The Dictatorship

What the DOJ’s Southern Poverty Law Center indictment is really about

Published

3 months ago

April 23, 2026

Apr. 22, 2026, 7:53 PM EDT

ByMichael Edison Hayden

As one of the most high-profile employees of the Southern Poverty Law Center for five years — and as someone who has been outspokenly critical of the organization — I never once heard of the program that allegedly involved paying sources within the Ku Klux Klan, National Alliance and Aryan Nations until the Justice Department published its indictment this week.

What I did hear, frequently, was people in the MAGA movement saying we were some kind of criminal syndicate — part of a sustained propaganda effort to delegitimize the work we did tracking and labeling extremist groups.

Although I find the notion of paying extremists distasteful, even unethical, the indictment feels like the culmination of years of pro-Trump activists consuming and amplifying that kind of propaganda. And, the SPLC, for its part, has called these charges “false allegations.”

One quote from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s press conference about the charges against the SPLC stood out to me as particularly absurd:

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” he said on Tuesday afternoon.

Imagine, for a moment, believing the SPLC — or any other civil rights organization — needed to fraudulently manufacture racism to sell it in today’s America. Just two months ago, the president shared an artificial intelligence-generated video depicting his Black predecessor and his predecessor’s Black wife as primates. In early 2025, the Trump administration suspended refugee admissions from majority non-white countries while investing in a special program to fast-track white South African Afrikaners into the United States. Racism is not a rare commodity in this country to be manufactured — it’s cheap and easy to find.

A closer look at the indictment raises more red flags. For one, the KKK, National Alliance and Aryan Nations have been largely defanged for years. You rarely hear those names now unless you’re a historian focused on the white supremacist movement. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of criminal wrongdoing on its own, but it does show that this DOJ, in 2026, had to reach back as far as 2013 to find a relatively obscure SPLC program — one that, as a former spokesperson, I had never even heard of.

Another issue is the indictment’s suggestion that the SPLC played a role in planning the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, based on the claim that an informant was “part of a leadership group.” The idea that an informant could have planted the seed for a gathering of white supremacists of that magnitude is completely implausible. We don’t need to speculate about the origins of that deadly event: Unite the Right was effectively a sequel to a similar rally in Charlottesville in May 2017, driven by widespread outrage within the movement over the removal of Confederate statues. Unicorn Riot preserved reams of Discord logs attesting to it.

The indictment feels like the culmination of years of pro-Trump activists consuming and amplifying that kind of propaganda.

So, leaving open the possibility that something comes out in the trial that I don’t know about yet, these charges look like a piece of political theater to shore up a wayward MAGA base beleaguered by the scandal around Jeffrey Epstein and an increasingly unwieldy debacle in Iran. It’s a MAGA base that understands the SPLC as one of the primary villains in its propaganda stories and enjoys seeing it suffer.

But if the DOJ argues that paying informants furthers hate, and that this makes the use of paid informants fraudulent, won’t the SPLC’s lawyers simply demonstrate how those efforts contributed to these groups no longer being around? If the SPLC propped up the National Alliance to defraud donors, why is it essentially defunct? Why does the once robust Aryan Nations group no longer exist?

If you’ve read this far and assumed I have an incentive to support my former employer, I don’t. I have a different life now — with a book out, a podcast and teaching. After producing some of the SPLC’s more notable investigative stories from 2018 to 2023, I’ve repeatedly criticized them in media appearances.

As chronicled in my book, “Strange People on the Hill,” the SPLC settled with me out of court after I raised allegations of racial discrimination and union busting against them. I have also publicly accused the organization of deliberately taking a lower profile during President Donald Trump’s second term — hoping to evade the kind of targeting that is befalling it now. The SPLC has done many things over the years, good and bad. It has been invaluable in tracing how MAGA brought fringe racist ideas into the mainstream conservative movement. It has also been clumsy, reactionary and, at times, foolish. This program involving paid informants may indeed be one of those clumsy and foolish chapters.

But to understand why a weaponized DOJ might choose this particular case amid all of the white-collar crimes it isn’t pursuing in America today, you first need to understand the narrative that’s been built around the SPLC for years — and how useful it has become to the corrupt men who run this country.

Michael Edison Hayden

Michael Edison Hayden is a leading expert on far-right extremism in the United States. His debut book, “Strange People on Blue Light News”— a chronicle of a West Virginia town in the five years following a white nationalist group’s purchase of a local castle — will be published by Bold Type Books/Hachette on April 7, 2026. Hayden also co-hosts the podcast, “Posting Through It,” with new episodes released every Monday and Thursday.

The Dictatorship

Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 7.10.26: Democrats pour into Maine race to replace Platner

Published

22 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 7.10.26: Democrats pour into Maine race to replace Platner

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Maine’s closely watched Senate raceGraham Platner has until Monday to officially withdraw his Democratic candidacy. And according to multiple reportshe intends to wait until Monday to file the paperwork. It’s not at all clear why he’s dragging out the process.

In the meantime, the field of contenders hoping to replace him on the general election ballot is growing quickly. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson, for example, announced his candidacy less than an hour after Platner left the race. Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Company, is also in, along with former gubernatorial hopeful Nirav Shah, who led the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic.

As Thursday progressed, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows joined the party’s field, as did Jordan Wood, who recently lost a competitive House primary race in the northern part of Maine.

Over the past 30 years, there have been only nine instances in which a major party replaced its Senate nominee. Two of those nine won.

* Despite credible concerns about Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor in Alabama, a state judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that argued he does not meet the residency requirement to run.

* In Texas’ closely watched Senate raceRepublican Attorney General Ken Paxton raised over $9 million in the second quarter (spanning April through June), while Democratic state Rep. James Talarico raised a staggering $30 million over the same three months. According to The Texas TribuneTalarico’s haul “is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year.”

* As Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s Republican gubernatorial campaign prepares for an Aug. 6 primary, the senator launched a new television ad this week that has been widely panned as racist.

* Rep. Mike Collins’ Republican Senate campaign in Georgia was already facing long oddsand it probably won’t help that the far-right congressman is now struggling with staffing issuesincluding the departure of two chiefs of staff.

* And while it’s undeniable that Republicans enjoy a financial advantage headed into the midterm electionsSenate Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with the Senate Democratic leadership, and its affiliated nonprofit raised $147 million in the second quarter. That’s the best quarter it’s ever had.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Mexican immigrant killed by ICE was not target, Democratic lawmaker says

Published

22 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Mexican immigrant killed by ICE was not target, Democratic lawmaker says

Christmas. 10, 2026, 11:47 AM EDT

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was not the target of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation that resulted in his fatal shooting, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, told MS NOW.

Salgado, a Mexican immigrant who moved to the United States 35 years ago, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday. According to Garcia, acting ICE Director David Venturella told her that neither Salgado nor his brother, who was in the vehicle with him, were the individuals that ICE officers were looking for. But Venturella “refused” to provide further information, Garcia said.

In a statement to MS NOW, a DHS spokesperson said that “officers conducted surveillance on a target’s address” where “they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.”

The New York Timesciting a DHS spokeswoman, also reported on Thursday that ICE officers had been looking for a different person.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has ruled Salgado’s death a homicide.

How the incident escalated to result in Salgado’s killing is unclear. Three other men arrested in the operation have disputed in handwritten statements to The Washington Post the claim by DHS that Salgado “weaponized his vehicle” against an officer.

“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas said. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

The officers engaging in the operation were also not wearing body cameras, nor were there cameras on the car dashboard. A DHS spokesperson told MS NOW in a statement that officers had not been issued body cameras because of the government shutdowns over funding for the department, saying the process of acquiring the equipment for ICE field offices “was interrupted by the Democrats multiple government shutdowns.”

Salgado’s death has sparked a firestorm across the country. His family said he was in the process of obtaining his work permit and was en route to a construction site when he was killed.

They have also called for an independent investigation into his killing, pointing to the similarities in DHS’ claim about the circumstances of Salgado’s death to that of Renee Good’s in Minneapolis.

DHS has said its Office of Inspector General is probing the incident. A spokesperson for the FBI in Houston previously told MS NOW that it is “leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.

Rosa Flores is a national correspondent for MS NOW.

Sara Weisfeldt is a field producer for MS NOW.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

The Dictatorship

Victor Marx’s GOP primary win in Colorado creates a new challenge for his party

Published

22 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Victor Marx’s GOP primary win in Colorado creates a new challenge for his party

Voters in Colorado haven’t elected a Republican governor in more than two decades, and now that this year’s GOP gubernatorial primary has been called, it seems the streak will continue for four more years. The Associated Press reported:

Marine Corps veteran Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Thursday, inching past a state senator who had the establishment’s backing.

Marx, described as a “high risk humanitarian” and the fastest gun disarmer in the world, defeated Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, his stiffest competition, in the June 30 election.

The results were incredibly close, and as of the latest tallies, Marx’s lead over Kirkmeyer was only about half a percentage point. That said, the advantage was good enough for news organizations to call the contest.

For her party, Kirkmeyer thanked her supporters and volunteers in a statement Thursday evening, signing off by saying, “I’m still proud of the campaign we ran … and, for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.”

That might sound like a strange thing to say, but in this case, it was highly relevant: According to Marx, who founded a group called All Things Possible Ministries, he had an abusive stepfather who effectively forced him, at just 7 years old, to kill a man.

Asked in May how many people he has killed since then, the GOP candidate paused before telling Kyle Clark, an anchor at the NBC affiliate in Denver, “Does it matter?” He went on to call it an “odd question.”

(For the record, there are lingering questions about whether Marx actually killed a man as a child, and according to local law enforcementthere are unsolved murders from that time period.)

In case that weren’t quite enough, in the same interview, Marx explained that he also performs exorcisms, which he added can be completed over the phone.

He did not appear to be kidding.

A recent Slate report noted that party insiders not only expect him to lose badly, they’re also concerned that having Marx at the top of the GOP ballot “could imperil other Republican seats in the statehouse and Congress, plunging the fractured, marginalized party into chaos.”

Marx will face Phil Weiser, the Democratic state attorney general, in November. Watch this space.