Democrats Sound Alarm on Republican Campaign to Promote White Nationalism and Silence Civil Rights Defenders At Hearing on Southern Poverty Law Center

In Latest Republican Re-Run Hearing, GOP’s Baseless and Evidence-Free Smears Against SPLC Fall Flat 

Washington, D.C. (June 9, 2026)— Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, led Committee Democrats in exposing House Republicans’ baseless charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for what it is: a blatant attempt tointimidate civil rights institutions and prosecute political enemies. 

The hearing included testimony from: Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, Georgetown University Law Center; Bryan Fair, Interim President and CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center; Alveda King, Chair of the American Dream, America First Policy Institute; Ryan Bangert, Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom.

SPLC is on the front lines of fighting violent extremist groups. 

• Rep. Jerry Nadler said: “The Justice Department has lost more than 10,000 attorneys since the start of President Trump’s second term. It’s not surprising that the indictment of the SPLC is replete with mistakes of fact and law. In the words of one former prosecutor, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) indictment of SPLC ‘falls egregiously short of alleging a crime.’” 
• In response to a question from Rep. Steve Cohen about how SPLC targets antisemites, Mr. Fair explained: “For 55 years, we’ve been resisting antisemitism. I mentioned that Tanya Gersh [victim of an antisemitic harassment campaign led by The Daily Stormer, a publication which the SPLC sued for a $14 million judgment] is here. We’ve also recently filed two lawsuits against the Goyim Defense League in Tennessee for attacks on a Jewish Center and on Jewish and African American people in Nashville. This is work that we’ve done that we will continue to do.” 
• Rep. Hank Johnson said: “America may not realize that election workers have recently faced bomb threats, harassment, and targeted intimidation simply for doing their job. And you’ve issued reports about that. How are these threats part of the larger race-based suppression tactics? And is this a reason why your organization has come under attack by this administration and by this committee?” Mr. Fair explained: “We believe that there is a direct threat to free and fair elections. And we believe that we are a target of this Administration because of the effective work we’ve done for 55 years.” 
• Rep. Joe Neguse said: “The SPLC, as I understand it, has gone to the FBI on many occasions to provide the FBI with information about suspected criminal activity and, in fact, that criminal activity, the reported criminal activity, has ultimately been prosecuted, by the way, not by President Biden’s Justice Department, but by Donald Trump’s Justice Department. And the best example of this was the potential mass terror attack at a synagogue in Las Vegas. Mr. Fair, I think you’ve already attested to this, but just to be clear, your organization gave information from a paid informant to the FBI when Donald Trump was president, and Donald Trump’s FBI used that information to prosecute someone to prevent them from having engaged in this mass terror attack. Is that true?” Mr. Fair said: “That is correct.” 
• In response to bizarre claims by witness Alveda King that SPLC had placed her on a ‘domestic terror list,’ Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove corrected the record: “President Fair, do you maintain a domestic terrorist list?” He confirmed: “We do not.” Rep. Kamlager-Dove continued: “So Dr. King, for example, is not on this nonexistent list. Is that true?” Mr. Fair said: “That is true. I’m not sure what list she’s referring to.” Rep. Kamlager-Dove also showed video testimonials, submitted by numerous Christian pastors, priests, and reverends across the South, detailing how the SPLC has carried forward the work of the Gospels.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice is siding with white supremacists and violent right-wing extremists.

• Rep. Zoe Lofgren said: “If Congress tries to diminish SPLC and dismiss its warnings about groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, what lessons would we miss about the threat posed by organized domestic extremism to our American democracy?” Mr. Fair responded: “The lessons we would miss is that all of us are less safe with the threat of domestic terrorism that these groups, that both express hate, that express white supremacy, that terrorize various groups are a danger to all of us. And we need to know about them. We need to know about what they say. And we need to know about the actions that they take. That’s what we’ll miss.” 
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal said: “My Republican colleagues want you to think that SPLC is targeting mainstream conservative individuals and groups, but I want to dive in a little bit to set the record straight about exactly who we are talking about here. Many of these individuals and groups espouse something called the Great Replacement Theory, which argues that elites are trying to actively replace white Americans and Europeans with nonwhite immigrants. [...] And it’s true, is it not, that the great replacement theory has stimulated violent reactionary responses in multiple cases, including mass murders, mass shootings?” Professor McCord explained: “There have been numerous mass shootings, including in Buffalo, New York, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, El Paso, Texas, and many others where the writings and work of the people who have committed those heinous crimes reflected that they adhered to the Great Replacement Theory as an ideology.” 
• Rep. Lucy McBath detailed the extent to which the Trump Administration has gone tocover up violent right wing extremism: “Last March, the Department of Homeland Security defunded the database at the University of Maryland that tracked domestic terrorism, hate crimes and targeted violence—the only publicly available database of its kind in this country—shut down at the very moment that its data showed a 25% increase in terrorism and targeted violence over the prior year. By summer 2025, the Administration went on to dismantle DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, the primary federal unit for proactively stopping extremist violence, credited with disrupting over a thousand violent plots. Last fall, the Justice Department quietly removed from its website a study showing far right extremists were responsible for the bulk of ideologically motivated deaths, a fact that has been shown numerous times in multiple studies.” 

Under Acting AG Blanche, DOJ has persecuted political opponents while giving criminals a pass.

• Ranking Member Raskin said: “We understand that the extremist swamp that gave rise tothis criminal indictment against the SPLC is just one more Orwellian attack on the civil rights movement and one more Kafkaesque prosecution designed to shame and ensnare the righteous and acquit and absolve the guilty. It is a tissue of lies that will join the pantheon of debunked fraudulent prosecutions that DOJ has been excoriated for by dozens of judges across the land appointed by all different presidents.” 
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal said: “Even after images and videos showed participants [in the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally] making Nazi salutes and cheering on the former grand wizard of the KKK, Trump then urged the same network of extremists to storm the Capitol and is still trying to implement his $1.8 billion slush fund of U.S. Taxpayer dollars topardon convicted insurrectionists, at least 89 of whom have gone on to commit all kinds of serious crimes, from child sexual abuse to reckless homicide. And he’s done so over and over again. And yet he’s weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after the Southern Poverty Law Center because they have dared to call out that hate and extremism, including from people within the white house like Stephen Miller and others within the administration.”  
• Rep. Deborah Ross said: “The indictment is a laughingstock. It is on specious legal grounds. Veteran prosecutors have called this indictment ’frail and deficient and particularly weak.’ One federal civil rights prosecutor, an FBI agent, even stated, and I quote, ‘I don’t think any prosecutor with white-collar experience would look at this indictment and believe it makes out the elements of a crime.’ It is not a valid indictment. We know why this indictment was brought. It’s just one of the many weaponized moves that Todd Blanche and the DOJ has taken at the President’s behest, to silence dissent for his months-long audition for Attorney General.” 
• Rep. Becca Balint said: “Acting Attorney General Blanche has quickly earned President Trump’s trust by using the Justice Department to attack people in groups like SPLC that have stood up to this Administration and its lawlessness. Mr. Blanche has overseen the creation of perhaps the most corrupt scheme in our nation’s history: the DOJ weaponization slush fund. Blanche signed off on an unconstitutional agreement to give taxpayers’ money to criminals and insurrectionists, people who beat cops in this building.” 
• Rep. Chuy García said: “Everyone knows that the SPLC indictment is a joke, a bad one at that. Everyone knows that the legal arguments are nonsense, and everyone knows that Todd Blanche’s corrupt henchmen ordered the U.S. Attorney to do this pathetic hack job, even though it’ll never hold up in court. So why are Republicans putting us through this absurd Gaslighting Olympics for a third time? Because their assault on the SPLC is a crucial part of the assault on democracy itself.”