Sen. Cruz Statement On Trump Administration Designation of Muslim Brotherhood Branches

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Sen. Cruz, a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement after the Trump administration announced it was designating branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.

Sen. Cruz said, "President Trump and Trump administration officials are systematically targeting the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches, including through President Trump's Executive Order last year and by implementing the strategy for designations laid out in that order. These measures were advanced despite overwhelming resistance, lobbying, and obstruction from supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad and from career bureaucrats across the U.S. government. I applaud and am deeply grateful for the President's leadership in securing these achievements.

"These steps are critical to the national security of the United States and to protecting Americans from the jihadist terrorism promoted by the Brotherhood. President Trump's Executive Order laid out a bottom-up strategy of designating individual Muslim Brotherhood branches as a way of countering the global Muslim Brotherhood, and I am confident that the President will pursue further measures and designations.

"I have been leading the fight in Congress to secure designations for my entire tenure in the Senate, and that bottom-up strategy is written into legislation I authored, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025. In the Senate, that legislation has secured bipartisan support, and I urge my colleagues to expeditiously advance it."

BACKGROUND

Sen. Cruz has introduced versions of the Muslim Brotherhood Designation Act in 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2025. In the Senate, the bill currently has bipartisan support from 10 cosponsors in addition to Sen. Cruz.