SPLC CEO Makes Astonishing Claim to Explain Why Leftist Group Stopped Its ‘Informant’ Program

The Southern Poverty Law Center acknowledged that it funded members of the Ku Klux Klan, but it claims the payments were merely part of an “informant” program to dismantle the Klan and other white supremacist groups—a program it has since ended. The group’s interim president gave a reason why in congressional testimony Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted in Tuesday’s hearing that the SPLC announced it had ended the “informant” program, and he asked for the reason why. “Do you wish you hadn’t done the program?” Jordan asked the center’s interim CEO Bryan Fair. “You said the program was successful, helpful, but now you’re stopping it.”

“We stopped the program because we believe hate and extremism has migrated significantly online and into government agencies,” Fair responded.

Jordan chuckled at the idea, saying, “That makes no sense.”

The SPLC’s Annual Report

Yet that claim emerges as the central argument in the SPLC’s annual report “Year in Hate and Extremism,” published during the hearing.

The report’s subtitle—”From Extreme to Establishment”—highlights its central claim.

Rachel Carroll Rivas, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, dubbed 2025 “the year hate and extremism infiltrated institutions.”

“Both the federal government and the private tech sector embraced the ideas of the hard right and advanced its agenda,” Rivas wrote. “The hard right effectively seized the power of government as a messenger for extremist rhetoric and a tool to dictate policies affecting the everyday lives of millions of people.” She warned that this agenda comes “at the expense of black and brown people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, families with low incomes and everyone who benefits from an inclusive democracy.”

The report condemns the Trump administration, claiming it favors “extremists.” It condemns conservative groups that seek to educate and mobilize college students, such as Turning Point USA. It condemns as “suit-and-tie extremism” conservatives who testified in Congress last year.

The 2025 report includes the SPLC’s latest edition of the “hate map,” which critics say plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The new version of the map includes 1,263 “active extremist groups,” including 556 “hate groups” and 707 “antigovernment extremist groups.” These numbers represent a slight reduction from the 2024 report, which included 1,371 active groups, including 533 “hate groups” and 838 “antigovernment extremist groups.”

In previous years, the SPLC added new organizations to the map. The SPLC added parental rights groups, such as Moms for Liberty, to the map in the 2022 report, released in 2023. The SPLC in 2024 added groups led by doctors who oppose experimental transgender “medicine.” Last year, it added Focus on the Family, PragerU, and Turning Point USA to the map.

Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., suggested the Republicans held a hearing about the SPLC because they support white supremacy.

He said the Republican Party is “nothing more than a death cult and a political front for the white supremacist movement.”

“The Republican Party protects these groups because they have the same goals: erase Reconstruction, erase the civil rights movement, destroy multiracial democracy, and restore Jim Crow in America,” Garcia claimed.

Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, responded to a similar attack in the last hearing regarding the SPLC. He noted that the Jim Crow era featured poll taxes, segregated restrooms and water fountains, and more, while the Republican movement for voter ID—often condemned as “Jim Crow 2.0″—merely involves presenting identification to vote.

Federal Charges

A federal grand jury in April indicted the SPLC on charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering. The SPLC has pleaded not guilty to the charges. New details about the accusations emerged in a superseding indictment this week.

Fair declined to answer directly many questions about the indictment’s allegations, which include claims that an SPLC staffer had a romantic relationship with a member of a neo-Nazi organization and that the SPLC’s funds paid for KKK hoods and reimbursed “informants” for a cross-burning.

Fair responded to accusations that the SPLC had lost its way.

“That’s false,” he said. “We’ve never lost our north star, a fair and just society for every person.”

Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and chair of the American Dream at the America First Policy Institute, testified at the hearing, as did Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy Protection.

Ryan Bangert, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom, testified about the negative effects of the SPLC’s “hate map.” The SPLC put his organization, a conservative Christian law firm, on the map around the year 2016.

“It has slandered ADF and others like us as ‘hate groups,'” Bangert said. “You don’t have to win a debate with your opponents if they’re invisible.”

He noted that the SPLC has led coalitions of activist groups demanding that social media companies, financial institutions, and other entities deplatform, debank, and otherwise exclude groups on the “hate map” from polite society.