Concerns are mounting over the status of Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), as fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill say they have not heard from him recently. The congressman has not been around for roughly 50 roll votes beginning March 5, according to Politico. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told NJ Spotlight News, “Nobody’s covering up. We just haven’t heard a word,” and Rep. Chris Smith said, “We’ve both reached out. Don’t know.” Van Drew further described to the outlet that it’s been “complete radio silence,” and he and Smith are “worried about him.” “Congressman is addressing a personal health matter. He will be returning to a full regular schedule,” Dan Scharfenberger, the lawmaker’s chief of staff, told the outlet in a statement last week. The Daily Wire reached out to Scharfenberger for further comment. It’s unknown what Kean’s health condition is. “I know the congressman and his family appreciate all of the well wishes and support,” Harrison Neely, a consultant for the Republican, said to Politico. “Please know that he will be back on a regular full schedule very soon.” Kean represents one of the most competitive House districts in the country, with the Cook Political Report ranking his race as a “toss-up.” The Republican has been in Congress since 2023, and he previously served in the New Jersey Senate as the minority leader. He serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee. Kean’s absence comes at a chaotic time for the House of Representatives, as Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Tony Gonzales (R-TX), and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) have all resigned in recent days due to major scandals. In addition, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) died Tuesday, and there’s an expulsion push against Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL). The House holds a 218-212 Republican majority with five seats vacant as a result of the recent upheaval.

Beginning in the early 1960s, one after another, former Nazi scientists and engineers were targeted for assassination in an Israeli intelligence operation called “Operation Damocles.” The scientists had taken new jobs developing rockets for Egypt, and it was very clear that Mossad — Israel’s intelligence agency — didn’t want that program to continue. So Mossad agents sent mail bombs, organized drive-by shootings, and in one case, managed to make a prominent arms dealer named Heinz Krug disappear completely. As the New York Times reported at the time, “The expert, Dr. Krug, who once held a top post with a Stuttgart research institute for jet propulsion physics, disappeared in Munich on Tuesday. … He was last seen leaving his Munich office for an appointment.” Operation Damocles was ultimately a successful program. It terrified Nazi scientists, and it certainly made the idea of working for Egypt much less appealing. It was also good practice for Mossad, which went on to conduct many more assassinations of foreign scientists — most recently in Iran. Just a few years ago, towards the end of Trump’s first term, the Mossad managed to kill Iran’s nuclear scientist using a remote-controlled, AI-enabled machine gun that was hidden in the back of a pickup truck that was parked on the side of the freeway. Credit: Darron Mark/Corbis via Getty Images Israeli spies programmed the AI to compensate for the machine gun’s movement in the back of the pickup truck, as well as the input delay from the remote operation of the weapon. So when the scientist drove by, all the Mossad agent had to do was press the button to shoot him. And at the time, Iran had no idea what happened. They assumed that snipers had been hiding near the freeway. Initial media reports suggested that a gun battle had taken place. And for their part, the Mossad contributed to this confusion by blowing up the pickup truck once the target was dead. We sometimes hear about these kinds of operations when they’re conducted by our own intelligence services, or intelligence agencies that work with the CIA (like the Mossad). And that makes sense — it’s effective propaganda that sounds like you’re reading a spy thriller. And people “on our side” like to brag about successful operations. At the same time, it’s very rare to hear about similar operations that are conducted by foreign governments, within our borders. And there’s only two possible reasons for that: Either foreign governments aren’t conducting any assassination operations on U.S. soil, or they’re conducting those operations without being detected — or at least, without our government telling us about them. Especially with the war in Iran underway, it’s not hard to wonder whether, indeed, American researchers are being targeted, without the government telling us. And in recent days, as you’ve probably heard, there’s a lot of concern about this possibility. It’s gone mainstream, and now the White House is involved. Watch: Whenever there’s a confusing and alarming story like this, the worst thing you can do as a media organization is broadcast a superficial, drive-by report. And that’s exactly what NBC just did in that clip. If you’re going to suggest that shadowy assassins are taking out American scientists, or might be, then you can’t spend 60 seconds on the topic and then move on. It’s too important for that kind of treatment. To be clear: this is obviously a story worth pursuing. But it’s also a story that’s extremely easy for media outlets to mess up. For the most part, they want the number of “dead or missing scientists” to keep increasing, because that creates more drama. And as a result, they’re not doing a deep dive into each one. Instead, they’re making you think that every single case is equally suspicious, which just isn’t true. There’s a lot of distraction going on here, for one reason or another, and it’s drawing attention away from the cases that deserve a second look. So today we’re going to go, one-by-one, through all of the scientists who have allegedly been killed, or died under suspicious circumstances. We’ll talk about everyone who was just mentioned in that NBC report, and many others. We’ll start with Amy Eskridge, because on the surface, she’s the most disturbing case — although when you dig into it, there are a lot of issues with the narrative that’s going around. Amy Eskridge died in Huntsville Alabama on June 11, 2022, at the age of 34. The cause of death was a gunshot to the head, which was determined to be a suicide. Shortly before her death, in 2020, Eskridge claimed that she was preparing to present major findings on “antigravity research” — which has relevance to UFOs and their propulsion systems — although she needed approval from NASA. To this end, Eskridge started a now-defunct website called “The Institute for Exotic Science,” which she said would provide a “public-facing persona to disclose anti-gravity technology.” Eskridge was also involved in her father’s company HoloChron Engineering, which was supposedly developing a “triangle antigravity craft” — although they didn’t get very far. Antigravity research, for the record, is not an established branch of science, and Eskridge has no published papers in any peer-reviewed publication. That’s not to say that “peer review” is the most important thing, but it does make it clear that she wasn’t an established, leading U.S. scientist or anything like that. In any event, according to Eskridge, she was on the verge of a big breakthrough. And someone wanted to stop her. A month before her death, according to a UFO investigator named Franc Milburn, Eskridge reportedly sent a text message to a friend warning that her life was in danger. The alleged text read, in part: “If you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. If you see any report that I overdosed myself, I most definitely did not … The dominos are being lined up all over again now.” Obviously, that’s a very conspicuous thing for someone to write, shortly before they die of a gunshot wound to the head. On the one hand, it could indicate exactly what it says — that this person was being harassed by people who wanted her dead. On the other hand, you need context for a text message like this, because it’s also possible that this woman was simply paranoid and mentally unwell. To make that determination, you need context. David Wilcock, the “paranormal content creator,” also repeatedly said he wasn’t suicidal — and according to police, he just shot himself on April 20 when they responded to a residence where he was located. So with that in mind, here’s a podcast interview featuring Eskridge, several years before her death, in which she talks about how a suspicious Lexus pulled up near her apartment complex. She describes the apartment complex as low-income, and says that a high-end, blacked-out Lexus is an unusual sight in the parking lot. And supposedly, this Lexus is part of the larger plan to harass her. Listen to this carefully, and assess her credibility. Watch: NEW: Researcher working on anti-gravity technology, whose death was ruled a su*cide, sent a text just one month before her death saying she would never kill herself, according to the Daily Mail. Amy Eskridge was found with a gunshot to the head in Huntsville, Alabama. Eskridge… pic.twitter.com/kUj5vrBPot — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 22, 2026 The problem here is that, really, what she’s saying doesn’t make much sense. There’s no logical reason why someone would do any of this. If she’s a threat to someone because of her research, it doesn’t make much sense for them to send a Lexus and change its license plates in front of her, or moonlight as her Uber driver, or break into her house, or any of that.  She also doesn’t mention any police report, or any surveillance footage, or anything — she’s asking us to take her word for all of this. You might say, well, the Lexus driver is trying to intimidate her so that she doesn’t publish her research. These people are supposedly sinister enough that they’re capable of murdering her, and yet they held off — for several years — hoping that they could scare her by changing some license plates around. But if that’s the case, you have to ask: Why didn’t she simply publish her groundbreaking research online? Why did she feel a need to wait for NASA or peer-review or anything like that? Why would these shadowy figures allow her to talk about their pressure campaign online, for years, before they took her out? These are all important questions. And no major news outlets are remotely interested in answering them. One of the things you need to be careful about, as you read stories about these scientists, is that a lot of outlets are extremely sloppy with details. Many of them are probably using AI to generate their stories. For example, as you can see here, The Daily Mail reported, “Journalist Michael Shellenberger testified before a public hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena that Eskridge was ‘murdered by a private aerospace company in the US because she was involved in the UAP conversation.'” Credit: The Daily Mail When I read that quote, I did a double-take. Michael Shellenberger is a serious journalist. We cite his work on the show, all the time. If he did the research, and concluded that Eskridge had been murdered by a private aerospace company, then I’d be very inclined to, at least, take that story seriously. But if you pull up the actual testimony, Shellenberger didn’t say anything like that. The attribution is completely wrong. He didn’t say anything about Eskridge, or how she was supposedly murdered. In reality, that claim came from a Retired U.K. intelligence officer named Franc Milburn, who got in touch with Eskridge before her death. And he told investigators that, in his view, Eskridge was indeed being harassed. In fact, he claimed that Eskridge had been targeted with a “directed-energy weapon.” Credit: The Daily Mail So who is Franc Millburn? He’s also the source for that alleged text message, where Eskridge said she’s not suicidal. As it turns out, he’s a British paratrooper veteran and intel officer who claimed that, in the late 1980s, the British special forces shot down a “non-human craft” in northern England. Milburn doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of this shootdown, but he claims that he spoke to an MI6 officer code-named “John” and the U.K.’s Royal Air Force crew that fired on the UFOs, which were supposedly traveling at hypersonic speeds. Per The Daily Mail Milburn said, “John said they were tasked to secure and retrieve the craft in the north of England. They were flown in by helicopter. They established a cordon, a perimeter, and they approached the craft. ‘He didn’t describe the craft, he just said it was obvious it was non-human, and it was obvious that there were occupants who had fled the scene on foot – or whatever you call it. ‘He said then it became a task of tracking down these beings to try to bring them into custody. ‘Part of the unit was left protecting the craft. They would have left maybe six to eight blokes to cordon the craft, and the others would have been on foot, quad bikes, or 4x4s trying to track down these entities that escaped from it, with helicopters supporting. ‘He said after that it was totally passed over. He said, “scientists and technicians came in and it was completely out of our hands. We were flown away by helicopter, and we knew nothing more after that.”‘ So we don’t get a description of the UFO. We’re only told that the aliens ran away, and that there was a hot pursuit of some kind, involving quad bikes, like something out of a movie. And then, the whole thing was just dropped. The government didn’t kill John to keep him quiet, or anything like that. So he just told all his friends. Put simply, Franc Milburn has a history of making unverifiable, outlandish claims. And now he’s making another one — he’s saying this woman was hit with a mysterious energy beam, harassed, and targeted for assassination. It’s simply not much to go on. On the other hand, there are disappearances that are obviously worth a deeper investigation. Consider the case of 29-year-old Joshua Leblanc, a NASA scientist who worked on rockets and nuclear propulsion. Last summer, he died in a car accident. Here’s how local news reported on his death at the time. Watch: A NASA nuclear scientist was found deceased in his Tesla after colliding with a guardrail, leaving his body so burned that he was completely unrecognizable, according to a new report from Fox News. 29-year-old Joshua LeBlanc, who worked on nuclear propulsion projects, died in a… https://t.co/C793en0aeU pic.twitter.com/8YIhgG7fE3 — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 22, 2026 By itself, does any of this reporting prove — or even suggest — that Leblanc was targeted by an intelligence agency? No, it doesn’t. Nor does it make much sense for someone to use a Tesla to kill him, since Teslas have cameras that are constantly recording. And while the family has their concerns, it’s also possible that they’re mistaken. But given the circumstances, you’d think the authorities would have investigated and come up with some kind of explanation for what Leblanc was doing, and why he would’ve left his phone behind. Normally it’s not hard to figure out these kinds of basic details. But in this case, none of those details have been forthcoming. Maybe now that it’s getting more attention, that will change. Then there’s another case NBC mentioned — the disappearance of 68-year-old US Air Force Major General. William Neil McCasland. And this is where the cases are worth paying a lot of attention to. William Neil McCasland Unlike Eskridge, McCasland had an established scientific career. According to the New York Post, he “served in senior Pentagon roles involving nuclear science, space research and defense initiatives. He also commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at New Mexico’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — where wreckage from the 1947 Roswell crash was purportedly shipped.” (Although the Air Force has denied that.) During his career, McCasland also oversaw research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, which was famous for its work developing the first atomic bomb. Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri says he had contacted McCasland concerning his research into UFOs. And according to the Post, “McCasland also appears in the Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s emails. Former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge was in frequent contact with Podesta regarding UFOs and identified McCasland as his insider source on alien intel. Leaked calendar notifications showed a meeting scheduled between Podesta, DeLonge and McCasland on Jan. 24, 2016.” On February 27 of this year, McCasland — an experienced hiker — left his home in Albuquerque without his phone or prescription glasses. All he took with him, apparently, was his wallet, hiking boots, and a .38-caliber revolver. Before leaving, at 10 a.m., he spoke to repairman at his home. His wife left for a doctor’s appointment at 11:10 a.m., and by the time she returned an hour later, he was missing. A couple hours later, his wife called 911. Listen: So he has both mental and physical issues. He’s retired. He’s given indications that he might not want to continue on with his life, and his wife believes he doesn’t want to be found. And he left with a gun. The police dispatched a helicopter with an infrared scanner to try to find him, but they said it was too hot outside for the scanner to be useful. “The mountain was just lit up like a candle,” a sheriff said. “We couldn’t differentiate from heat signatures and the heat from the rocks.” So again, the simplest explanation is clear. You can easily make the case that, in all likelihood, this elderly man with mental health problems may have committed suicide, or become incapacitated while he was on a hike, or attacked by an animal, or any number of possibilities. There aren’t any indications that he was actively involved in any high-level research, or was on the verge of any kind of breakthrough. What makes his case interesting is that, in a relatively short period of time, several other people with connections to national laboratories basically went missing the same way. Within around 10 months, they all disappeared without taking their cellphones with them. And some of them had weapons. So let’s go through those cases, starting with 78-year-old Anthony Chavez, a research and development engineer who also worked at Los Alamos. He spent most of his career working on a “Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test” facility, which is involved in nuclear weapons research. Anthony Chavez Chavez had long retired. He hasn’t been working since 2017. And like McCasland, Chavez was last seen leaving his home on foot, with his car parked in the driveway — only, unlike McCasland, Chavez left behind his wallet. He was reported missing in May of 2025, and he still hasn’t been located, despite an extensive search. Then, three months after Chavez disappeared, 48-year-old contractor Steven Garcia also went missing. Steven Garcia And he disappeared in pretty much the same way. He was last seen on August 28 leaving his home in Albuquerque at 9 a.m., carrying only his gun, and leaving his wallet and keys behind. Police said they had some reason to believe he may have been a danger to himself. Watch:

“Theft is virtue.” “Stealing is altruism.” “Murder might be excusable.” “Burn it all down.” These are the principles of the radical Left. And that radical Left is increasingly embraced by the mainstream Democratic Party.  You may have heard of Hasan Piker. There have been a ton of New York Times profiles of him. He’s associated with most of the major left-wing Democrats. He’s a podcaster and a Twitch streamer.  He is also monstrously evil.  He publicly advocates for hatred of America. There’s not a terrorist group, an anti-American, anti-Israel terrorist group, that he doesn’t support. He has advocated for violence against those opposed to his views.  And the mainstream Left loves him. I think that’s because they think that he is bro-coded, meaning that he works out a lot, and speaks the way that your friends from high school might after they read the Communist Manifesto and smoked some pot.  He also zaps his dog, and is a socialist who is quite rich, but hypocrisy does not matter to these folks. Not one iota.  When you speak of limousine liberals, this dude is a mansion Marxist. He’s worth millions and millions of dollars and owns a huge mansion in Los Angeles.  He’s also willing to travel to Cuba — a communist hellhole where the average annual income is something like $150 — and party it up while rationalizing why he should have air conditioning in his nice five-star hotel. His outfits apparently cost roughly four times the annual income of a normal Cuban. He wore a Cartier ring that apparently costs $1,400, and Cartier sunglasses that cost roughly $1,300.  But remember folks, he is a good Marxist, and he represents certain principles on the extreme Left: that America is evil, private property is inherently bad, and violence is often justified. No principles of morality must be adhered to as long as you’re “fighting the system.” The ends of Marxist anarchism justify the means. They justify any behavior, so long as you are aligned with the ends, so you can have a really nice mansion, a $1,400 Cartier ring, and $1,300 Cartier sunglasses in Cuba.  What we are watching right now on the Left is radical and dangerous leftist garbage. The legacy media and the New York Times are trying to turn Piker into a mainstream figure. Inside the Democratic Party, they are succeeding.  What we’re watching right now with the Democratic Party is beyond the intersectional wokeism that previously was the way of the future for Democrats.  We are well beyond that now. When people on the Right say “woke is dead,” woke may have died, but it’s been replaced by something else, and that is something older: third worldism.  Third worldism is the philosophy that essentially every country on Earth that is poor is poor because of the West. The solution is to tear down the West from the inside. Global redistributionism, destruction of private property, and violence are all justified by the supposed evils of the Western system. That’s not something new. That’s something quite old.  In the 1970s, there was the Baader-Meinhof gang, also called the Red Army Faction. They were communists whose entire goal was to tear down the world of capitalism on behalf of Marxism. They called for revolution. Ulrike Meinhof, the left-wing radical journalist who founded the group, famously said, “Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure that what does not please me occurs no more. Protest is when I say I don’t like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like.” That manifested itself in terrorism by the Baader-Meinhof gang. Meinhof actually wrote an essay defending the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists. That sounds a lot like the people defending Hamas’s massacre of Jews on October 7 while defending Hezbollah. Which, of course, Piker has done. Stefan Aust, who wrote a book on the Baader-Meinhof gang, pointed out that a poll at the time they were active showed that a quarter of West Germans under 40 felt sympathy for the gang. One-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police, and prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang’s righteousness. When the gang started robbing banks, newscasts compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde.  This is nothing new. There’s an impulse in human beings that when they do not like the system, they believe it justifies violence, theft of property, evil, and terrorism. Hasan Piker is one of these types. We’ve played clips of him on the show, routinely talking about violence against his political opponents. Now he’s done an interview with The New York Times in which he talked about stealing. He explained that he fully endorses crimes like robbing banks and stealing artifacts, saying, “I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it.” What a despicable human being. He also went on to suggest that you should steal from corporations. Of course, he also said he would not recommend stealing from taxpayer-funded grocery stores in New York City because the workers would be unionized. He also said you should be able to steal intellectual property. The fact that this person is being mainstreamed by the Democratic Party shows you what the Democratic Party has become: a full-scale, destructive force in American life.  This all culminates in Hassan Piker’s justification of murder. He’s not in favor of murder, you see. But he totally understands why United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered, saying, “That was a fascinating story for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They’re very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.” Permission structures for murder. “Of course, I understand why people were so okay with a man being murdered, because of course, it’s just social violence.” Everything Hasan Piker doesn’t like is social violence. And social violence justifies and excuses actual violence. He can pretend he’s not excusing it as much as he wants.  He has made statements such as, “I don’t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for America,” and “Liberals,  you need to be showing your opponent’s guts on there, okay? You need to be gutting them. You need to be shanking these and letting their intestines just ride on stage.” This is who the Left is mainstreaming. Zohran Mamdani is ideologically the same as Hasan Piker. They are exactly the same. Nothing Hasan Piker says is radically different from anything Mamdani says.  A couple of days ago, Barack Obama was hanging out with Mamdani. Hasan Piker and Bernie Sanders have campaigned together. This is now pervasive throughout the Democratic Party. Where does all this end? Communist centralization of power. 

Florida could be the Republicans’ last stand in the mid-decade redistricting battle, as the state legislature prepares to convene a special session Tuesday to consider new congressional maps. If approved, the proposed maps could add three to five seats that favor Republicans in the state, according to Politico, potentially shaping the balance of power in a narrowly divided U.S. House. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has criticized the effort, warning Florida Republicans to “F around and find out.” “If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans who are on the run right now,” Jeffries said at a Wednesday press conference. Jeffries also expressed confidence that Democrats will win tough seats in red states, adding, “Under no circumstances are Texas Republicans picking up five seats. They’ll be fortunate if they get two or three. While in California, we are going to get all five.” “The Republicans are dummymandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast because they started this war and we’re going to finish it,” he continued. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis laughed off Jeffries’ comments, suggesting that a national campaign by Democrats targeting the Sunshine State would only bolster the GOP. “There’s nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida to see Hakeem Jeffries everywhere around this state,” DeSantis said, according to Florida Politics. “Please, be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida and campaign. I’ll put you up in the Florida Governor’s mansion. We’ll take you fishing.” Mid-decade redistricting efforts have rocked numerous states. In California, recent changes are expected to favor Democrats in several districts, while Texas Republicans have approved new maps to strengthen their position. In Virginia, a Tuesday special election approved changes that could create four more Democrat-leaning seats, though a state circuit court judge has temporarily blocked the results from taking effect pending further legal review, The Daily Wire reported. When The Daily Wire reached out to DeSantis’ office for further comment, a spokesperson simply stated, “Stay tuned!” At the state level, Democrats in Florida are also pushing back on the process. State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith criticized the lack of publicly released maps ahead of the session. “Just 6 days out from the Florida GOP dummymander and still NO MAPS!” Smith posted to X on Wednesday. “They want rigged Congressional maps that keep Trump’s Republican party in power despite majority opposition from Florida voters.” Florida’s current congressional delegation includes eight Democrats and 20 Republicans. Nationally, Republicans hold a slim 218-212 majority in the House, with several vacancies and a number of competitive races expected to factor into the chamber’s balance of power. The Cook Political Report ranks 16 House races as “toss-ups,” with 14 contests considered “Lean Democrat” and two as “Lean Republican.”

For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has had an outsized influence on American government and society, much of it malignant, but that may be coming to an end. Federal prosecutors have announced that a grand jury has indicted the SPLC for financial offenses related to its alleged funding of supposed infiltrators in various white-supremacist groups and events, most notably the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” riotous demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. The government claims the SPLC took money from donors who wanted to counter organized extremism and then funneled it into support for leaders of extremist groups. Legally, it’s a bold claim, and courts will have to decide whether the allegations constitute federal crimes. But politically, the government has a powerful claim. As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” The charitable group was founded in 1971. By the end of its second decade, its lawsuits assaulting Ku Klux Klan groups had successfully bankrupted that ugly movement. Its original mission accomplished, the SPLC didn’t declare victory and shut down. Instead, it became a fundraising factory that enriched its coffers by tarring mainstream conservative and religious groups by unfair association with extremists, lumping together neo-Nazi cadres with respectable conservative groups like the Family Research Council. Compared to other nonprofits, SPLC is lavishly funded. In 2023, the group reported almost $170 million in total revenue — more than the revenues of the Special Olympics, the United Service Organizations (USO), and the National Park Foundation. SPLC’s vast wealth totals roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars in assets, tens of millions of which are held in offshore accounts, leading to jokes that its Alabama headquarters building is the “Poverty Palace” and that the group’s motto should be “The SPLC — making hate pay.” Other than swelling the SPLC’s domestic and Caribbean bank balances, what did donors get for all this cash? The group’s institutional donor list — which contains such left-wing luminaries of Big Philanthropy as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (a conduit for Big Tech billionaire giving) — suggests the SPLC had strong ideological motives. Before allegations that the SPLC was funding people at the top of radical white-supremacist groups, its most notorious product was its list of “hate groups.” In addition to counting what seemed like every racist knucklehead who could afford to register a URL as a “hate group,” it also tarred as hate groups such mainstream conservative organizations as the legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, the education advocacy groups Moms for Liberty and Defending Education, and immigration-restriction groups like the Center for Immigration Studies. It also branded the conservative political group Turning Point USA an “anti-government extremist group” just months before its founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated, apparently by a young man who told his roommate in a text, “I had enough of his hatred.” Ominously, Kirk had warned that SPLC’s listing of his group could lead to violence, recalling that a shooter had attacked the Family Research Council after SPLC hate-listed it. That would-be mass-murdering extremist was stopped after shooting a security guard; he later said he chose his target based on the SPLC’s hate map and planned to also kill persons at three more conservative groups. Thanks to ideologically sympathetic tech and major media companies, as well as law enforcement authorities like the FBI, the SPLC had its “designations” treated as if they were somehow official and neutral, rather than ideological weapons that often succeeded in harming targeted mainstream groups’ ability to raise money. In 2017, GuideStar, a widely used watchdog of charities, was persuaded not to apply SPLC “hate” labels to groups. By 2019, SPLC was partnering with the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation — a donor-advised fund provider closely tied to the bank that services the Democratic National Committee and is nearly majority-owned by affiliates of the Service Employees International Union — on a pressure campaign to ban contributions from donor-advised funds to so-called “hate groups.” Still more scandals plagued SPLC, even as its wealth ballooned. Morris Dees, its founder and longtime litigation director, was canned in 2019 amid widespread allegations of misconduct, including sexist and racist discrimination and sexual harassment. A former employee wrote a long, devastating tell-all in the New Yorker, confessing that folks on the left had known for decades that Dees was “a ‘super-salesman and master fundraiser’ who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals.” It remains to be seen if the Justice Department’s indictment of the SPLC will prevail, but should the shameless operation finally meet its downfall, that downfall would be well deserved. At a minimum, the latest revelations should knock down any last support for the group’s claim to moral authority. Scott Walter is president of the Capital Research Center.