The White House is considering issuing a new executive order banning travel to the United States from certain countries, resurrecting a controversial policy from President Donald Trump’s first term, according to three people who attended a Wednesday White House meeting where the plan was discussed.

The planned executive order was mentioned in a meeting at the White House with Jewish leaders. The meeting, which had several dozen attendees, was organized in response to the deadly antisemitic attack in Washington last month that left two Israeli Embassy staffers dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The briefing took place three days after an antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., injured 15 people at a march to raise awareness about Israeli hostages in Gaza.

White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the group about the order but did not mention which countries would be included in the ban. Scharf said Trump could sign the order as soon as Wednesday. 

“They were just saying that an executive order regarding a travel ban is in the works,” one of the sources told Jewish Insider after the meeting. “Everyone was very careful about what they said and didn’t say.” 

Another source said the planned order was “not directly because of the events in Boulder,” but that the attack in Boulder was mentioned “as a rationale, as proof of why this executive order was so important.” 

The alleged perpetrator in the Boulder attack is an Egyptian national who is in the U.S. illegally, having overstayed his visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The suspect’s wife and five children were taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Tuesday and were set to be deported to Egypt, but a federal judge on Wednesday halted deportation proceedings against the family members. 

In 2017, days after taking office in his first term, Trump signed an executive order barring travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations. Egypt was not one of them. 

Speakers at the meeting included Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff; Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice; evangelical pastor Paula White and Jenny Korn from the White House Faith Office; Noah Pollak, senior advisor at the Education Department; Sebastian Gorka, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council; Adam Boehler, U.S. special envoy for hostage response; Martin Marks, White House Jewish liaison; and Leo Terrell, chair of the federal antisemitism task force. Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was in the room. 

Attendees at the meeting included a wide range of Jewish communal leaders, with representatives from Chabad, Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Orthodox Union, American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, AIPAC, Agudath Israel and several Brooklyn-based Orthodox institutions. 

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., on a group marching to raise awareness about the hostages held in Gaza, a bipartisan push is growing on Capitol Hill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the assailant, an Egyptian citizen who lived in Kuwait for 17 years prior to arriving in the United States, appears to have expressed support for the group and Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who previously served as Egypt’s president.

Law enforcement officials have not announced any further links between Soliman and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, and the group is closely tied to Qatar.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Tuesday that he plans to reintroduce a “modernized version” of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act he previously led, adding, “the Muslim Brotherhood used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen their influence, but the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security.”

The Washington Free Beacon first reported on Cruz’s efforts.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) separately wrote to President Donald Trump on Tuesday urging him to “conduct a comprehensive investigation” into designating the group as a foreign terrorist organization, noting that multiple U.S. allies and partners including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Austria have already done so, and France is considering doing the same.

“It must be noted that such ideological influence not only fosters division but also encourages radicalization against the United States, our allies and the foundational principals that define our societies,” Moskowitz wrote. “Taking steps to investigate and designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an FTO would enhance the ability of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to disrupt financial networks and recruitment activities connected to its affiliates.”

The Muslim Brotherhood Designation Act backed by Cruz was first introduced in 2014 by former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Cruz and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) subsequently picked up the torch, reintroducing the bill in the subsequent four congressional sessions.

At its high-water mark, in 2016, the legislation picked up additional 71 co-sponsors, most of them Republicans, in the House, and seven in the Senate, and was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee by a 17-10 vote. When it was last introduced, the legislation picked up just 14 co-sponsors in the House and two in the Senate.

The bill as of 2021 would have directed the administration, within 60 days of passage, to assess whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization and to provide a “detailed justification” if it determines it does not.

Near the end of his first term, Trump was expected to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group but that move never materialized.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), who on Monday told Jewish Insider that the Council on American-Islamic Relations should also be designated as a terrorist group, told JI on Tuesday that he had reached out to Cruz to offer to lead the Muslim Brotherhood legislation in the House.

“That’s really the nexus of all this,” Fine said, accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of funding CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel groups. “None of what we’ve seen in America is organic … Look, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE don’t want them and Egypt doesn’t want them, maybe you ought to take a hint.”

He described CAIR as the “mouthpiece” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and said that designating the Muslim Brotherhood would inevitably wrap in CAIR and SJP. CAIR’s leader met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood as recently as 2022, and has been linked to other Brotherhood-affiliated groups. CAIR has praised the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderating force with which the U.S. should engage.

SJP and its parent group, American Muslims for Palestine, have also been accused of having grown out of Muslim Brotherhood networks in the U.S.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told JI she hasn’t been contacted about the effort to designate the group yet, “but I can think of no reason why I wouldn’t support that.” She added, “I am surprised — how has that not already happened?”

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), the newest Jewish Republican member of Congress, argued on Monday, following an antisemitic attack on a group marching in support of the hostages in Gaza in Boulder, Colo., that the federal government should take aggressive action against groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations whose executive director said he was “happy to see” the Oct. 7 terror attack.

Fine added that the federal government also should be deporting all undocumented immigrants and take a strong hand toward college campuses in order to fight rising antisemitism..

“I’m angry that we’ve allowed this to get there, I’m angry that we’ve allowed Muslim terror to operate unfettered in this country,” Fine said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Monday. “Make no mistake, the Palestinian cause is fundamentally a broken, evil philosophy … It’s time to realize there is evil in this world and we have to fight it.”

He said that institutions tied to that ideology, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and Students for Justice in Palestine, should not be allowed to operate in the United States, and should be designated as terrorist organizations, “because that’s what they are.” 

He noted that the executive director of CAIR had celebrated the Oct. 7 attack, and remains in his position. Nihad Awad had in November 2023 said he “was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in.”

Fine also said that the U.S. must deport “every illegal immigrant,” as well as closely examine individuals entering the country “from these places that hate us.” The Boulder attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was an Egyptian immigrant who overstayed a tourist visa and was subsequently granted a work permit, which expired in March, according to Fox News.

Fine said that, while security funding is important, it’s impossible to provide individual security to every Jewish American, making it critical to go on the offensive.

“What we need to do is hunt bad guys,” Fine said. “And we can start by throwing out every illegal immigrant. And we can start by taking a hard look at people who are here on visas from Egypt.”

He said the U.S. must also move to stop countries such as Qatar and China “who are not our friends,” from “buying our universities and buying off our media outlets,” and take action to protect Jewish students.

He noted that he has introduced legislation that would explicitly make antisemitism and other forms of religious discrimination illegal on college campuses. Currently, based on guidance in executive orders, antisemitism is banned as a form of discrimination based on shared ancestry. Fine argued that his legislation would “create real legal courses of action” for Jewish students to protect themselves.

Though Elias Gonzalez — who killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside of the Capital Jewish Museum last month — was not a student or an undocumented immigrant, Fine argued that campuses and immigrants are epicenters of antisemitic incitement and that addressing those would address larger trends.

“When these people hear that the nation’s best universities are saying that Israel is engaged in a genocide or 14,000 babies are going to die, they are radicalizing people through false information with the stamp of approval of universities,” Fine said. “So this guy [Gonzalez] was involved with organizations that are tied back to universities.”

“Also, he may not be an illegal immigrant, he may not be on a visa from another country, but I guarantee he was hanging around people who were and they’re going to rub off,” Fine continued.

Fine said he expects that antisemitic rhetoric and attacks will only get worse after Sunday’s attack in Boulder. He said he hadn’t slept the night after the attack because he was afraid of what might come next.

“What the Muslim terrorists will do is they’ll do what they did before — they double down, they get more aggressive with the rhetoric afterwards,” Fine said. “That’s part of the strategy. Punch and then punch harder … Muslim terrorists have declared open season on Jews. And I think that is a frightening thing. And I think the people who need to be hunted are the Muslim terrorists.”

Pressed on the fact that Rodriguez was not Muslim, Fine responded, “there are white supremacists who aren’t white … it is terrorism that is rooted in the Muslim faith.”

“They call it Christian nationalism, I don’t think every Christian is a bad person, I think very few of them are,” Fine continued.

Fine argued that surveys show a substantial portion of American Muslims are sympathetic to Hamas, that leading Muslim organizations like CAIR have supported Hamas and antisemitism, that there are few in Gaza who have stood up against Hamas and that many of those who participated in the Oct. 7 attack were not Hamas fighters.

“We are told, ‘No, no, no, it’s this tiny, tiny fringe.’ It is not a tiny fringe,” Fine said. “I don’t know whether it’s 30 or 40 or 70 or 90%, I don’t know. But I know it’s not 1% that are bad, and it’s time for us to stop pretending that it is.”

WASHINGTON — As visitors entered the Capital Jewish Museum on Thursday morning, open for the first time after an antisemitic attack killed two Israeli Embassy staffers steps from its doors last week, they walked past a makeshift memorial to Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky before security guards wanded them down and checked their bags. 

The museum might be reopening, but its staff — and the broader Washington Jewish community — now feel a heaviness that did not exist last week, when the museum was on the cusp of unveiling a major new exhibit about LGBTQ Jews ahead of the World Pride Festival next month. The presence of police officers and heightened security precautions in the newly reopened space were stark reminders of the violence perpetrated by a radicalized gunman who said he killed the two young people “for Gaza.” 

A brief ceremony marking the museum’s reopening began with a cantor leading the crowd in singing songs for peace. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged to continue to support the Jewish community and called on all Washingtonians to do the same.

“It is not up to the Jewish community to say, ‘Support us.’ It is up to all of us to denounce antisemitism in all forms,” Bowser told the several dozen people at the event. 

Bowser, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum, which opened in 2023, urged people in the local community to visit.

“One of my messages to our community here in D.C. is for people of all faiths to keep showing up for the Jewish community and to keep showing up for the Capital Jewish Museum,” she continued. “Spaces like this that teach us history, that allow us to connect, inspire, reflect people coming together, of all backgrounds, faiths, ages, coming from different places in the world and different places in the city, can talk about important ideas and ways that we move together for a better collective future.”

A group of local faith leaders — a rabbi, an imam and two ministers — addressed the crowd, discussing their faiths’ teachings against violence and reflecting on the legacy of Lischinsky and Milgrim, who were killed as they left an American Jewish Committee event for young diplomats. Throughout the ceremony, speakers said the way to fight such hate is with understanding, built at institutions like the Capital Jewish Museum. 

“This reopening is exactly what our city, our country and our world needs. To keep telling our stories, who we are as a people, to have us be known, what our values are, what we are to the city, what we contribute and the intricacies of what make us who we are — not only so that we don’t shrink from fear, but also because it is the path to better understanding each other,” said Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, senior rabbi at Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation. 

Imam Talib Shareef, president and imam of Masjid Muhammad, described the reopening of the museum as an “invitation to embrace our shared, original identity as fruits of the first human, Adam, from which came the many wonderful, beautiful, diverse expressions of human life that have contributed to the strength and unity of our nation.” 

To close the event, the museum’s executive director, Beatrice Gurwitz, took to the podium, visibly shaken. 

“Last week’s antisemitic attack cannot be our last chapter,” Gurwitz said. “So we reopen today, and we dedicate ourselves to honor Yaron and Sarah and their commitment to repairing the world and building bridges, and we take strength in all of you as we go forward in fulfilling that mission.” 

Attendees finished the event by milling about the museum, including its newest exhibit, “LGBTJews in the Federal City,” which tells the story of Washington’s queer Jewish community. Items on display reflected the community’s struggle for inclusion — within the broader Jewish community, and also within the federal government, where workers were penalized for being gay during much of the 20th century. 

One Washington Post newspaper clipping from 1979, displayed in the exhibit, reported on the formation of Bet Mishpachah, “a synagogue for homosexuals.” The synagogue’s decision to participate in the article was described as a risk — putting its leaders at personal and professional peril. 

More than four decades later, Joshua Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, delivered remarks to the crowd assembled at the museum on Thursday morning. He described Milgrim as a “passionate advocate” who “made it her mission to ensure that LGBTQ voices were heard and celebrated within our local Jewish community.”

“She made people feel seen, valued and embraced,” Maxey continued. “She approached her work not just as a job, but as a calling. She was a peace broker in the truest sense, someone who lived out our values, our Jewish values of tikkun olam, or repairing the world.”