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The Trump administration has initiated a legal challenge against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), sparking concerns about the implications for other nonprofit organizations that oppose the president’s policies.
On Thursday, the SPLC entered a not guilty plea in an unusual case. The allegations suggest the organization has betrayed its core mission by allegedly channeling funds, through a now-discontinued informant program, to hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which it has long opposed.
The SPLC vehemently refutes these accusations, asserting that the claims are not substantiated by the indictment itself. Furthermore, the center accuses prosecutors of misguiding the grand jury to secure an indictment.
According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, this prosecution is part of a broader trend targeting civil society organizations, a campaign he argues began with law firms and academic institutions.
“There has been ongoing speculation about an impending crackdown on the nonprofit sector,” Raskin remarked to The Hill.
“This looks like a whole new frontier in attacking not-for-profit groups that the president considers an enemy or politically incorrect. That’s where we are with this thing.”
The SPLC, founded in 1971, works on criminal justice reform and voting rights, though its most notable work has been tracking the movement of a number of different extremist groups.
Tensions between the SPLC and some conservatives have been building for years, particularly through the group’s “Hate Map” and other work documenting the ideologies of various groups. That includes some that have been supportive of Trump, such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and the Proud Boys.
The SPLC argues Turning Point belonged on its list because Kirk had “warned his hundreds of thousands of listeners” they were were being replaced by foreigners.
“He then promised Trump will ‘liberate’ the country from ‘the enemy occupation of the foreigner hordes,’” the SPLC wrote in a 2024 case study.
It said this was an allusion to the “great replacement theory,” a debunked conspiracy in which elite parts of society are said to be intentionally replacing white populations with nonwhite populations through immigration.
“Kirk accused Democrats of embracing immigration as part of their plot to secure voters, permit crime and enact the ‘great replacement,’” the SPLC said.
Conservatives say the inclusion of Turning Point and other groups that espouse restrictionist immigration policies unfairly aligned them with neo nazis and other white supremacists.
“A mere difference in policy opinion may land you on SPLC’s hate map,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), said last December, when a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing branding the SPLC as “partisan and profitable.”
“In the aftermath of Charlie’s assassination, there have been no retractions, no accountability, and no acknowledgment of the risks inherent in branding mainstream political figures as existential threats,” he said.
Following Kirk’s killing, the FBI announced in October it was severing ties with the group, with FBI Director Kash Patel accusing it of having become a “partisan smear machine” whose work “has been used to defame mainstream Americans.”
Central to the government’s case against the SPLC is that the group defrauded its donors by failing to alert them their money “was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups.” However, the indictment alleges only one instance in which money from an informant reached other group members and it does not provide any further details.
In pleading not guilty, the SLC on Thursday argued it was “no stranger to legal threats by those on the wrong side of history.”
“The charges against the SPLC are provably wrong; they are based on inaccurate facts and a misapplication of law. Our informant program was successful in accomplishing its purposes: Threats and attacks were prevented, criminal activity was stopped, and information was gathered to dismantle the efforts of hate and extremist groups,” said Bryan Fair, the group’s interim president and CEO, in a statement.
“There is no question that the information the SPLC shared with law enforcement saved lives.”
Democrats in Congress have backed the SPLC while faulting the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) prosecution.
“It is, as far as the indictment reads, a complete abomination of our criminal justice system. They do not show any misrepresentation that was made to donors, and certainly not one that influenced whether the donors would have given money if they had, and that’s required,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a former federal prosecutor.
“The entire theory ignores all of the work that the SPLC has actually done because it is in furtherance of exposing and taking down the hate groups, and that’s what they represented. So it is clearly a purely political attack on organizations and vehicles that try to hold Donald Trump and the extreme right accountable for our laws and our Constitution and more than anything, is a message to send a deterrent effect to anyone who tries to do that.”
Other nonprofits have also recently earned the scrutiny of the Trump administration, like George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, with the DOJ encouraging various U.S. attorney offices to investigate their dealings.
In December, the State Department also sought to revoke the visas of five leaders of nonprofits focused on online hate speech and disinformation, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio accusing them of “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
Goldman noted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also had tension with the Trump administration, and the FBI also severed its ties with that group.
“If I were the ADL, right now, I would be wondering if they’re also coming after me, because it’s just so obviously a hack job,” he said.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said while he was not familiar with the indictment, he dealt with the SPLC during his time as a federal prosecutor, saying it served a role in advocating for those on death row.
“I just kind of felt like they played a role,” he said, describing them “as an advocate for people less fortunate.”
“I think they’re being targeted for obvious reasons,” he said, questioning whether the indictment would be successful.
“A judge is going to have to look at it right? And the federal judges are — they’re smart, and also because they have a lifetime appointment, they don’t take bullshit from the prosecutors. So we’ll see what happens here.”
In court filings last month, the SPLC said the government was aware of the informant program when it was still in operation because it coordinated with authorities to thwart attacks and save lives.
The filings describe three such incidents where it partnered with law enforcement, including using information from informants in providing a warning to the FBI that a “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally organized in Charlottesville, Va., was likely to “foment violence.”
In another case, the SPLC provided information that led to the indictment of a member of the white supremacist group Atomwaffen Division who planned to attack a Las Vegas synagogue. The SPLC also provided information about a member of Vanguard America who had failed to acknowledge his extremist ties while seeking a security clearance.
Raskin said it was exactly that type of work that was a selling point to the SPLC’s donors.
“That was the reason that I thought people supported the group, because they had people going actually undercover into the Klan and the Nazis, getting real information that would lead to actual criminal investigations and prosecutions. I mean, anybody can say, ‘We deplore racism, we abhor racism,’ but it’s the fact that they sent people undercover that made the donors support them,” he said.
In the wake of the indictment, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) again announced plans to hold a hearing on the group, writing that the SPLC had gone too far in monitoring groups it said espoused hateful rhetoric.
“Although the SPLC started with the commendable goal of providing pro bono legal services to indigent defendants, it has shifted in recent times to focusing on an ever-evolving, highly partisan understanding of ‘hate,’” he wrote, something he said includes those backing “conservative or Christian ideology.”
He also launched his own investigation last month asking the SPLC to turn over all documents and communications about its informant program and all “revenue and expenses” relating to payments to the field sources.
Jordan said a hearing on the group “will examine the role that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has played in distorting federal civil rights policy in recent years.”
Raskin and other members on his side of the dais have also pushed back, launching their own investigation into the prosecution of the group, asking the DOJ to turn over documents and communications related to the case.
That said, Raskin supports further congressional hearings.
“Look, I feel bad for the SPLC, which does critically important work and should be able to focus on its work. They should not be enduring this harassment. But having said that, I welcome a hearing,” he said.
“Because we’re going to be able to educate America about the fundamental importance of the kind of work that they do and the fact that it’s completely protected by the First Amendment. And this is an utterly bogus indictment that is going to collapse.”