April 22, 2026

CORN, POPPED: Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces a Justice Department criminal probe over paid informants.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

That was a long time ago. This is the SPLC’s present: However Bad You Think Biden’s DOJ Was, New Documents Show It Was Even Worse. “Imagine a leftist group with ties to Antifa puts conservatives and Christians on a “hate map” with defunct chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, and that map inspires an act of terrorism and would go on to contribute to the demonization of Turning Point USA ahead of the Charlie Kirk assassination.”

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

THIS:

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Two More Years of ‘Scorned John Fetterman’ Should Be Fun to Watch. “We know that the Democrats — or any lefitsts for that matter — don’t handle rejection well. This probably won’t end well for Fetterman. I’ve always maintained that the easiest time to oust an incumbent United States Senator is after his or her first term. After that, too many favors have been doled out. The last Democrat in the Senate to hover anywhere near the center was Kyrsten Sinema. She became so toxic to the Dems that she registered as an independent before becoming a one-term casualty. There are already signs that Fetterman may soon be getting the Sinema treatment.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

THE DEEP STATE: Secret ‘Witness 2’ was anti-Trump intel officer pushing Russiagate, Ukraine impeachment.

Since he left the National Security Agency and the National Security Council, Gavin Wilde has hit the podcast circuit and penned articles suggesting Donald Trump parroted Russian propaganda while reportedly lamenting “MAGA conspiracy theories.”

Just the News has confirmed that Wilde is the unnamed “Witness 2“ identified in the Ukraine impeachment documents released this month by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The 2019 claims by Witness 2 were critical in helping the intelligence community watchdog push the whistleblower’s complaint forward, and his Russiagate-linked biases were concealed from House investigators during the impeachment saga.

Wilde isn’t just your average spy agency retiree with an anti-Trump chip on his shoulder. He played critical roles inside the intelligence community in furthering the now discredited claims that Vladimir Putin helped Trump win the 2016 election, and he pushed claims that Trump later improperly tried to extort Ukraine’s president to investigate the Biden family.

After leaving government in 2021, Wilde wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2022 that “during the 2016 and 2020 elections, Ukraine was a key theme of Russia’s interference activities. Numerous Kremlin operatives had ties to Ukraine or to past Russian interference in Ukraine […] Members of Congress and President Trump himself parroted these narratives.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Downtown Frisco tower once worth $320 million went to auction. Nobody made an offer.

One of San Francisco’s notable office towers was up for auction last week, a 20-story, 360,000-square-foot Class A building on one of the most coveted corridors in the North Financial District. Nobody who showed up to the stretch of sidewalk in the shadow of City Hall where the sale was held Thursday was there to bid on the polished, quietly assertive building that was once valued at over $320 million.

It’s a bit of a reckoning for the property at 600 California St., which was tied to a distressed $240 million loan and pushed into receivership after its former anchor tenant WeWork stopped paying rent three years ago. With no contenders stepping forward to offer bids, Dallas-based Lone Star Funds became the official owner of the property, after the private equity group paid roughly $130 million to acquire the debt in January from Goldman Sachs, the original lender.

The quiet transaction felt closer to a casual curbside deal than a high-stakes transfer of a notable piece of the city’s skyline. Some market participants pointed out that 600 California’s anticlimactic sale underscores continued weakness in the office market, challenging claims of full recovery.

Also news out of Detroit by the Bay:

Unexpectedly!

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

LET THE LAWSUITS BEGIN:

Posted at 8:20 am by Stephen Green

MEANWHILE, ON THE ECONOMIC FRONT…:

Posted at 7:49 am by Stephen Green

SALENA ZITO: ‘I am a Democrat’: Will Pennsylvania turn on John Fetterman?

Fetterman’s pro-Israel stance increasingly made him “pro-Trump” in the eyes of many progressives. When he and his wife, Giselle, met with Trump in Florida to get acquainted — what was once a common courtesy between congressional members of opposite parties and presidents — it was considered an act of betrayal.

Powerful Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer were once aligned with Fetterman on issues such as securing the border and supporting Republican presidential picks for Cabinet positions despite political differences.

It wasn’t Fetterman who changed; he still believes in those things as much as he believes in a woman’s right to choose, rights for the LGBTQ+ community and progressive economic views such as closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and supporting workers’ rights and affordable health care.

“The party has abandoned core values in the face of TDS,” Fetterman said, referencing “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Hatred of Israel and observant Jews, too.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

ELIMINATING FRAUD WOULD BE NICE, BUT DC HAS NO BUSINESS IN HEALTH CARE:

Posted at 7:18 am by Stephen Green

RADICAL CHIC AND MAU-MAUING THE KLAN MEMBERS: They Call Us Extreme? Look Who Just Got Indicted for Funding Hate Groups.

On Tuesday, another news item dropped that will have conservatives (and probably a fair number of moderates) chuckling for the rest of the day. The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is fond of screaming about racists and white supremacists; they are vocally part of the school of thought on the left that a white supremacist is lurking around every corner, when in reality, they are pretty thin on the ground.

Now, we learn that the SPLC has not only been encouraging real white supremacist and racist groups, but they have been funding them. And now, they have been indicted on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Acting AG Blanche and FBI Director Patel made the announcement:

Given the DNC-MSM’s reliance on the SPLC for stories, as “Northern Barbarian” tweets in response to Rupar, “This is the point where they need guidance from higher on how to address this. The shitbag media, that is.”

Yesterday’s announcement potentially means:

As Zhou Enlai famously never said, “The French Revolution? It’s too early to say.” How much of the 2018-2020 color revolution was based on funds sloshing around the SPLC?

Tweet continues, “Everybody well-informed knew thing whole thing was astroturfed from day one. But maybe not to this extent.” In 2022, Glenn wrote, “Both the SDS and the KKK used to say in the 1960s that the guy in your group calling for illegal activity was the FBI mole.” Or more recently the SPLC mole.

Incidentally, yesterday’s announcement sure casts the Atlantic’s hit piece on Patel in a different light:

(Classical allusion in headline.)

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

GRIFTERS AND LIARS (CONT’D):

Posted at 7:08 am by Glenn Reynolds

GRIFTERS AND LIARS:

Posted at 7:06 am by Glenn Reynolds