A viral video posted on May 6 by Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal, shows Zahra Billoo — executive director of CAIR's San Francisco Bay Area office — coaching her followers on how to be strategically antisemitic. Not how to stop being antisemitic. How to hide it better.
Your tax dollars at work, California.
In the clip, Billoo tells her audience, "Now imagine your LinkedIn profile says, 'I hate all Zionists.' Not strategic. Right? … You may say that sitting around Kahwah House on a Friday night, but you're not going to say it on your LinkedIn." Her advice wasn't "don't hate Jews." It was "don't get caught hating Jews on a platform with a search function." That's the leadership of an organization that California has handed $41 million to over the last five years.
Rufo put it bluntly on X: "CAIR-CA leader Zahra Billoo advises her followers that they can express hatred against Jews in private, but should not write 'I hate all Zionists' on their social media profiles, in order to be 'strategic.' Gavin Newsom gave her group $40 million."
The funding trail is damning. According to City Journal's investigation, the California Department of Social Services has rubberstamped at least $41 million in funding to CAIR-CA over five years. That includes a $7.2 million federal award in 2022 for Afghan legal services and an additional $23 million in September 2025. The majority of those dollars are federal money flowing through Sacramento. CAIR-CA's CEO, Hussam Ayloush, signed the sub-grant contracts. The same Hussam Ayloush who, on November 12, 2023, publicly compared Israel to Nazi Germany and stated "Israel should be attacked."
And it gets worse. CAIR-CA distributed over $4 million in sub-grants to 39 organizations in 2024 alone, including $185,000 to the Muslim American Society — which George Washington University's Program on Extremism identifies as a Muslim Brotherhood "legacy group" — and $117,000 to Islamic Circle of North America relief chapters.
This is not ancient history or guilt by association. In the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, the court found "ample evidence" of CAIR's association with Hamas. An FBI special agent testified under oath that CAIR was a "front group for Hamas." Holy Land Foundation leaders funneled over $12 million to the terrorist organization. CAIR co-founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad led the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee, which federal prosecutors described as having "effectively became the US-based Hamas infrastructure."
Texas designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization in November 2025. Florida followed in December 2025. The Department of Justice confirmed in July 2025 that an investigation into CAIR is underway. Former FBI Special Agent Lara Burns, who spent 20 years investigating terrorism, told City Journal, "You can't look at what CAIR is doing today in isolation."
Two states call them terrorists. The DOJ is investigating them. The FBI called them a Hamas front. And Gavin Newsom keeps writing checks.
Newsom's response to the Billoo video was the political equivalent of hiding behind the couch. He posted on X: "A 46-year national high in antisemitic assaults should alarm EVERY American. We must confront hate and antisemitism directly and reject hate wherever it appears." He did not mention CAIR. He did not mention Billoo. He did not mention the $41 million. His spokesperson told reporters the administration "works with a range of nonprofit organizations through community initiatives." A range of nonprofits. Including the one coaching people to hide their antisemitism.
Billoo herself has a track record that would disqualify her from managing a Dairy Queen, let alone running a taxpayer-funded civil rights outfit. On October 7, 2023 — the day Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis — she declared, "We are witnessing decolonization." When Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed on July 31, 2024, she declared him a martyr.
The video is damning. The funding makes it a scandal. And Gavin Newsom's silence makes it a cover-up.
