A federal judge dismissed a conservative nonprofit’s defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center Wednesday, reversing a previous judge’s theory of the case. Critics say the SPLC routinely smears mainstream conservative and Christian groups by placing them on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, sued the center for defamation after it branded his Georgia-based organization—which opposes illegal immigration—an “anti-immigrant hate group.” Judge W. Keith Watkins of the Middle District of Alabama allowed the defamation case to move forward in 2023, but Judge Corey L. Maze of the Northern District of Alabama later took the case. After discovery—the legal process of acquiring documents to prove a case—Maze ruled Wednesday that most of King’s claims fell outside the statute of limitations, and that King further failed to prove the center acted with “actual malice” in re-publishing the “hate group” accusation. King died last year, but his estate is a plaintiff in the case. Harry Mihet, chief litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel and one of King’s attorneys, told The Daily Signal that Judge Maze took the wrong approach to the case. “I think the first judge who looked at this issue got it exactly right and the court currently got it exactly wrong,” Mihet told The Daily Signal in a phone call Thursday. “The first judge looked at this in careful detail and nothing’s changed since. Whether something is time barred is a matter of law, so that should not have been affected by the facts in discovery.” Watkins’ Ruling on the SPLC King sued in April 2022, meaning the SPLC’s initial “hate group” accusation in 2018 fell outside of Alabama’s statute of limitations. However, the center has repeated its accusation each year since, so Judge Watkins ruled as timely the accusation published in 2021. Watkins also found that, because the SPLC initially stated in 2011 that the Dustin Inman Society was not a “hate group” before reversing course, the center may have smeared the society despite knowing that it was not an “anti-immigrant hate group.” Defamation cases face high hurdles due to the Supreme Court’s precedents from New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) onward. Watkins found the SPLC’s specific claim that the society—which has legal immigrants on its board—”poses as an organization concerned about immigration issues, yet focuses on vilifying all immigrants” likely met the defamation standard of “actual malice,” where the defendant publishes a provably false statement while likely suspecting the statement was false. Since the SPLC uses this claim to support its “hate group” designation, republished every year, Watkins ruled the claim did not fall outside the statute of limitations. Maze’s Reversal Yet Judge Maze reversed the decision, holding that the initial 2018 “hate group” designation, and the subsequent “extremist profile” explaining it, fell outside the statute. Maze found only one claim timely—the 2021 “hate group” accusation—and he ruled that King failed to show the SPLC acted with “actual malice,” because he had no evidence that the SPLC staffer who made the 2021 decision, Keegan Hankes, had reason to doubt the truth of the accusation. Maze wrote that the SPLC’s claim that the society vilifies all immigrants “is non-actionable rhetorical hyperbole,” the kind of “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts.”  260107.KING.Memorandum Opinion.EFS.Doc 134Download What Went Wrong? Mihet, King’s attorney, accused Judge Maze, a Republican and appointee of President Donald Trump, and his magistrate judge of defending the SPLC. “They really hamstrung our hands in discovery in terms of what we could ask and receive from the SPLC,” the attorney told The Daily Signal. “They protected the SPLC vehemently.” “Now he complains that we didn’t show him more evidence in discovery,” Mihet added. “It’s because he and his magistrate carefully circumscribed the scope of discovery.” Mihet said he aimed to reveal a pattern of the SPLC smearing conservatives, but the judge would not allow “this line of questioning.” Todd McMurtry, King’s lead attorney, told The Daily Signal he has not yet decided whether to appeal the ruling. “We will review the decision and evaluate next steps,” he said. The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. The post Leftist Group Dodges Accountability for ‘Hate Group’ Accusation After Judge Blocks Discovery appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Franklin Camargo was only six years old when he stood in a Florida grocery store and stared at the variety of Oreo cookies. In that moment, he says he began to understand that the U.S. was very different from his home country of Venezuela.   When a child “can tell the differences, the huge differences, when it comes to prosperity, happiness, [and] safety between a country and the other one, that’s the biggest sign that a system works and the other one simply doesn’t,” he told The Daily Signal in an interview. After fleeing Venezuela’s socialist regime as a young man and moving to America, Camargo has spoken out against the Maduro regime.   Franklin Camargo. (Courtesy of Franklin Camargo) While Camargo says he, and many Venezuelans, are “extremely happy” to see the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro, calling it the “biggest happiness Venezuelans have had in more than two decades,” he says Venezuelans also understand that their country “isn’t free yet.”   Under the direction of President Donald Trump, the U.S. captured Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a military operation on Jan. 3 and brought them to New York City, where they are currently in custody. Maduro pled “not guilty” in a federal court Monday to multiple charges, including narco-terrorism.  Camargo, 28, was born in Venezuela to what he describes as a “strong middle-class family.” Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela when Camargo was only a year old.  His family continued to work hard as the nation’s economy deteriorated, and when Camargo was six, his parents took him and his brother on a trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It was on that trip to Florida that Camargo says he started to fall in love with America.   Franklin Camargo, left, and his brother at Disney World. (Courtesy of Franklin Camargo) In time, Camargo says his family went from living comfortably to being concerned about having enough food to eat.   “We lost weight,” Camargo said, adding that his parents “stopped eating meat or protein so they could provide for my brother and for myself.”   Camargo’s parents were not politicians, but he grew up very aware of politics because “when politics is affecting your daily life, you start paying more attention,” he explained.   “When I was a teenager, I became a political activist,” he said, adding that he joined the political organization María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader, headed at the time.   Watching his family struggle and his nation devolve under socialist leadership caused Camargo to get into “politics and to try to fight back, to try to do something.”  His willingness to speak out against the socialist regime ultimately led to his expulsion from medical school, and he was accused of being a terrorist. Fearing for his safety, Camargo fled Venezuela the U.S. in 2019 because he had a U.S. visa.   Also fearing for their safety, Camargo’s parents and his brother moved to America shortly after he did, but he still has family members living in his home country.   The current situation in Venezuela following Maduro’s capture is “difficult,” Camargo explains.   It is not uncommon for Venezuelan police or the National Guard to stop citizens to review their messages and social media posts, he says.   “And if they have posted something on social media in support of the capture of Maduro or against the regime, they could get arrested, easily,” he said.   The head of the regime has been removed, but the “mafia is still there,” Camargo says.   Delcy Rodriguez, the acting president of Venezuela who served as vice president under Maduro, and Diosdado Cabello, the nation’s interior minister, are two of the key members of Maduro’s “mafia,” according to Camargo.   Camargo says he thinks Trump has taken “the right path” in regards to the country’s future.   With Maduro in U.S. custody, Rodriguez is acting as the nation’s leader, and Trump says his administration is working with her to ensure stability in the nation.   “It’s not just about what we want, but what’s the best thing to do that is realistic,” Camargo said.   “If Maria Corina Machado, or any leader of the Venezuelan opposition, goes to Venezuela right now,” he said, “they’re going to get arrested, or even worse, they get tortured or even killed.” “So, the question here is, how do we lead a political transition that is the most pragmatic and realistic?”   The answer, according to Camargo, is to “use those who are still in power, that I do not trust, but that you can basically tell them, ‘hey, you follow what I tell you to do, or you [will] pay the same price that Maduro paid.’”   Even if elections were held today, Camargo says they would not be fair because Maduro’s allies would benefit from the voting structure in place. He added that “radical Marxists” are threatening harm to those who openly oppose Maduro.   Change will not happen “in one day or in one week, or not even in one month,” according to Camargo, but will take time and continued consorted effort.   The post Venezuelan Warns His Country ‘Isn’t Free Yet’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In Springfield, Ill., in 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful speech decrying the “ravages of mob law” throughout the land. Lincoln warned, in eerily prescient fashion, that the spread of a then-ascendant “mobocratic spirit” threatened to sever the “attachment of the People” to their fellow countrymen and their nation. Lincoln’s opposition to anarchy of any kind was absolute and clarion: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” Unfortunately, it seems that every few years, Americans must be reminded anew of Lincoln’s wisdom. This week’s lethal Immigration and Customs Enforcement standoff in the Twin Cities is but the latest instance of a yearslong baleful trend. On Wednesday, 37-year-old “queer activist” Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Good, who had barricaded her vehicle in an attempt to obstruct an active law enforcement operation, ignored agents’ requests to exit the vehicle and instead directed her car at one of the agents. Good actually then hit the agent, who was briefly hospitalized for his injuries. But before she could do even more damage, the agent shot and killed Good. The federal government has called Good’s encounter “an act of domestic terrorism” and said the agent shot in self-defense. Suffice it to say Minnesota’s Democratic establishment does not see it this way. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the deployment of 2,000 immigration agents in the area and the deadly encounter by telling ICE to “get the f—out of Minneapolis,” while Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable.” Frey, who was also mayor during the George Floyd-inspired mayhem of 2020, has lent succor to the anti-ICE provocateurs, seemingly encouraging them to make Good a Floyd-like martyr and riot accordingly. As for Walz, he’s right that this tragedy was eminently “avoidable”—but not for the reasons he thinks. If the Biden-Harris administration hadn’t let in untold millions of unvetted illegal aliens, and if Walz’s administration hadn’t conveniently overlooked hundreds of Minnesotans—of mixed immigration status —defrauding taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars, ICE never would have embarked on this particular operation. National Democrats took the rage even further. Following the fateful shooting, the Democratic Party’s official X feed promptly tweeted, without any morsel of nuance, that “ICE shot and killed a woman on camera.” This sort of reckless fear mongering may have already inspired a crazed activist to shoot three detainees at an ICE facility in Dallas last September while targeting officers; similar dehumanizing rhetoric about the National Guard perhaps also played a role in November’s lethal shooting of a soldier in Washington, D.C. Liberals and open-border activists play with fire when they so casually compare ICE, as Walz previously has, to a “modern-day Gestapo.” The fact is, ICE is not the Gestapo, President Donald Trump is not Hitler, and Charlie Kirk was not a goose-stepping brownshirt. To pretend otherwise is to deprive words of meaning and to live in the theater of the absurd. But as dangerous as this rhetoric is for officers and agents, it is the moral blackmail and “mobocratic spirit” of it all that is even more harmful to the rule of law. The implicit threat of all so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, whose resistance to the federal government smacks of John C. Calhoun-style antebellum “nullification,” is to tell the feds not to operate and enforce federal law in a certain area—or else. The result is crass lawlessness, Mafia-esque shakedown artistry and a fetid neo-confederate stench combined in one dystopian package. The truth is that swaths of the activist Left now engage in these sorts of threats as a matter of course. In 2020, their monthslong rioting following the death of Floyd led to upward of $2 billion in insurance claims. In 2021, they threatened the same rioting unless Derek Chauvin, the cop from the fateful Floyd traffic stop, was found guilty of murder. In 2022, following the unprecedented (and still unsolved) leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case, pro-abortion activists protested outside many of the right-leaning justices’ homes, hoping to induce them to change their minds and flip their votes. And now, ICE agents all throughout the country face threats of violence—egged on by local Democratic leaders—simply for enforcing federal law. In “The Godfather,” Don Corleone referred to this sort of thuggery as making someone an offer that he can’t refuse. We might also think of it as Lincoln’s dreaded “ravages of mob law.” Regardless, a free republic cannot long endure like this. The rule of law cannot be held hostage to the histrionic temper tantrums of a radical ideological flank. The law must be enforced solemnly, without fear or favor. There can be no overarching blackmail lurking in the background—no Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of a free people, ready to crash down on us all if a certain select few do not get their way. The proper recourse for changing immigration policy—or any federal law—is to lobby Congress to do so, or to make a case in federal court. The ginned-up martyrdom complex that leads some to take matters into their own hands is a recipe for personal and national ruination. There is nothing good down that road—only death, despair and mobocracy. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Moral Blackmailing of the American People appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Renee Good died on Wednesday in Minneapolis. She had been attempting to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents engaged in federal law enforcement activities. Along with other protestors, Good involved herself in what federal agents were doing and used her car to block them. Confronted by federal agents, Good accelerated with an agent in front of her car. He pulled his gun, she accelerated and struck him, he opened fire and shot her. She died. Watching the video footage, it is clear she accelerated with an agent directly in front of her car and struck him. Close observers noted her front wheel appeared to be turned, so not intending to hit the agent. The agent who shot her was not looking down to try to see her tire. The car came towards him on an icy, slippery road. He pulled his gun. She kept accelerating. He fired. The Democratic Party sent out a tweet that federal agents had murdered an American citizen. The agent, in a very tense situation, operated in self-defense. The whole thing is tragic. Good is neither a hero nor a martyr. She tried to obstruct a federal operation. When confronted, she tried to flee the scene, hitting an officer who drew his gun and shot her. For four years, Americans witnessed an overrun southern border. Democrats repeatedly denied there was a problem. They falsely claimed the border was secure. Voters decided to vote for President Donald Trump, a man whose supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol just a few years before, because the voters decided Trump was preferable to the status quo. Progressives did not handle that rejection well. Despite Mr. Trump winning the popular vote, progressives swung into action to not just obstruct every presidential initiative, but to harass federal agents and protect the very illegal aliens that most Americans want ejected from the country. Going back to 2019, the local Minnesota press has documented a massive welfare fraud operation. Eighty-nine percent of those indicted are from a Somali community that has failed to assimilate into the United States. In 2019, the Minneapolis Fox affiliate reported Minnesota welfare money was being used to fund Islamic terror. Just a few weeks ago, another report came out documenting that Somali fraud in Minnesota had flowed to an Islamic terror group in Somalia. Governor Tim Walz has decided not to run for re-election, in part because of the scandal. The fraud, which some estimates put at several billion dollars, happened on his watch. Walz has insisted there is no scandal and it is all racism. Walz and Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis Mayor, both insist federal agents are acting as a Gestapo. The incendiary rhetoric from Democratic politicians fired up progressive activists. ICE agents have been fired upon. In Texas, several illegal aliens were killed when a progressive activist fired at ICE agents. ICE agents have been hit by cars, assaulted and vilified for trying to clean up the mess created by Democrats. Progressive activists have turned violent, interfered and now one has been killed. We cannot observe this tragedy without acknowledging not just the incendiary rhetoric of the left, but also the repeated assassination attempts on federal agents. It is a tragedy that Ms. Good is dead and leaves behind a son whose father died a few years ago. But Ms. Good should not have been attempting to obstruct ICE agents. She should not have used her car as a barricade. She should not have ignored the ICE agents. She should not have struck an ICE agent with her vehicle. The ICE agents are there because Democrats have allowed an illegal alien problem to fester. They are vilified by progressive politicians and have been targeted by progressive activists. Ms. Good would be alive today except she believed the hysteria of people like Tim Walz. She substituted politics for religion and decided to involve herself in political protest and opposition. She is now dead because of it. This is a tragedy. It was avoidable. But Democrats have grown more shrill and hysterical since she died. There will be more attacks on ICE agents, all of whom are simply doing the job of deporting those the Democrats let flood the country. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Tragedy and Reality appeared first on The Daily Signal.

What is going on in the People’s Republic of Minnesota? The Democrat establishment in the Gopher State is nothing like it was back in the Reagan years, with ex-Vice President Walter Mondale or Gov. Rudy Perpich. The insurrectionist echoes of their language about immigration-enforcement cops are eyebrow-raising in the same week the elitist media somberly mourned the attack on police at the Jan. 6 riot. On Jan. 7, activist Renee Nicole Good used her car to try and block traffic to resist ICE agents. When she refused requests to step out of the car and instead drove her car into an ICE agent, the agent shot her. That’s a terrible thing. But so was the shooting of activist Ashli Babbitt by a policeman on Jan. 6. How is running over ICE agents not like threatening the Capitol Police on Jan. 6? If you don’t believe ICE agents were in danger, then maybe you should read about how Cuban illegal alien Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero “interacted” with ICE agents last Dec. 21. On Jan. 5, a Justice Department press release noted when ICE agents initiated a traffic stop with Romero in St. Paul, he “refused to obey commands and attempted to flee in his car.” He accelerated his car toward ICE officers who were on foot. He then lost control of his car, and ICE tried to apprehend him a second time. Romero again accelerated his car and struck one officer. When ICE officers actually apprehended him, he “bit one of the officers, drawing blood. Two ICE officers were transported to the hospital, suffering from bruised ribs, a dislocated finger, and a bite wound.” Last September, an illegal alien ran over and dragged an ICE agent in Chicago until ICE shot him dead. But there was no sympathy for the dragged agent. CNN and the rest of the press treated that as ICE brutality, absolving the violent cop-dragging. WBEZ, the Chicago NPR station, openly promoted assisting the ICE resisters: “Here’s how you can help us track where ICE agents are being deployed in Chicago.” The Democrats align themselves with violent leftists resisting ICE. “Get the f—- out of Minneapolis,” proclaimed Mayor Jacob Frey after Good was killed. Gov. Tim Walz suggested he’d deploy the National Guard: “I’ve issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed, if necessary.” Minnesota Democrats openly allied themselves with Somali Americans who defrauded the federal government of billions of dollars. When Team Trump drew attention to this massive fraud, Walz called it “white supremacy.” These radical stances underline the wokeness, or the “anti-racism” of Democrats and their affiliated media outlets, who see everything through a lens of oppressive “white privilege.” It’s precisely this wokeness that enabled the massive fraud in the first place, and which now seeks to disable any attempt at deportations. Will these stances hurt the Democrats statewide in Minnesota? They already caused Walz to drop out, and Sen. Tina Smith is retiring, so there’s open seats, and Kamala Harris only won the state by four points. Will it hurt Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in the Senate race? She recently demonstrated her wokeness by donning a hijab in a video released on Christmas and proclaiming solidarity with our Somali “immigrant neighbors.” Wokeness damaged Kamala Harris in 2024, but Democrats can’t seem to curb their pandering to illegal immigrants and Somali fraudsters. The “mainstream” media stand with the Democrat extreme on these issues, promoting Frey and Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison and the rest. But biased media voices —hailing their rants as “powerful”—can’t always ensure victory. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Minnesota Democrats Are Testing How Woke Is Too Woke appeared first on The Daily Signal.