Southern Poverty CEO Eviscerated by House Panel

By Diana Banister | 2026

CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center

UNITED NATIONS, June 12 (C-Fam) This week, the House Judiciary Committee grilled Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) President and Chief Executive Officer, Bryan Fair, in its second hearing titled “Manufacturing Hate” examining the role SPLC played in funneling money to groups it has accused of spreading hate and “artificially elevating the domestic extremist threat and misleading its donors.”

Fair admitted to Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that his organization used donor money to infiltrate and grow existing chapters of “extremist” groups and paid informants more than $4 million through fictitious bank accounts. In April, the Department of Justice filed charges against SPLC for wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

“We used donor money to pay confidential informants to infiltrate extremist organizations,” admitted Fair, a University of Alabama law professor who has served as interim President of SPLC for the last year.

Rep. Jordan pressed him further on one incident in which an SPLC employee who ran the confidential informant program also had a romantic relationship with a paid field source who joined the white supremacist group National Alliance. Their shared bank account revealed that the field source received $1.2 million from SPLC.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, publishes a “Hate & Extremism Report” and created a “hate map” in 1990 that now tracks more than 1,300 organizations, including conservative organizations like C-Fam (publisher of the Friday Fax) and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

“The consequences [for being on the list] have been deadly,” stated Ryan Bangert, Senior Vice President at Alliance Defending Freedom, who also testified before the Committee and whose group has been on the list since 2016 “Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was murdered 24 hours after the SPLC named him in an article sub-headlined ‘Militia and antigovernment movement activity.’

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Fair to recant listing Charlie Kirk on the SPLC hate map, and Fair said, “The SPLC will continue to expose hate and extremism.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) asked if SPLC had considered removing the Family Research Council from its “hate” map following a shooting incident in their lobby in 2012, where their security guard was shot by a man who had targeted the organization after studying the SPLC hate map.

“Family Research Council remains on the hate map,” stated Fair unequivocally. “Family Research Council is an anti-LGBTQ group.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Roy introduced legislation, “The Stop SPLC Act” that would revoke the Southern Poverty Law Center’s tax-exempt status for misusing its donor funds to engage in illegal money activities under the guise of being the arbiter of hate.

Rep Harriet Hagerman (R-WY) provided details of how SPLC has profited from labeling ideological opponents. As of 2024, the organization had more than $829 million in assets and an endowment of approximately $730.8 million and $120.9 million in revenue.

“We don’t fund hate groups,” Fair said defiantly. “We target groups that demean and vilify other people. We take no pleasure in listing any groups, and we wish the list was empty, but we have the constitutional right to do that, and we will continue to do that.”

C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, landed on the SPLC hate map in 2013 after advising the people and the government of Belize that they had no treaty obligation concerning homosexual sodomy.

Demonstrating the seriousness of the charges against SPLC, sitting behind Fair during his testimony was Abbe Lowell, one of Washington, D.C.’s priciest, most powerful attorneys.

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