After Party with Emily Jashinsky - SPLC’s Despicable Grift, Plus Weaponized DOJ, and Secrets of the Dobbs Decision, with Mollie Hemingway

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by her friend and former boss Mollie Hemingway, author of the brand-new book “Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution” and the Editor-in-Chief of “The Federalist.” They go behind the scenes of the highest court in the land, detailing the dynamics at play, what really happened before and after the Dobbs decision was leaked, the controversy surrounding Justice Alito’s wife, pressures from President Trump, and what people really think about Ketanji Brown Jackson. Then Mollie and Emily discuss the surprise court ruling out of Virginia that invalidated a closely passed redistricting referendum backed by Democrats, newly released records in the “Arctic Frost” probe, plus broader “weaponization” against President Trump and his allies. Emily also gets Mollie’s take on the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center before doing a deep dive on the disturbing allegations against the SPLC, including claims it funded individuals tied to extremist groups, and how the media is complicit in the story.   Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILY and order your UP phone today!   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229.   Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com/EMILY & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to another edition of After Party, everyone. It is great to be here with you. We are joined tonight by Molly Hemingway, the one and only, the lesser Hemingway. Of course, if you watch this show, Mark Hemingway, has made many appearances by popular demand, but tonight we are stuck with Molly, unfortunately. It'll be great, though. Molly has a new book out. She is blowing the lid off of a major scandal at the Supreme Court and much more. First, please do subscribe. Support our independent journalism here. Help us subscribe. Hit that, smash that subscribe button. Don't hit it smash that subscribe button. Whether you get your podcast on Apple, Spotify, or on YouTube, it helps us a lot.

Thank you. Like I said, tonight, Molly's blowing the lid off a big scandal at the Supreme Court. We also have breaking news about that wild Virginia redistricting situation. The election that Democrats won last night in Virginia, we already have some news that it might be on the rocks. Big news. It might be on the rocks. We have fascinating new records from the, quote, bigger than Watergate.

Arctic Frost scandal. Glad to have Molly here to get into some of that. And I'm going to do a big deep dive into the history of the Southern Poverty Law Center towards the end of the show and bring you some information from the DOJ's shocking new indictment. It really is shocking. So please stay tuned for that. We have a lot of our own research to break down for you this evening. So we're excited to have Molly on the show. We're going to bring her in in just one moment. but first, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Well, for years, legacy media, government, and big data companies coaxed us into surrendering our digital freedom. We talk about this on the show all the time, giving lip service the whole way to privacy while leaving their digital backdoors wide open for their own purposes.

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You open it up and it shows you how many trackers have been blocked so far that day. You have total privacy controls on the phone. And so you can just switch things. on and off, and one of the absolute coolest things about the up phone is that there's even a battery disconnect switch. It's physically on the phone. So off really means off. And all of this is independently verified and tested, so you can actually be confident in knowing your upphone is the most private smartphone that you could possibly buy. So check out upphone from unplugged at unplugged.com slash Emily. That's unplugged.com slash Emily. Welcome back to after party, everyone. We are joined now by

The Love of My Life, Molly Hemingway. She's author of the new book, Alito, the Justice who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. It's out now. Molly's, of course, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, where I worked for about six years. And Molly, you know, just helped wit me from a young, lost reporter in the wilderness to the giant of the industry that I am now. So thank you, Molly. I like to just think of myself as a charter member, if not founder. of the Emily Jishinsky fan club.

Yeah, well, you've done a great job. The meetings are great. You always bring lemonade, so that's a huge plus. Molly, congratulations, Alito, which I have in my hands right here. It is out now, and it's making waves. Before we get to some of the really big news, I want to start by just backing up. You wrote an article in the Federalist, we can put this up on the screen, F2, about the courage of Samuel Alito. Sam Alito is the most courageous, Scottish justice you've never read about until now was the headline.

By the way, you also got the Trump seal of approval just hours ago today. We can put the president's post up on the screen. It's still surreal to say that by the president's post. He called you, quote, an extraordinarily talented writer, highly respected commentator, and a truly good person. That was my favorite part. Total stamp of approval. He says it's going that everyone would do well to read this book and to learn from Alito's example. So tell us, Molly, who is Samuel Alito for the casual observer of the court? Who is this man

that you dedicated a full book to? Well, for me, it kind of goes back to writing with Carrie Severino, the Kavanaugh confirmation book. And we did that immediately after Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court. We talked to a hundred or nearly 100 people. So many of those people said, why does nobody ever talk about Sam Alito? He's a giant on this court. And I just, it kind of stuck with me. Like, we know so much about Justice Scalia. And I'm glad we know so much about him. We know so much about Justice Thomas. Again, I'm very glad to know so much about these great men. But you have this other guy who's just been quietly bebering away, getting the work done. And all of a sudden, he's behind some of the most important consequential decisions in Supreme Court history. but because he's reserved, he's not seeking any celebrity status at all.

A lot of people don't know anything about him. So I was like, we got to, it has to get done. So I am so glad that I was able to do it. And once again, interviewed close to 100 people, talked to many justices on the court, tons of clerks, deans of law school, you know, really a lot of people to get a picture of this man and his import. and also was able to collect quite a few fun stories about goings-on at the court as well. Well, and for people who don't know, and I don't know, because I've never done Supreme Court reporting like you have, Molly, this is perhaps the most difficult institution for a journalist to penetrate, period.

And what you just laid out in terms of sourcing is really remarkable. And maybe you could just speak to a little bit about what it's like trying to report on this institution that does not really want to be reported on historically. Well, it's not supposed to be held to political pressure. You know, we have other institutions that are political. Article 1 branch, you elect these people, the executive branch, you elect the president. The court has some distance from that. These people are given lifetime appointments. They are protected from salary cuts. They're supposed to work as judges on the court, not as politicians. And so some of what they do is quite transparent. They announce publicly which arguments they're going to hear. They hold oral arguments where you can hear what everybody has to say and they're held in public. They write their reasoning.

You know, they have a vote and they release that vote and they write out their reasoning in quite detailed fashion. So some of it's really public. But then like the rest of it is completely behind closed doors. And it's a very small group of people who, it's a small number of people who work at the court. Each justice has four clerks per year, maybe three of, other staff in their chambers. These are small offices.

None of these people are political. None of them do PR. None of them are in the communications. And then there are some permanent staff at the court as well. You know, police officers and, you know, people who are shredding documents and things like that. But we're talking about a couple hundred people working in this really important branch of government. Which brings us to who might have leaked the Dobbs decision to Politico, one of the questions

Molly, that you've tried, I mean, one of the mysteries that you've tried to solve since it happened, but the book gives us some insight into how this might have happened, how the court handled it. Could you share with us a little bit from your reporting of what went down behind the scenes? Obviously, Samuel Alito was the author of that decision, and we're going to get to the seemingly despicable behavior of his Democrat-appointed peers on the court in just one moment. But first, what do we know? I mean, you've looked into this. What do we know about what might have happened?

So just personally for me, being able to dig deep into how Dobbs came to the court, how that case got brought to the court, who was involved with that, how they handled it, how the court decided whether and when to grant cert, which is when they say, okay, we're going to hear this case, how that was announced, what the oral arguments were like. I love going deep into stories behind that. And I think that the advocate from Mississippi who ended up getting Roe v. Wade overturned is another one of these very quiet figures who does not seek a claim, but it's a fascinating story. But when the leak, well, first, before we talk about the leak, it's worth noting that the oral arguments were on December 1st. Now, short after the oral arguments, the justices go into a conference and they say how they're going to vote. And there were five votes at that time to overturn Roe v. Wade as part of the DOPS decision. And shortly after December 1st, when they make the decision, the senior justice in the majority

opinion gets to assign the opinion. And that was Clarence Thomas. And he had already had a really big gun rights case for the term that was going to be a lot of work. And also he, you know, he wanted someone who was just going to be perfect to write. this. Many times before, the court has tried to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's one of these decisions that even people who love abortion admit that it was just a joke of a decision, a joke of a ruling from the court. It didn't even try to be constitutional law in any sense. But they tried to overturn

it before, and always the political pressure would get so intense that there would be people pulling away or, you know, figuring out a way to somehow not do what needed to be done. And, you know, Thomas knew Alito was this guy who was going to be strong enough to get it over the finish line and keep everybody together. And that can be tricky. I mean, even for Thomas has very particular views on the 14th Amendment that basically the other justices don't share. How do you write it in a way that doesn't anger him while keeping everybody else in line? Or it could just be things like different justices had things they really cared about. You heard this in Kavanaugh's oral arguments, but pointing out all the times the court,

has overruled bad precedent that was important to Kavanaugh. And Alito is the kind of guy who can be generous when he writes an opinion to make sure everybody feels included. He doesn't care if they, even if they're putting in something clunky that he wouldn't put in. He just doesn't worry about it. And that was a long opinion, right? It was a lot of years.

It was devastating. That's another thing I learned. The liberal justices were shocked by how thorough it was. They already knew when it was granted cert, what was going to have. happen. It had a long time to work on their dissent. When that draft gets disseminated in early February, they were, they were like, oh, wow, this is a lot. I mean, he goes through the history. He goes through every argument. And that's vintage Alito, too. He either, as one person put it, he either just cuts the jugular and writes a very short thing or he absolutely destroys everything about the

opponent's argument, including the footnotes. And this was one of those type of things. It was 100 pages long, But it was very efficiently written, and it goes through the history and what the Common Law. The 18th Amendment was at the time that this was passed. And it was devastating for the liberals. So this was written in The Federalist from the book, writing up some of the scoops from the book, about Elena Kagan. And Molly, I'd rather just have you tell the story, and I have some questions about it. And people should buy the book, 100% go buy the book to get the full rendering.

the full picture of what was happening behind the scenes. But as the conservative justices are obviously under threat, their safety is under threat, what did Elena Kagan do after the leak? So the majority gets their opinion out in pretty early February. It leaks at the beginning of May. And it's nothing like that had ever happened before. Immediately, the justices who had signed on to Dobbs had their lives threatened. There were people, they had to wear bulletproof vests, they had to go to secure locations,

there were actual attempts on their lives. We know about the situation with Justice Kavanaugh, and he and his family were targeted by an attempted assassin at their home. Liberal groups were posting the home addresses of these justices, and they don't live in, like, usually don't live in fancy communities. They don't actually make that much money, and they live kind of a typical suburban life and here they were having to deal with these really serious threats. So the next time they meet in conference after the leak, what happens is the Chief Justice kind of announces which opinions are ready to go. Those are graded in A. Which ones are just needing the final touches? Those are B. And which ones are nowhere near completion. And those are C. They find out it's a C.

The Dops is a C. These people have had literally 50 years to work on it. But at the very least, they had the arguments in December. They had, you know, the full opinion by February, and they were nowhere near Don. And so Alito actually asks them to wrap it up, help them out. And they declined, and Gorsuch was like, can you give us a date? And they couldn't. And what I learned from my sources was that Breyer, one of the three who wrote the dissent in the Dobbs decision, you know, solid, progressive, liberal, but someone who was very well respected on the court and was a gentleman toward his colleagues. And according to my sources, Kagan understood that he wanted to be accommodating to his colleagues, went to his chambers and said, don't,

you know, don't accommodate these people. And we know that they did delay because they said that they couldn't possibly get the decision done until June 1st, and then they would have to get everything else done by June 15th. And when they file it, the June 1st dissent, they include a completely gratuitous and unnecessary footnote to a decision that they, you know, that wasn't coming in until after June 15th that still needed work. And it didn't even need to be mentioned in there. And they knew, therefore, they were keeping it to the very end of the term. And I think it came out like June, was it June 24th or, you know, somewhere late in June. And I was listening to you talk about this with Megan earlier in the week.

A question was playing over and over again in my mind, which is you would assume that Elena Kagan does not want her colleagues. I mean, again, historically, there's a collegiality at the Supreme Court, which you've mentioned that Clarence Thomas recently commented on just in recent years and said he's worried about maintaining that. So obviously there's some friction internally, maybe historically more than usual, but she doesn't want her colleagues killed. I would assume or hurt. I would assume. So why, why would she ask that? So I think partly the liberal justices really have no idea what it's like to be a conservative justice. The liberal justices get to go perform on Broadway or go to the Grammys or have the red carpet rolled out for them at Yale Law School.

and the conservative justices can't go to dinner with their families because they might get killed. But they don't, you know, if they don't really understand that and they don't empathize with this or, you know, there's some problem there. I don't think they were trying to get their colleagues killed, even though that was the almost result of their decision. I do think we have reporting that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Breyer were really trying to get Kavanaugh to. to peel away from the Dobbs majority. And maybe they felt that if they had more time, and if they could show Kavanaugh, that the left was willing to resort to violence

because of their love for acclaimed abortion right in the Constitution, that maybe that would pressure him to do what happened in 1992 when Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Davis O'Connor and David Souter peeled off and formed a Troika to kind of preserve Roe, even though they admitted that it was completely, completely flawed law.

So, and it's your reporting that Alito is a character who manages when he needs to this coalition. He's a sort of, I don't know how you would characterize it, but he's somebody who's able to keep people together under immense pressure. He's able to keep major, you know, coalitions together, in part through the generosity of how he writes. In this case, I actually, one of the things I also found interesting and partly from interviewing Scott Stewart, who was the Solicitor General in Mississippi, he read through every single decision, dissent, concurrence in any abortion-related case. And he picked up something very

different than most DC people do. The DC people said, you can't ask for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. And then once they took the cases, you really have to give them an option to not overturned. turn Roeby Waiter, you're going to lose everything. But he, when he was reading all these things, he thought, I actually think they're really sick of dealing with this bad law, polluting every, or this bad opinion and decision, polluting everything they do. They're just done with it. It's like ludicrous how it has these emanations of ridiculosity coming from this one decision that everyone knows is wrong. And they just wanted to be kind of like, they wanted to stop pretending. And that wasn't just Alito and Thomas.

That was the other justices as well. And, you know, you had five who were willing to do the tough thing. And they each had, you know, there's no comparison to what, like, Thomas and Alito have had to go through. Kavanaugh's also obviously gone through a lot. But they all had to be courageous in taking this step and doing what was right, even though they knew that there would be major left-wing activism and even possibly threats on their life. And that did end up happening. And then Samuel Alito's wife.

fell under the microscope as well. You read about this in the book. What can you tell us, Molly? You know, I was thinking when I started writing this because it was a long project, I'm like, how am I going to introduce Martha Ann Alito to the people? Because she's a really fascinating figure. Justice Alito is extremely reserved, very dry wit.

He won't, you know, he'll tell jokes or funny things, but he doesn't really like laugh at them. he's so he's got that justice type presence his wife is like life of the party really fun really willing to say whatever she wants to say and then ProPublica and New York Times went after the elitos and everybody learned about her you know for instance her love of flag flying where you know and she does she loves she loves flying flags at their properties And then she got caught on a hot mic by being surreptitiously recorded by a left-wing activist who wanted to catch her saying something that would have matched the media narrative. Okay, so the issue was she'd flown an appeal to heaven flag, which is revolutionary era flag that is not actually a coded right-wing symbol.

At the time she flew it, San Francisco had flown it for 50-plus years in their civilization. Park, but the New York Times decided it was a flag of an insurrectionist. So they made a big deal, and they were trying to get Alito to resign from the court or to be impeached or, you know, these types of things. And so we, you know, we got to go through all of that. This left-wing activist records her. And she wants to record her confirming some of the leftist reporting. And instead, Martha Ann was like, they think that he can tell me what to do. I do. I do. what I wanted to. She was just exactly what he had said when he responded. He's like, I don't like flags. My wife likes flags. He does have the right. You know, this is her property and she has the right

to express herself. And I asked her to take it down and she didn't. And, you know, if you know her, it totally makes sense. But the New York Times was like, he's throwing his wife under the bus. It's a horrible thing. Well, no, he wasn't. He was being honest. And I think they're not used to dealing with people who are just honest and who also respect that their wives have different lives than they do. Huge lesson they could learn from Mark Hemingway. But you mentioned the New York Times. Let's stick with the New York Times because another leak hit the New York Times just in the last several days. And I think we have the Slate article. The left is very upset with Justice Roberts. over this case with Barack Obama's climate agenda. If you were following the news closely at the time, you probably do remember this as being a really big deal.

I think these are memos from 2016. The slight headline is, A New Supreme Court leak shows John Roberts at his worst. But, Molly, in the context of what you wrote about Justice Alito, this is a pretty shocking leak from the New York Times, as all leaks from the court are. But I wonder if you, are we starting? I didn't get numb to leaks from the Supreme Court.

I mean, what's going on with this? I just want to say that had the court done a better job of investigating the Dobbs leak, and I tell the story of what in the Buccalido, I tell the story of how meager that investigation was and how insufficient it was. And they waited weeks to really get going. They didn't understand court procedures or who had access to information, where they had access. like they didn't really understand that people have access to these things in their homes. And then they just asked them questions like, did you leak? Which is not a good way to find out if someone's the leaker.

And I think I think Chief Justice John Roberts, who officially ran that investigation, is paying the price for doing a not better job with it. Because now you're seeing continued leaks. Now, in this case, I actually don't think it's like that big of a leak. It's a 2016 memo. it's clearly part of a campaign by the left. The left has used nationwide injunctions to thwart democratic elections from having any effect. It's like their main and most successful strategy. Have a low-level federal judge issue a nationwide injunction and then, you know, slow things down.

It's been unprecedented, at an unprecedented rate in Trump, too. Like more than all other presidents combined for Trump one and Trump two, I believe. And it's just increasing. Now, before Trump, you would have Elena Kagan saying, I don't think the use of the emergency docket is good. Or I don't think people should be circuit shopping, which is where you like go looking for a judge who's going to give you the answer that you want. But once it became the primary strategy of the left,

everybody's tone changed. And it's become a real headache for the court. So clearly this leak is designed to put pressure in favor of the liberal lower court judges and the larger liberal legal movement. But I don't know if we know who it comes from. I mean, the paperwork shows that Sotomayor's name is not on there in a way that is suspicious. But you also have a retired justice, Breyer, and probably people going through his papers as well. You have a deceased justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was on the court at that time.

Her papers are in control of someone else. So maybe it's just, you know, a liberal activist in one of those worlds who's, who's leaking for gain, but it's not great. And it really does make it more difficult for the court to do its business when you can't trust that what's happening is happening between. And speaking of pressures, I mean, we've been talking, and you've been documenting for years pressures

that come from the left, but you also know Donald Trump if interviewed Donald Trump many times. In fact, he tweeted about your book just today, or truth about your book just today. I want to put F-13 up on the screen. Another post that he went with today, was saying that the court is already packed. He said the Democrat justices stick together like glue,

never failing to wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas and cases put before them. They always vote as a group or block even that new low IQ person that somehow found her way to the bench, parentheses, Sleepy Joe, the Republican justices don't stick together. They give the Democrats win after win like a $159 billion pile of cash on a completely ridiculous tariff decision goes on and on. It's probably like a 200-word post.

So, like, can I just get your real? reaction to this lashing out from President Trump. I don't in any way understand what provoked this, particularly at this time when he has a case before the court in the birthright or birthplace citizenship issue, which I think it, you know, I was at that, I was at the court that day for to hear oral arguments. He also was there at the court that day. It was really long, even by normal Supreme Court oral argument standards. They gave the sides more time. I was like, this must be very painful for President Trump here

to be sitting here like this. But I don't know why he... You can't have your phone, right? You can have nothing. You have nothing. I was there with my mom. She was visiting. She couldn't hear anything.

So it was a very boring three hours for her, too. But she did get to see President Trump. So that's, you know, she got that. In any case, It's a misunderstanding of what the court does. It doesn't vote Republican or vote Democrat. And it can be hard to see that when you do have some partisans on the court. Like Katanji Brown Jackson has not shown much independent thinking.

Neither has some of the Sotomayor. Elena Kagan, by contrast, does think about how she can work with colleagues, even if only to get it a decision to be slightly more narrow than it otherwise would be if she weren't part of the majority. And as far as the Republican appointed justices, and the tariff case is a great example. I thought that was a really great read from all parties. Now, both Thomas and Alito were on the side that Kavanaugh was on, that these tariffs were not a problem. And then Gorsuch had a very dramatically written opinion that they were not allowed.

But it was good legal argument in both cases. And even today, you had Justice Thomas siding with the left and Justice Alito, siding with the right. Those two guys are usually, usually together, but not always because they're doing their best to interpret the law. And that is what you want. Far and away, the healthiest branch of government we have is the judiciary, is the judicial branch. And the Supreme Court is the best it's ever been. I totally get that people have complaints about it. You know, you hear lots of complaints from the right about the quality of the new justices.

And I've just written a book that shows that I think what Alito provides is something that those newer justices could learn from. Alito. And yet, it still is, I think, the best court we've had in history. It is, these people are really trying hard for the most part. Now, I will say that I definitely picked up court. frustration with Katanji Brown Jackson. It does seem, someone highly placed that she makes

Sonia Sotomayor look like a philosopher king. So, and you've even had, like, even Cabin would be frustrated with her, and he's the nicest guy. You had Elena Kagan being like, does this woman even know what the law is? Katanji has that rare combination of Justice Jackson,

has that rare combination of not really knowing, not really being at the same level as her colleagues, but having just an amazing amount of confidence. It's the arrogance to ignorance ratio. It's out of whack. I don't know why, but there's always been something I kind of liked about this. Like, I have a friend who's horrible driving, but she believes she's a good driver,

and she's very insistent about where she's going. She's always, like, making the wrong turn. It's so absurd that it becomes funny. And you'll hear this in Katanshi Brown Jackson's, oral argument. She is by far the most loquacious person on the court. And she'll read the questions that she's prepared. But then she'll get an idea for another question. And it like always goes badly. She's like, what if I stole a wallet in Japan? We're a Japanese citizen. And then she's like, she's like, I'm so smart. And everyone's like,

hmm. Yeah. We're going to have more with Molly Hemingway in just one moment. Author of Alita. go get it. It's out now. You can get it wherever. Books are sold well worth your time. Quick break. Back with Molly Hemingway in just one moment. First, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I'm pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner and partner so proudly with pre-born. Pre-born makes motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women and crisis, and then they, women in crisis, and then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is

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So amazing. So don't just say your pro-life, live it, help save babies and support mothers today. Go to pre-born.com slash Emily or call 855-601-229. That's pre-born.com slash Emily. We love preborn. All right, we're back now with Molly Hemingway. She's the author of the new book, Alito, and of course, editor-in-chief over at the Federalist. Molly, I wanted to ask about this breaking news out of Virginia, a state you're very familiar with.

Obviously, voters just barely voted in the hilarious redistricting, the hilarious gerrymandering map. There's been so many great memes about the absurd gerrymandered district. that Democrats pushed in Virginia yesterday, it was close. But actually, unexpectedly, today, I'm going to read from Fox News here, quote, Republicans are cheering a circuit court victory in Virginia that showed Democrats redistricting efforts are not quite over yet, despite a referendum. Virginia Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley ruled Wednesday, this was just hours ago, that all votes for or against the proposed redistricting amendment were unconstitutional, citing rules that impose certain requirements that the referendum did not mean.

meet, there are a handful of cases making their way through the Virginia court system, challenging various aspects of the referendum, including the one Hurley ruled on Wednesday. Molly, the referendum was part of this big push by Virginia Democrats, led by Governor Abigail Spanberger, who has proven to be much further to the left than she campaigned on governing as to take over the state. I mean, it's pretty clearly a blue state at this point with purple inclinations. I mean, Glenn Yonkin had a great year in 2020. What the heck is going on? I mean, nobody really saw this court thing coming. As far as recently as

yesterday, it was just, I saw in mainstream media reports, quote unquote, mainstream media reports that there was a slim chance that this might have problems in Virginia courts. Well, I think there are four total constitutional challenges to the radical gerrymander. And I don't think anyone expected this to happen as quickly as it did. But the fact that the vote was as as close as it was, was a surprise for me. I live in Virginia. All of the mail I got was about voting to do the radical gerrymander, all of the ads in the area. Never even talked to a single, nobody said, vote no. It seemed like the Republicans or people who just oppose gerrymandering didn't really put money or effort into it. The fact that it's still only passed by a very small

margin is interesting to me. And I think it says something about how much Virginians are not happy with this, this, you know, extreme thing. You're right that Virginia is a, is a blue state for the most part. It's also true. Too many of you people live in Northern Virginia. It's a few months ago, there was a Republican lieutenant governor, a Republican lieutenant governor, a Republican attorney general. That attorney general was replaced by someone who thinks that killing people and having their kids watch it is a totally legitimate and good political strategy. After it came out that he said that and he admitted he said that, all of my neighbors were like, let's vote for that guy for attorney general. So the state is getting increasingly radical in the north in particular. But this effort to kind of just wipe out the Republican presence totally is just shocking.

But also they've been very honest about this being what they want to do, Mark Elias, who ran the Russia collusion hoax and who ran the effort to change all of the voting laws and processes in 2020. I think he makes one or two appearances and rigged. He's just in there a couple times. Unfortunately, none in the latest book. But he said he'd been working on this project of radical gerrymandering for 10 years. Okay. So if you don't like that, you got to put up the money. And they had tons of billionaire support and activism.

And the other side needs to, too. It's can't sit this out totally. It looked almost like Republicans kind of gave up on Virginia after Spanberger came in and bulldozed with all of her new executive actions and the like. We do have some reporting on this coming out tomorrow about how it was only. late in the game when they realized they even had a shot of winning, and so money only came in late. But Virginia is one of those states that has early voting, like massive early voting, and coming in late doesn't make sense when so many people are voting early or voting by mail. I've got to ask you about these updates in the Arctic Frost case.

Jordan Boyd wrote about this at the Federalist, quote, as new records released by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley on Tuesday reveal, It was not, quote, an isolated incident that could be swept under the rug forever. Arctic Frost was the culmination of years of political weaponization against President Donald Trump. His allies and his voters, Breckinthees over at the Federalist wrote that the text messages released by Senate judiciary just yesterday, you can see, quote, despite admitting that the video evidence contradicted claims that Lauren Bobert led a reconnaissance tour through the Capitol before January 6 because she was not even within the group in question. Cooney and Gaston, these are FBI agents, appear to be persistently disappointed and frustrated by the lack of evidence to justify an investigation while persisting in the belief that, quote, the information is out there. Molly, the Federalist, you have covered Arctic Frost since the very

beginning and have been really at the cutting edge of the lawfare reporting for many, many years now. Help us contextualize this new evidence that you have FBI folks going back and forth looking to get from point B, Bobert is guilty to point A. And I think Paul Gosar was wrapped into this as well. We see this plain as day in the messages that were released. It's really, I mean, this is not shocking. This is exactly what at this point I think you and I expect was happening. But it's, it's shocking to see the utter disinterest that the rest of the media has in these stories. And that Democrats, frankly, who love to now wax poetic about the weaponization of government, nobody cares, except for Chuck Grassley in the Federalist and all of your readers.

I was thinking about this how I remember a time when something really scandalous would happen and the media would turn their attention to it and they would really like get at it like a dog with a bone. And now we have like day after day the most dramatic insane stories about literally the FBI spying on members of Congress and having entire shops set up to like protect the Biden family. And obviously the corporate media aren't going to cover it because it goes against their preferred narrative, which is that while all of this was happening, the DOJ was in it. And while the Russia collusion hoax was happening, that was an era of non-partisanship at the DOJ.

And now that any effort might be made to hold people accountable or to go after left-wing terrorism or anything, well, that's when you're politicizing the DOJ. And it's maddening. And it's, you know, it's also frustrating. frustrating like you'll write something or you'll know something that's going on and then seven years later you'll be vindicated and it's like I'm kind of sick of always being right about everything but also you know years later you know like been screaming about the SPLC for 15 years and I'm glad that we're knowing more about how crazy their behavior is but especially anyway so with the arctic frost thing it's been challenging because the

DOJ is still largely a body controlled like the people who work high up are still mainly partisans. And there were some firings when Trump took over for his second term, but nowhere near enough to clean out the rot that's happening there. And they did a really good job of not opening like formal investigations, but just having these inquiries that don't require the same level of paperwork. And so as people are trying to figure out exactly what's going on, you don't even find it through the normal systems, the normal cataloging of information.

But you do find, again, there were massive efforts. For instance, there were numerous whistleblowers about the Biden family. And there was a project to just take out each one. Like each one got ruled a bad witness, even though they'd been used in many cases for years prior. But it wasn't like an official investigation was set up. They just took care of it on their own. And with all of the situation that's happening with what Grassley has revealed,

these were different aspects of different investigations. They did a pretty good job of just like fishing, fishing, fishing. And when they found nothing, you know, just not admitting the problem with their entire theory of the case, but just coming up with like another way to go after Trump or anybody who had supported him. But it is shocking. We'll be on it. I do, you know, there's some rumor that there might. I've given up hope.

I don't mean to blackpill here, but it's been so long. And there's so many people who should, frankly, be in jail. And you hear that there might be this grand conspiracy thing happening that will fold all of this in. But until it happens until it happens successfully, I'm just content to get the information out, sadly. Well, yeah, I want to put this Paul Sperry post up on the screen. He said, just released DOJ text messages.

I said FBI, it looks like they were broader DOJ, revealed that after video evidence confirmed, Republicans weren't helping J6 rioters do reconnaissance of the Capitol. Former DC prosecutor, Malley Gastone, expressed disappointment. Sigh, dot, dot, dot, okay, well, that's too bad. Paul says, after I expose Gaston's pro-democrat anti-trap bias in 2020, her formal boss, AG, Eric Holder told me to quote, shut the hell up. I mean, you really see them in real time reacting. to their evidence drying up or slipping through their fingers. And they're so sad about it,

but they keep going. And one of the things I've learned in my reporting on this is anybody who was worth their salt at DOJ or at the FBI who raised any concerns about the weaponization that they were being asked to participate in, they would just be moved out of those illustrious units into another place. They did not want anybody who questioned what they were doing. And we saw this also and we reported about this at the CIA and other three-letter agencies that people who are saying, I think this Russia occlusion hoax thing is insane. They would be demoted. They would not get promotions.

They would be told, you don't have this Gnostic knowledge that I have. You can't, you know, you can't say anything. But it's kind of heartening to know that there were at least some people trying to do their jobs well at these agencies. And just as a reminder, big picture context, which I sort of started with here, Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary, released records earlier this year showing how vast the surveillance apparatus of Arctic Frost was, wrapping in many mainstream conservative groups, things like Turning Point USA, even records of conversations with journalists, no, just crickets again from the legacy media on this question over and over again. And that brings us to the SPLC story,

Molly. Now, the Federalist itself came under attack from the Southern poverty. Law Center back in 2017. So they have been a thorn on your side and in the broader conservative movement side for years and years and years. As you just mentioned, you've been screaming from the rooftops about this for a long time. But I want to focus particularly on the media and tech aspect of the story. I'm going to get into kind of the bigger picture stuff later in the show, but we can toss this article up on the screen if we have it. It says, the Federalist has also found itself in the SPLC's crosshairs. In the summer of 2017, the SPLC posted an article under its hate watch category attacking the Federalist as a, quote,

rabidly partisan purveyor of anti-LGBT and specifically anti-trans writings, L. Pernell wrote today in the Federalist, our rabidly partisan offense was obtaining and publishing an exclusive story from then AG Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General. A few days prior, Sessions had given a private speech at an event put on by Alliance defending freedom. ADF, normal conservative group, great group. quote, one of the most hard-hitting civil liberties non-profits in the country, ADF, L. Rights, is a legal powerhouse with a record of success defending religious and free speech rights, as well as the right to life.

But since 2016, the SPLC has smeared it as a hate group for its defense of Christian clients' religious convictions about sex and marriage. Molly, you tweeted, posted on X, the SPLC is evil. Yes, the media who perpetuated their false claims are evil. But please do not forget evil big tech groups who relied on the obvious lies of the SPLC. and their media handmaidens to censor the Federalist and other brave people and groups who spoke against them. What you see in this story is multiple layers. First, you have ADF. Then you have Jeff Sessions, daring to speak to ADF. Then you have the Federalist daring to publish a Jeff Session speech at ADF.

This is enough to get the Federalist on the hate watch, which is then used to censor, suppress. It's used by corporations. There was a time when SPLC was used in the GuideStar ratings for charities. I mean, it's just maddening. And I'm very excited to hear you just unload. I was the one who got the Jeff Session speech, which I think is. Oh, you're the hate monger. Good.

It's just a journal. Grand Dragon Hemingway. When the attorney general of the United States speaks to a private audience and has interesting things to say, and I think that's something that everybody should benefit from. And just letting them see what was said. and we also had stories about what was said as well. The punishment for doing journalism, or what they call wrong think,

because we weren't pushing their narrative, it was severe. The censorship has been unbelievable and very difficult. And big tech companies, they would say, if this group, the SPLC says that this other group that they don't like is actually hateful,

we aren't going to allow people to visit their site. And it just kept working over. and over again. It's an unfair advantage that they were given. And their budget, Emily, oh my goodness. I mean, they have like, I'm not joking. It's like hundreds of millions of dollars. I looked it up. Do you want to know what their revenue was as of 2024 on their 990? 132 million dollars. Their total assets, $822 million, almost a billion dollars. And they keep some of that in offshore accounts. It has been reported, which is all. No. Yes? No, that's been, I mean, it's already been reported. Of course they do. Find out that this group.

that was, okay, and I just want to say, when they put you on a hate map, it sometimes ends in violence. They said that the Family Research Council was a hate group. A follower of the SPLC used their map to go to FRC and try to commit a mass shooting and was only stopped by a brave guard who got shot. They put Charlie Kirk on a hate list, which was, at the time, people said you're targeting him for assassination. Within a few months, he was assassinated. And they were getting tens of For hate, allegedly, by the way. That's what the alleged assassin has said, that some hate can't be argued with. He followed the SPLC's desires, right? And this group is getting so much money from big names and big corporations. And then they use it to finance or to fund racism because they weren't finding

enough on their own. And so they then pay people to be racist and to plan racist things. They, you know, they were involved in the planning of the show. Charlottesville rally, we got a woman killed and other people run over. And then they were, you know, setting up fake fake accounts to hide this from the donors and from the government. And then all the media today and all the Democrats today were like protecting SPLC because they understand this is a group that means a great deal to them politically. When they helped orchestrate the Charlottesville situation, that was a gift to that party and to that movement and to efforts to oppose Republicans.

And they're, of course, going to defend these people because they're a very important cog in the machine. Oh, I mean, what they've done to marginalize and diminish the power of conservative groups can't possibly be quantified. Like, we can talk about it, but there's no way that we can measure it because it's been over decades in ways that you could, I mean, they're just so powerful. You couldn't possibly measure what it meant to have, you know, the case study of the federalist.

We forgot to mention BuzzFeed wrote a story. BuzzFeed at the height of its power wrote a story. just credibly laundering the SPLC's ridiculous conflation of hatred with a federalist. To this day, they will repeat SPLC claims about a group being hateful. ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, is one of the most successful civil liberties law firms in the country. They win. They win over and over again at the Supreme Court to try to marginalize them as this group that can't be dealt with. I mean, I'm sure that's an easy way to handle it for the left, but it's completely ridiculous.

Yeah. And again, like, this, the media should have known better for many, many years. Ken Silverstein back in 2000 wrote about this for Harper's. He wrote about it again, several years later. Liberal journalist, Ken Silverstein wrote about all of this about how grifty their fundraising was, how shady it was. And the Washington Post had a long piece. It wasn't until like 2018 or 2019, they assigned to this piece, but about how questionable. some of the practices of the labeling was, and it persisted until, maybe it'll stop now, but I don't know, Molly, it might keep going. I don't know. I mean, I saw some ridiculous stuff today. But again, to finance, to fund the leaders of these groups and then also to fundraise by claiming you were going to stop these groups is, I mean, that's just, that's got to be a violation of many laws. or it's like John Roberts at Fox earlier today said it's like a firefighting department,

or firefighting department paying an arsonist to go set fires and then saying you need a bigger budget to go fight those fires that you yourself paid for. It is such unethical behavior and it should be, I mean, they should take all that money and distribute it to all the conservative groups that they defamed over the year. Yeah, good luck finding a conservative group. with a billion dollars in assets that was treated credibly by the media over the course of decades. That was also paying people to like go into Antifa and burn cities to the ground in 2020. It's not something that exists.

Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the Federalist, author of the new book, Alito. This is a landmark historical book, truly. It was a pleasure and an honor to have you here, Molly. Thank you for staying up late. Thanks so much, Emily. Appreciate it. All right. We're going to be back in just one. one moment, but first, I've told you this before. It's hard for me to relax after the show. We finish late at night, and I'm all wired up, but one of my favorite ways to relax actually is with cozy earth. If you haven't tried their robes or slippers yet, you're missing out. The

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going back to, I think, 2017 is the first time that I covered the SPLC all the way back when I was at the Washington Examiner and was new in journalism. CNN replicated their hate watch map and just put it out on the site, like this was a perfectly credible source of information. And that was not a unique situation at all. It's almost impossible to describe how often the media would take the SPLC's hate designations over many decades and then put them up on the screen or in their copy and act as though this was not a controversial, not an ideologically charged, not a partisan source. It was really, really despicable for many years. And so multiple layers here. There are two things we're going to talk about. The first has two layers in and of itself. So follow along with me here. Allegations from conservatives against the Southern Poverty Law Center for years, including myself,

were that they were engaged in a really despicable conflation of traditional values with bigotry and not even traditional values. We're talking about, as we just discussed on the show, opposition to radical trans policies. We're talking about Ayan Herse Ali's criticism of her own former religion, Islam. All of this immigration hawks, all of this was enough to get people sliddle. with a hate designation that would then, and this is the second part here, be laundered by the media because all of these journalists were inclined to agree with the SPLC that the toothless rubs in America's heartland were actually racist and hateful. Who could forget the Taylor Swift, you need to calm down music video where she pans over to the protesters against, I guess,

the LGBT community. And they're all dependent. picked it as like toothless hillbillies with overalls on at the time. So another story I wrote for the Federalist. It was actually the black community that had the highest level of opposition to gay marriage. But again, this is the point that coastal elites in their bubbles are in their bubbles of affluence in Super Zips, as Charles Berry documented in coming apart. They are just inclined to believe because they don't spend enough time with people outside of their bubbles, whether that is in their own cities, people of less affluence, or in a quote-unquote flyover country, they were inclined to believe that the SPLC was absolutely telling the truth,

that people who are opposing the full slate of cultural progressivism are necessarily bigoted and hateful. So you would often see the SPLC cited as a credible source. And when I say often, I mean, it was like a reflex. And to some extent still is like a reflex. Whenever you're covering one group or the other, it's just boom. SPLC says this is a hate group, even if it's a mainstream conservative organization. So we're going to get into all of it. Obviously, what the Department of Justice unveiled yesterday was an indictment.

I have it here in my hand. This is the indictment itself. My copy is all highlighted, but you've seen a lot online in regard to what's actually going on. And that's where I just want to say, again, there are these allegations conservatives have made, and even some on the left have made as early as 2000. Liberal journalist Ken Silverstein was writing for Harper's about this, wrote about it again in 2010. This has been, the SPLC has been controversial for a long time. You just wouldn't know it from the media coverage and you wouldn't

know it from all of the corporations that showered them with cash. Their 2024-990 form shows they had $123 million in revenue, about $8222,000. million dollars in total assets. That is a staggering amount for a nonprofit in the United States. Staggering blows most other nonprofits totally out of the water. And so what the DOJ unveiled is pretty shocking because this is what people weren't talking about about the SPLC, right? The bias was one part of it. The laundering in the media was another part of it. But nobody really had evidence or had an inkling. I mean, people were suspicious, but nobody really knew how serious the case was. was that the Southern Poverty Law Center, while it was fundraising on fighting hatred and extremism,

was allegedly, according to the Department of Justice's indictment, funding members of the hate groups and their activities on behalf of those hate groups. This does include, allegedly, that famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that Joe Biden cited as one of the reasons he ran for president in 2020. Now, this indictment, it's actually pretty easy read if you want to read it yourself, but I'm just going to read from the introduction. The SPLC's paid informants listed as field sources engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website. The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017, Unite the Right event in Charlottesville. That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC. And I just want to underline that.

I literally underlined it in my document, but they're saying under the supervision, those postings were made. And then they helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. So in order to covertly pay its field sources, the SPLC, according to the government, opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. That is also critical. I was going to say key and critical at the same time. But that's really key to understanding this indictment because that's what the charges are. They're basically about fraud, that the SPLC defrauded its donors and supporters by creating these fake groups and transferring money from bank accounts in those names to people who were actively boosting the hate groups, that it was fundraising to fight.

So there's 11 counts here, if I'm counting this correctly. And there is conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and the like. stems from this allegation that because they were funding, quote, field sources, that was an act of fraud. Now, again, the DOJ has bank sources here. They clearly have bank records. You can see it. They have charts in the indictment of records that they procured, including wire transactions from their operating accounts, straight to accounts controlled by the field sources, and they list them out here. That level of evidence is obviously significant. The grand jury returned this indictment yesterday when the announcement was made.

So let's go a little bit deeper into what happened. They have, per my count, there are nine field sources, nine separate field sources. The DOJ says that they were secretly paid by the SPLC, but it is not limited. These are examples of field sources who were secretly paid by the SPLC, but these are not, they're not the only one. So they say include, but are not limited to the following. And then they list out all of these different field sources. Again, I counted nine of them in groups like and events like Unite the Right. National Alliance.

There was someone at the National Alliance who, according to DOJ, between 2014 and 2023, that's a neo-Nazi organization, by the way, the SPLC secretly paid this person, F9, more than $1 million. So over a decade, this person was given $1 million of donor money from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Crazy, crazy story. They were paying an imperial wizard of the United Clans of America. An imperial wizard! The United Clans of America, as the Justice Department points out, was responsible for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham all the way back in 1916.

Okay, that's F unknown listed in this indictment, but also people involved with the Aryan nations, the KKK. The breadth of this indictment, which is based on bank records, is stunning. And it shows a very significant amount of money going into, I think it totals like $3 million. They say that this is a practice the SPLC started all the way back in the 1980s. A lot of the evidence here is from, roughly the last 10, 12 years. I think we're starting here in like 2014. I think one of them goes back to 2013, but you get the, yeah, 2013, so you get the gist, you know, roughly the last 15 years, most of it in the last 10 years. And so what the Justice Department is going to have to prove here

is that these, quote, racist postings were actually made under the supervision. That's the quote, of the SPLC. What I expect the SPLC to counter this with is by just saying, and they're denying everything to be clear. But again, this is based on bank records and it was returned by a grand jury. They're going to say, basically, I'm expecting they're going to say these people were going rogue. Every time they were, you know, as F9 reportedly did, this is one of the guys at the National Alliance, who was a field informant for the SPLC for more than 20 years, according to the DOJ, they entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group in 2014 and sold 25 boxes of their documents. So the SPLC is probably going to say that was the actions of a rogue field source.

They had nothing to do with it. They didn't ask for it, et cetera. Now, I would assume there's going to be ample evidence. That's not the case. This is a lot of smoke. It's actually more than smoke. It's pretty hard evidence. Again, we have bank records. We have a pattern of behavior, allegedly, here. So we'll see the SPLC's full response to this, but what we know is that the Department of Justice has clear evidence that money was going from bank accounts controlled by the Southern Poverty Law Center to people who were involved in violent extremist groups, actual racist, hateful, hateful groups. So well worth noting that. Now, why is this coming out in 2026? I just want to roll V1.

If you're listening to this, you should head over to the YouTube channel and just watch it. This is a compilation that producer Kelly put together of an example, a sample, of all of the times that the corporate press, this is an example from CNN, would launder the SPLC's hate group research. I mean, the Jeff Session example right here, credibly. You know, by the number, seven charts to explain hate groups the United States. That's from CNN. And it's literally just the SPLC's research, but it's presented like that in the headlines. Conservative groups were fighting this for years and years and years.

Because, as Molly Hemingway pointed out earlier in the show, this sometimes did lead to violence. And also, it is just so profoundly incorrect. It is so profoundly wrong. It is factually incorrect, but it is also entirely immoral to lump your fellow countrymen in with actual Nazis, racists.

We're talking about the Klan. We're talking about neo-Nazi groups. And to take the goodwill that you earned, the reputation you burnished after the Jim Crow era, this is where the SPLC comes into play, going after really legitimate hate groups. Like we're talking Klan, Klan affiliates, neo-Nazi groups, actual violent groups, racist motorcycle clubs, and the like. and fighting the vestiges of real bigotry in this country to then take that reputation and turn your fire on people like Ayan Hershey who survived female genital mutilation

and should have the right to say whatever she damn well wants to within reasonable boundaries about Islam, which she has done and has done very bravely at great risk to her own life every single day to then put her in this category of hatred and extremism that should include the remaining hateful extremists in this country. Well, you were the one providing funding to some of the people that were infiltrating this group and not just spying, but actively participating in the hate and extremism, actively making racist postings, for example, as the allegations are, coordinating travel to hate events. infiltrating other hate groups and stealing their documents, the audacity of the Southern Poverty Law Center to do that and the laziness of our corporate media because journalists in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as Charles Murray documented, are increasingly isolated from people

who are less affluent and are therefore more likely to share traditional beliefs that disagree with them, who are more likely to have totally different lifestyles, all of that led journalists to rest on their laurels and allow the Southern Poverty Law Center to get away with this despicable grift that divided the country that pitted people against each other as, I'm putting this up on the screen, we were making enormous progress,

and I would argue world historical species scale progress towards eliminating racism and bigotry over the last 100 years in the United States of America. What we have in the United States of America, we should not take for granted. Because we have so many people from different racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, living very closely together here in this country. And yes, there are many times we feel divided. There are times when there is tension.

But over the years, that has improved significantly. What's up on my screen right now is a, 538 article that shows how attitudes towards racism and inequality have shifted in the United States over time. So, for example, here, this one is the question in surveys, would you vote for a black person for president? Southern respondents who said yes, assuming the candidate was qualified and nominated by the Respondents Party among white respondents, that went from just under 75% around the 1970s all the way up to almost 100% by 2010. We, we have. We, have the question posed to Southerners, what explains inequality between blacks and whites?

Southerners who answered that it was inborn inability went from around 30% of white respondents all the way down to almost 0% of white respondents from the 80s to the mid-2010s. Is it okay to discriminate in home sales? This is actually of all U.S. adults who say a homeowner should be allowed to refuse to sell a potential buyer based on race. That went from, get the 75% of white respondents in the mid-70s all the way down to just a quarter of white respondents in the mid-2010s. Still too high. Of course, still too high. But enormous progress.

And this is right when the Southern Poverty Law Center is going peddled to the metal, turning the screws on conservative groups, and telling everyone that people who disagreed with them on trans issues, gay marriage, Islamism, immigration, like hawkish immigration groups that they were racist, hateful extremists, and giving the mainstream media basically permission to publish that over many years. Now, here's another, this is a good proxy that social scientists have used for many years to gauge racist attitudes. This is 2021 from Gallup, U.S. approval of interracial marriage at new high of 94%. And now look at the progress that has been made since 1958 to 2021. U.S. approval of marriage between black people and white people. This is in the lifespans of many Americans. It went from around 4% of approval to 94% of approval. And just as we're hitting 94%, you go to 2009, it's at 79%. Just as we're hitting these

historic high levels, you have the Southern Poverty Law Center and the corporate media amplifying these claims that the problems of extremism and hatred and racism are much more significant than they actually are. And it, of course, adds up to the picture of a group that risk losing its fundraising, putting itself out of business by helping to stamp out the remaining racism and bigotry in the country that then finds a new grift and says, or finds, a grift as a new model of fundraising. We've seen feminist group do this. For example, I had a formative experience when I was an intern for Christina Hoff Summers at the American Enterprise Institute going through pay gap studies. I think this one was from the American Association of University

Women that would put one out every August and say, the pay gap is 33 cents or whatever. And then you'd get to like the last page of the report. I remember looking at this as an intern in college. and I was, you know, just making sure that Christina's research was correct, double-checking it. And sure enough, it gets to the last page. And they say, well, when you control for these factors, it's more like 90%. But it's like the fine print that they don't put out to the press. Because you can't fundraise off a 10-cent pay gap when you control for all of the mitigating factors in the same way that you can if it's a 33-cent pay gap. And this is something that we see happen all of the time, but the media is never covering it critically.

So, as I said, there are two real buckets to keep in mind when it comes to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The first is this conflation of disagreement with hatred extremism and bigotry, that it's hard to even quantify, it's hard to actually even wrap your mind around the scale because the SPLC was cited as the preeminent source for so many years by every legacy media outlet with nary a inkling of credibility or of any of doubt, let's say, of skepticism, of criticism, it was so rare that they were ever framed as a partisan source, ideological source, dubious source, like the conservative groups, were being portrayed because of the SPLC information, their BS studies, all of that contributed vastly to this elite cultural understanding of Middle America as a place teeming with legitimate bigotry and hatred.

And of the conservative movement teeming with legitimate bigotry and hatred when, in fact, it was people who you might disagree with bitterly, but do not have hate in their hearts for people based on immacetra, mutable characteristics or differences, but who you could argue against and you could make the case that they are wrong, but to marginalize them as hateful and bigoted, pushed this country to the brink where we are right now. And the Southern Poverty Law Center was one of the biggest players in bringing us to this point. They validated the suspicions of elite media and academics, And you kind of center institutions in the political world that actually people who weren't getting behind transgenderism or really lenient immigration policies were actually bigots rather than people who had substantive serious disagreements with them. Because it just makes it so much easier to win an argument when you call people at least it used to racist and bigoted. instead of saying, well, here's why we think a more lenient immigration policy is better for the country, right?

It's a much easier argument to win. It's a shortcut. It's a cheat code. At least it used to be. I think that's changing to some extent. The second part of this is now, apparently, the Southern Poverty Law Center is facing serious allegations that they were the ones, not the conservative groups. The conservative groups weren't funding the clan and unite the right. They were accused of it.

They were accused of helping to mainstream this bigotry and hatred. But it was actually at the Southern Poverty Law Center, allegedly, that was making payments to boost the efforts of these people involved in legitimately racist, bigoted, hateful, violent endeavors. They got money from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, we'll determine the scale of the funding. The allegation right now is it's about $3 million. It's not insignificant. and there may be more to come. But three million dollars is, again, it's not an insignificant figure.

It's enough, obviously, to make a difference. And the SPLC made a bigger difference than $3 million could ever buy as it mainstreamed the idea that regular conservatives and liberals, by the way, who disagreed with them on trans issues or immigration or Islamism, political radical Islamism, were hateful. You couldn't put a price figure on that. You couldn't put a price tag on that. $3 million.

That's pales in comparison to what the SPLC did for the left by convincing elites and folks in the media to take them seriously and credibly launder these allegations of hatred. But now it turns out the SPLC was probably funding actual Nazis and racists. like I mentioned earlier, the first time I reported on this was all the way back in 2017. And conservatives have been sounding the alarm about this longer than that. I came in like probably midway into all of this. People like Miami-Way have been on top of this for much longer.

So we'll see what happens to the $822 million in assets the Southern Poverty Law Center allegedly has. We'll see what happens in this case. but just once and for all, let us dispense with the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a good actor, that they are a credible source on hatred and extremism. What they did to this country is despicable, what they did to individuals like Ayan Hercie Ali was despicable, and they never deserve to be taken seriously again. And frankly, I hope that there's a flurry of stories from legacy media outlets, although I'm skeptical, looking credibly at their own coverage,

looking critically back on their own coverage and the roles that they played in helping to marginalize and anger so many people on the right, myself included, who saw people getting smeared as hate mongers alongside the KKK and neo-Nazis for holding mainstream conservative beliefs. All the while, conservatives in the entire country we're becoming much more tolerant. I mean, again, world historical levels

of tolerance for people from different backgrounds here in the United States of America. What the Southern Poverty Law Center did was just despicable. And I look forward to this case playing out further. Thank you for indulging me on the Southern Poverty Law Center story. I could keep going. I literally could keep going for like another two hours,

but we'll cut it off there tonight. Emily at Devilmaycaremedia.com is where you can email me, questions for Happy Hour, which I'll be recording Thursday afternoon. So get your questions in. It'll drop on Friday on podcast feeds only. So if you don't subscribe to the podcast feed, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get podcasts, head on over there to get Happy Hour. That's where I go through all of your questions. Trust me, there are a lot of tough questions you send in. And nothing is off limits. I read just about all of them live on the show. So get them in.

We'll be back with an episode of Happy Hour on Friday. Until then, have a great evening, everyone.