The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), once a beacon in the fight against Ku Klux Klan violence and white supremacist groups through landmark civil rights litigation, has long since veered off course into partisan activism. Founded in 1971 by Morris Dees and others, the organization amassed a $1 billion endowment by the 2010s, but critics argue this windfall fueled a shift from courtroom victories to ideological warfare. Instead of focusing solely on genuine extremists, the SPLC began labeling conservative nonprofits, Christian advocacy groups, and even parental rights organizations as “hate groups” on its influential “hate map,” a tool launched in 2000 that tracks nearly 1,400 entities today. This transformation, substantiated by internal scandals like the 2019 firing of co-founder Dees amid sexual misconduct allegations and a $3.37 million settlement in a 2018 defamation lawsuit against Maajid Nawaz for falsely branding him an “anti-Muslim extremist,” has painted the SPLC as a “partisan smear machine” that prioritizes fundraising and left-wing agendas over objective civil rights work.

The SPLC’s “hate map” has drawn particular ire for conflating mainstream conservative voices with neo-Nazis and the KKK, effectively defaming ordinary Americans and endangering them in the process. High-profile examples include the 2012 armed attack on the Family Research Council (FRC), where shooter Floyd Corkins explicitly cited the SPLC’s map as his inspiration for targeting the group over its stance on same-sex marriage; he planned to kill staff and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches on their faces, but was stopped by a security guard who suffered lasting injuries. More recently, the SPLC included Turning Point USA—led by the late Charlie Kirk, assassinated in September 2025—in its 2024 “Year in Hate and Extremism” report as an “anti-government extremist group,” just a day before Kirk’s death, prompting accusations from Elon Musk of “incitement to murder.” Such listings have led banks, tech firms, and even the FBI under prior administrations to blacklist or surveil these groups, amplifying the map’s real-world harm and underscoring how the SPLC’s biased classifications have inspired violence while masquerading as anti-hate advocacy.

This sordid history renders the SPLC wholly unfit for any collaboration with federal law enforcement, a point FBI Director Kash Patel hammered home in October 2025 by officially terminating all ties. In a stark X post, Patel declared, “Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated,” echoing his April 2025 Anti-Christian Bias Panel remarks where he vowed to reject “politicized or agenda-driven intelligence” from groups like the SPLC—especially after the Biden-era FBI’s Richmond office memo cited it to justify infiltrating traditional Catholic churches as “radical-traditionalist” threats. Coming on the heels of severed partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League, Patel’s move signals a broader purge of ideologically tainted informants, restoring the FBI’s focus on impartial threat assessment rather than left-leaning hit lists that have fueled division and danger.