Wed
Apr 22 2026
06:50 am
By: bizgrrl
The Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that has long tracked hate groups, on Tuesday with financial crimes, accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations.
...
The indictment, however, offers little to support the notion that the group’s payments to informants was meant to aid the extremist groups they had infiltrated.
Whatta ya gonna do?
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*
Read the NYT coverage and read the email SPLC sent me today. SPLC is spending my (modest) donations exactly as I've wanted.
In the NYT piece, though, these comments from Blanche and Patel are illuminating:
"(Blanche) accused the group of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”"
...and...
"(Patel) said the organization “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”"
So is it the case that the both of them think that *only* racial minorities have to perpetually fight for their civil rights?
On the contrary, the *totality* of minority groups having to perpetually fight for their civil rights includes racial minorities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities (including minorities as to their sexual orientation or gender identification), as well as disabled people, old people, and even people who are ill.
Given how few of these many minorities are represented in Blanche's and Patel's GOP, though (except for old people, ha), it's not surprising that condemnation from groups like SPLC would feel "partisan" to them.
The GOP could change that, if they wanted to.
*
Really, I expect the fed's suit will be easily defeated, if not dismissed on the front end.
SPLC shouldn't have any difficulty documenting what they did with the info gleaned from their informants and neither do Blanche's and Patel's feelings that their political party has been personally attacked much matter, either.
From Kyle Whitmire,
From Kyle Whitmire, AL.COM,
Justice Department indicts SPLC for doing the thing Justice Department does