DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Tuesday that it’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for previously using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The nonprofit public interest group announced that the Trump administration appears to be preparing a case against the organization or some of its employees.

“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 obtained by the Associated Press.

Fair said that the SPLC had used informants to monitor the threat of violence inside extremist organizations, and had frequently shared its findings with local and federal law enforcement.

“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.”

Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The Montgomery-based SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the nonprofit’s purview has been nationally perceived (at least on the right) as less and less acceptable, in the decades since. Conservative politicians and personalities have railed against the advocacy group, claiming that its work—which includes tracking extremist groups, promoting tolerance, and kneecapping bigotry through litigation—is inherently partisan and overly leftist.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced last year that his agency would sever ties with the SPLC, ending a long-standing research arrangement between the nonprofit and the federal government.

The investigation has reignited concerns that Donald Trump is trying to weaponize the Justice Department during his second term, morphing the agency into his personal law firm in order to harm or attack his dissidents and critics.

The Department of Homeland Security is developing smart glasses that would allow federal agents to identify people using biometric data in real time.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein, citing a budget request from DHS, reports that these devices, slated to be released by September 2027, build on existing smart glasses that include video cameras and heads-up data displays. They would be able to pull from the federal government’s archives of biometric data, including facial recognition, walking gait, and iris patterns.

“The project will deliver innovative hardware, such as operational prototypes of smart glasses, to equip agents with real-time access to information and biometric identification capabilities in the field,” the document states. The project is under the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, the agency’s research and development division.

While the budget request says the glasses are necessary for immigration enforcement, a DHS attorney anonymously told Klippenstein that “it might be portrayed as seeking to identify illegal aliens on the streets, but the reality is that a push in this direction affects all Americans, particularly protestors,” adding that the technology behind the glasses has applications for general government surveillance in addition to immigration.

These glasses would give federal agents the Orwellian ability to identify anyone within their line of sight, especially if people are on any of DHS’s many watchlists. The glasses would be only one more addition to the rapidly expanding surveillance state under the Trump administration, which is collecting massive amounts of data on people and organizations in the U.S.

The federal government is gathering this data with the help of contractors like Palantir, a company with a disdainful view of democracy whose apps help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents map out deportation targets and utilize AI to find them. ICE itself is also putting together a team focused on monitoring social media to find people to deport. Will Congress rein in this infringement on basic freedoms and liberties, or will they remain mostly silent?

President Donald Trump doesn’t sound particularly optimistic ahead of peace talks with Iran.

Speaking on the phone to Joe Kernan of CNBC’s Squawk Box Tuesday morning, Trump signaled that the U.S. was ready to resume attacks if negotiations with Iran were unsuccessful.

“Well, I expect to be bombing, because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with, but we’re ready to go. I mean the military is raring to go,” Trump said.

Asked if he planned to extend the ceasefire if talks were unsuccessful, Trump replied: “I don’t want to do that. We don’t have that much time.”

None of this sounds like what someone who is expecting a deal would say. And Trump’s vow for more violence comes after administration officials revealed that the president’s comments have hurt negotiations with Iran.

The U.S. nearly upended peace talks Monday after it seized a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has demanded the immediate release of the cargo ship and vowed retaliation. Iran has reportedly told regional mediators that it still plans to send a team of negotiators to Islamabad Tuesday, but Tehran has refused to publicly confirm that the country will come to the table.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned Monday night that Iran was also ready to resume fighting. “We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he wrote on X.

Donald Trump appears to have finally lost one of his most influential supporters.

Ex–Fox News host Tucker Carlson disavowed the president Monday night during an interview with his brother, Republican operative and speechwriter Buckley Carlson, telling his audience that he was “sorry for misleading people” and that he regretted supporting the MAGA leader over the last decade.

“You wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. I mean, we’re implicated in this, for sure,” Carlson said to his brother on The Tucker Carlson Show. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well I changed my mind,’ or like, ‘Oh this is bad, I’m out.’ It’s like in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.

“So I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.”

Carlson was once the largest figure in conservative media, ranking head and shoulders above his competitors during his primetime evening slot at Fox. But his sympathies for Trump after the 2020 election—and his penchant for demeaning women and minorities—cost him his throne. Carlson was fired by the network in 2023, shortly after Fox settled a historic $787.5 million lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for spreading baseless conspiracies that the company had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden.

Trump has broken up with several major MAGA acolytes in recent weeks over their unfavorable responses to the Iran war, including Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and another famous former Fox News host, Megyn Kelly.

The president boosted a video on his Truth Social account over the weekend that urged viewers to stop questioning his decisions. His disavowed media supporters—Carlson included—were plastered all over the clip, framed as individuals that need to “shut the fuck up.” It was the second time that Trump had shared the video; he previously posted it to his account in January. Nonetheless, it has taken months of repeat public abuse for his supporters to question their loyalties.

President Donald Trump’s addiction to social media posting is hurting negotiations with Iran.

Talks last weekend seemed to be going well, with a deal close to being reached. But then, Trump went online and claimed that Iran had agreed to specific provisions, such as handing over all of its enriched uranium, making similar comments to reporters over the phone. Iranian negotiators then publicly denied those claims and announced they weren’t preparing for more talks, saying that the U.S. was unserious.

Unnamed Trump administration officials told CNN that Trump’s posts and statements to the media have had a negative effect on efforts to end the war with Iran, fueling mistrust from the Iranian negotiators.

“The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” one person who was familiar with the negotiations told the news outlet.

Trump’s remarks in the press didn’t help, either. To Bloomberg, he claimed that Iran had agreed to an “unlimited” suspension of its nuclear program, and he told CBS News that Iran had “agreed to everything” and would remove its enriched uranium with help from the U.S. In an interview with Axios, he said, “I think we will get a deal in the next day or two,” with another meeting “probably” coming on the weekend.

Whether any of these details were true or not, airing them out in public before an agreement was reached was not wise, and probably gave the Iranian government less of a reason to take the U.S. in good faith. But don’t expect the president to change anytime soon. On Tuesday, he threatened to resume bombing Iran, just as Vice President JD Vance was expected to leave for peace talks in Pakistan.

“I expect to be bombing. The military is raring to go,” Trump said on CNBC, setting a deadline for a peace deal to be reached in the next 24 hours.