" last December. Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles posted on X that "Muslims don't belong in American society."

But Democrats have not stayed clean. During the New York City mayoral election last year, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand had to issue an apology after characterizing now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, as supportive of a "global jihad." In New Jersey's June primary, Dr. Adam Hamawy faced attacks from some Democratic opponents over a 1995 trial testimony he gave for a religious leader convicted of plotting terror attacks.

Imraan Siddiqi, executive director of CAIR Washington, connected the accusations to a broader pattern of using fraud allegations as a cover for targeting Muslim communities. He pointed to attacks on Somali-run daycares in Washington state, which followed conspiracy theories that spread from Minnesota about Somalis committing child care grant fraud. The conspiracy was traced to Nick Shirley, whose videos amplified baseless claims across multiple states.

The same playbook appeared in Washington state, where predominantly Somali Muslim childcare workers faced harassment after similar fraud claims went viral. In each case, the allegation of misuse served as a pretext for a deeper political target: Muslim organizations that organize, advocate, and document government abuses.

Hatem Baizan, an Ethnic Studies lecturer at UC Berkeley, summed up the administration's approach. "Facts are immaterial," he said. "The aim is to throw as much dirt as possible, use as many investigative tools as possible, with the hope that you have enough delegitimization, enough doubt, to actually get people to distance themselves from CAIR."

Kennedy's department has not contacted any of the three CAIR organizations since his social media post. No subpoenas. No formal requests. No evidence presented. Just the claim itself, floating in the court of public opinion, designed to stick without ever being tested.

CAIR national's Mitchell put it plainly: "No subpoenas, no nothing at all, just this shot across the bow in the court of public opinion."

The secretary of HHS claimed he was investigating terrorism. The organization he accused had never received money from his department. The congressman who prompted the accusation had no evidence. The states that followed suit had no authority over a national organization. And the people most affected by the smear were the ones who had done nothing wrong.

The question is not whether the investigation is real. The question is what it costs an American Muslim organization to be accused of terrorism by the government, even when the government knows the accusation has no basis.