The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in its effort to attack members of the Right, has often labeled individuals that others would consider normal as hate-filled or “extremists.” On Tuesday, a Grand Jury in Alabama returned an indictment charging the SPLC with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. “The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups — even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes.” The current SPLC list of “extremists “and “ideologues” includes White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, the late David Horowitz, the founder of the Freedom Center, which featured the platforms FrontPage Magazine, Discover the Networks, and Students for Academic Freedom; Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association; Chaya Raichik, aka Libs of Tik Tok; James Lindsay, the author, mathematician, and cultural critic who has become a leading figure in the intellectual opposition to wokeness; the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy Frank Gaffney; and author and social scientist Charles Murray. SPLC’s “Hatewatch” blog has included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson; author and leading intellectual Dennis Prager, the famed Evangelical minister Franklin Graham, among others. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which was labeled a “hate group” by the SPLC, has noted: SPLC’s “Hatewatch” blog is a perfect example. SPLC says this blog “monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right” and the “activities and events of anti-LGBT organizations.” The so-called “radical right” and “anti-LGBT organizations” SPLC has identified include many beloved, respected, and mainstream conservative and religious organizations and individuals, such as Ben Carson, Heritage Foundation, Dennis Prager, PragerU, The Federalist Society, Franklin Graham, Catholic Medical Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Heritage Action, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Liberty Counsel, Pacific Justice Institute, The Leadership Institute, First Liberty Institute, Ruth Institute, European Center for Law and Justice, Alaska Family Council, Florida Family Policy Council, Texas Values, and Homeschool Legal Defense Association, to name just a few. Demonstrating the breadth and danger of SPLC’s conception of “hate,” SPLC labelled the Boston chapter of The Federalist Society “anti-LGBT” because it hosted then-United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a talk on “The Future of Religious Liberty.” Months before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the SPLC added Turning Point USA to its Hate Map. One day before his murder, the SPLC smeared Kirk in an online Hatewatch article tagged under “Dismantling White Supremacy.” The article was still live days after his death.

A book questioning the benefits of mass immigration is shooting to the top of the Amazon bestseller list after going viral when it was yanked from the site April 17. All the leftists who shriek about book bans were notably silent when “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 dystopian novel written by French author Jean Raspail, became unavailable at the largest bookseller in the world.  The work of fiction depicts the collapse of Western civilization after a horde of third-world migrants overtakes the country. The book’s publisher, Vauban Books, released a statement following the book being removed from Amazon on April 17. An X post from Vauban Books on April 20 said, “On Friday, April 17th, Amazon US removed the paperback listing for our edition of Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (at this writing, the book remains available for purchase in Kindle and audiobook formats).”  Our statement on Amazon’s suppression of The Camp of the Saints in the United States: pic.twitter.com/JDTE5i4XbH — Vauban Books (@VaubanBooks) April 20, 2026 “We have since been informed by Amazon that the book is in violation of the company’s ‘offensive content’ policy,” the statement continued. “Amazon has supplied no information as to which portions of the book are offensive nor to whom.” Vauban Books also noted that the book had been selling well after first being listed on Amazon in July 2025. “In the eight months since, Amazon has sold roughly 20,000 paperback copies of it.” “The Camp of the Saints” was also said to have been “extensively reviewed in the American and international press” and found that its reviewers “have been unanimous in their assessment of its abiding importance and relevance to contemporary debates.” “While we cannot say for certain has taken this extraordinary step, it may be no coincidence that the listing was removed one day after New York Magazine published a critical article on Vice President Vance that referenced the book.” Following public outcry, Amazon reportedly shared a response with Vauban Books courtesy of their media contact, stating, “We’ve resolved an error that briefly affected the availability of a paperback listing of The Camp of the Saints, and the title is now restored.'”  The publisher said that Amazon “appears to be in damage control mode,” and again confirmed that the book was originally taken off the website due to their “offensive content policy.”

A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed Texas to enforce a law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.  In a 9–8 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that S.B. 10 does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, marking a significant victory for conservatives who support a greater role for religion in public schools. “S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment,” the 5th Circuit’s opinion said. “It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason. It levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions. These are the kinds of things “establishments of religion” did at the founding. S.B. 10 does none of them.”  In June 2025, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed Senate Bill 10, which requires public elementary and secondary schools to display in each classroom a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments.” In December 2025, a coalition of parents filed suit and obtained preliminary injunctions blocking the law in certain parts of the state.  Challengers of the law argued that they didn’t want their children to “be forced to observe and venerate a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments” every day at school, according to the ACLU.   Judges on the conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit disagreed, arguing the law does not mandate any religious exercise.  “Students are neither catechized on the Commandments nor taught to adopt them. Nor are teachers commanded to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them,” the opinion said. “It puts a poster on a classroom wall. Yes, Plaintiffs have sincere religious disagreements with its content. But that does not transform the poster into a summons to prayer.” Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott hailed the ruling as a “HUGE WIN.”  “The foundation of Western law & morality belongs in our classrooms. Texas stands for faith, freedom, and the values that founded our great state,” he said on social media.  HUGE WIN The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Ten Commandments can remain in Texas public school classrooms. The foundation of Western law & morality belongs in our classrooms. Texas stands for faith, freedom, and the values that founded our great state.… — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 22, 2026 Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), who faces a contentious May 26 runoff with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), also took a victory lap.  “This is a major victory for Texas and our moral values,” Paxton said. “My office was proud to defend SB 10 and successfully ensure that the Ten Commandments will be displayed in classrooms across Texas. The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether meatpackers engaged in criminal antitrust conduct. Last November, as consumer beef prices continued climbing, President Trump called upon the DOJ to investigate the practices of meatpackers. Beef is among America’s most important protein sources, and understanding how beef makes its way to the grocery store reveals why consumers at the end of the beef supply chain and farmers and ranchers at its beginning are highly susceptible to foul play. Think of the beef supply chain as a sand-filled hourglass. The sand-filled top represents the start of the beef supply chain, with the sand itself representing hundreds of thousands of widely dispersed, independent, family-scale cattle farmers and ranchers scattered across America. Now cattle grow slowly, and from the time they are born until they reach their optimal slaughter weight takes upwards of two years. As the cattle grow, they flow downstream in the hourglass and are eventually transported from their distant, wide-open grassy birthplaces to large pens called feedlots, where they are congregated. Most feedlots are in the central and southern plains regions of the United States, and when cattle arrive, they are fed a highly concentrated diet that fattens them to slaughter weight. Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images When fed to their optimal weight, these slaughter-ready cattle are offered for sale to the beef packers at the choke point of the hourglass, as here there are just four dominant beef packers who purchase and control 80% of the 25 million or so slaughter cattle entering the choke point each year. Of course, these same dominant packers also control 80% of the resultant beef that passes on through the choke point, which they then sell to grocery stores scattered across America for ultimate purchase by consumers. It is at this highly concentrated and centralized choke point — the point at which the dominant beef packers purchase cattle from the feedlots and convert them into consumable beef — that foul play can cause harm to the cattle farmers and ranchers above the pinch point and consumers below. For example, if the concentrated beef packers unlawfully collude by agreeing to reduce the number of cattle they will collectively slaughter, cattle will back up in the supply chain above the choke point, effectively reducing demand for cattle and lowering their prices paid to cattle farmers and ranchers. Because slaughtering fewer cattle will result in less beef, reducing the number of cattle the beef packers will collectively slaughter will reduce the available beef supply below the choke point, causing beef prices to increase. Now it could be argued that colluding to lower cattle prices could result in lower consumer beef prices if the dominant beef packers were to pass their cost savings on to retailers, and ultimately consumers. But history shows otherwise. Going back for more than four decades, the spread between the prices that farmers and ranchers receive for their cattle and the retail prices that consumers pay for beef has grown increasingly wider. This suggests that firms standing between America’s cattle ranchers and America’s consumers are somehow capturing artificially high profits along the beef supply chain. How these supra-competitive profits are being extracted from the beef supply chain and by whom is likely a central focus of the DOJ’s ongoing antitrust investigation. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images During the past six years, several private class action antitrust lawsuits have been filed against the four largest beef packers operating in the United States – Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company, alleging they had colluded to suppress cattle prices while simultaneously inflating beef prices. These civil antitrust lawsuits have alleged harm to virtually every segment of the beef supply chain, from cattle farmers and ranchers who sold cattle to the beef packers to consumers, distributors, and retailers who directly or indirectly purchased beef from the dominant beef packers. These private civil actions are still working their way through the court system and have so far resulted in settlements of over $170 million. In at least one of these civil lawsuits, it is alleged that the dominant packers unlawfully colluded to suppress cattle prices from mid-2015 through early 2020. During that period, retail beef prices trended markedly upward while cattle prices trended downward, an anomaly signaling market failure in the beef supply chain, particularly since the only source of beef is cattle. The question of whether beef packers engaged in unlawful antitrust conduct will be answered upon the completion of the numerous civil lawsuits pending against them and the result of the DOJ investigation. The outcome of the DOJ investigation alone will determine if principals representing the beef packers also engaged in criminal antitrust conduct. * * * Bill Bullard is the CEO of R-CALF USA in Billings, Montana.

An informant who was paid by the Southern Poverty Law Center helped white supremacists plan the infamous “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, according to the Justice Department. In an indictment made public on Tuesday, the SPLC stands accused of secretly using donors’ money to pay leaders within racist groups. One of the SPLC’s informants was a member of the leadership team of a white supremacist group that planned the rally in Charlottesville, according to the Justice Department. The informant, who was identified in the indictment as “field source 37” or “F-37,” was paid more than $270,000 by the SPLC between 2015 and 2023. The informant was part of a group chat created for those who were planning the “Unite the Right” rally, and the informant attended the rally “at the direction of the SPLC,” according to the department. “F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the indictment states. The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally included a mix of alt-Right groups, including neo-Nazis and Klansmen. The rally turned deadly when a man drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 35 others. The rally and violence that ensued became a main talking point for Democrats who attempted to pin blame on President Donald Trump and Republicans. Joe Biden pointed to the Charlottesville rally as the main reason for his decision to jump into the 2020 presidential election, saying in his campaign announcement video, “In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.” The indictment announced by the Justice Department this week provides multiple examples of how SPLC informants affiliated with extremist groups were paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023. The SPLC is also accused of hiding its activity behind bank accounts that were opened for “a series of fictitious entities” and making false statements about the bank accounts to keep the operation going. One SPLC informant, identified as F-9, helped fundraise for the neo-Nazi group National Alliance. F-9 raked in more than $1 million from the SPLC over a 20-year period, according to the indictment. Another informant, F-30, was secretly paid around $70,000 by the SPLC during a time period when the informant was also on the SPLC’s webpage that identifies groups and individuals that the SPLC labels as “extremist.” F-30 led the National Socialist Party of America and had previously led a faction of the white supremacist group Aryan Nation. The informant paid by the SPLC was also a former Klan member. “In addition to directly paying leaders and others associated with the same violent extremist groups that the SPLC sought donations ostensibly to ‘dismantle,’ the SPLC also used Fs to indirectly funnel money to other violent extremist group leaders,” the indictment states. The SPLC is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. Many people on the Right have criticized the SPLC for lumping together white supremacists and neo-Nazis with mainstream conservatives. The SPLC was also used as a resource by the FBI to identify extremists before FBI Director Kash Patel cut the bureau’s ties with the leftist organization last year.