Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting the Southern Poverty Law Center is the latest step in a coordinated effort to intimidate organizations challenging Christian nationalism and other forms of extremism.

Testifying before the committee, Southern Poverty Law Center Interim President and CEO Bryan Fair defended the organization’s 55-year record.

“For 55 years, with the support of generous donors who appreciate our work, the SPLC has fought racial terror, white supremacy and other forms of discrimination and hate, to build and defend a multiracial democracy where we can all thrive,” Fair told lawmakers. “That was the goal of the Civil Rights Movement — and it is our mission.”

Fair reminded committee members that the center helped dismantle the United Klans of America through litigation and has spent decades exposing extremist organizations through research, education, policy advocacy and legal action. He also rejected claims that the organization has strayed from its mission.

“Some say we’ve lost our way,” Fair testified. “That’s false. We have never lost our north star — a fair and just society for every person.”

At the hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Subcommittee Chair Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and others continued their campaign against the Southern Poverty Law Center, attacking the organization’s longstanding work tracking hate groups and extremist movements.

Multiple lawmakers questioned why the center has designated organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom as hate groups. Fair responded that the designations are based on documented statements and activities that vilify, demean or target marginalized communities, not on an organization’s religious beliefs. He emphasized that the center does not label entities based on their faith, but rather on conduct and rhetoric that it concludes promote hostility or discrimination.

Members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, including Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Reps. Becca Balint, D-Vt., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., forcefully pushed back against these attacks, defending the importance of independent research and documentation of extremist movements. Raskin defended the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decades-long civil rights work and warned against using government power to punish organizations for their viewpoints.

“The proper response to speech you don’t like is counterspeech, not government prosecution, not government censorship,” Raskin said in his opening remarks.“If you don’t like the fact that someone’s called you a hate group, then you get up and you rebut them. You denounce them.”

Balint warned that the hearing was part of a broader campaign to punish organizations unwilling to show blind loyalty to President Trump. She accused Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of transforming the Justice Department into a tool for political retribution, targeting the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups that have resisted the administration’s attacks on democratic institutions and civil rights protections.

Among the witnesses was Alveda King of the America First Policy Institute, a Christian nationalist organization closely aligned with the Trump administration. King argued that Americans with “traditional Christian values” are being unfairly targeted and criticized the center for its opposition to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion activism. She accused the organization of mischaracterizing her advocacy and repeated claims attacking transgender healthcare and reproductive rights. Her testimony reflected a broader theme of the hearing, in which lawmakers and witnesses sought to portray criticism of Christian nationalist ideology and anti-LGBTQ extremism as discrimination against Christians themselves.

The same House committee had held an earlier hearing against the Southern Poverty Law Center on May 20. And in April, the Justice Department indicted the center over its program to track hate groups, an investigation which an earlier administration had already closed. The center’s lawyers are seeking dismissal, documenting that the DOJ moved to charge without interviewing a single current employee and contends the prosecution is a political vendetta.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history of documenting threats from Christian nationalists, white supremacists and other extremists. In its annual “Year in Hate and Extremism” report, it named white Christian nationalism as the key ideology that inspired the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, drawing directly on the February 2022 report that the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty co-published. The center has continued to document how Christian nationalism stokes hate through false claims of “Christian persecution” and “white genocide,” and how the movement seeks to dominate American political and cultural life.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation stands firmly with the Southern Poverty Law Center. FFRF is among more than 100 civil rights organizations that have signed the Unity Pact, a commitment organized by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights under which an unjust attack on one signatory is treated as an attack on all. A prosecution built on the president’s enemies list and dressed up in a congressional hearing is exactly what the pact has been made to defend against.

Despite the congressional attacks, the center today released its most recent “Year in Hate & Extremism” report, which chronicles trends in hard-right activity, exposes the players driving extremism and equips communities with data and tools to prevent radicalization. This year’s report identifies 1,263 hate and antigovernment groups in operation throughout 2025 and documents how the hard-right movement rapidly consolidated power across influential institutions, including the federal government and the private tech sector. The report examines how extremist movements have targeted immigrants, LGBTQ-plus people, women, students of color and poor people, exploited cryptocurrency to sustain harassment campaigns, and intensified propaganda and recruitment efforts on college campuses.

“Attempts to punish organizations for exposing extremism are an attack on free inquiry, civil rights advocacy and democratic accountability,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The Southern Poverty Law Center has spent decades documenting the dangers posed by white supremacy, Christian nationalism and other extremist movements. It should be commended for that work, not dragged before Congress because powerful politicians dislike its conclusions.”

FFRF urges lawmakers to abandon these politically motivated attacks and focus instead on addressing the real threats posed by extremist movements that seek to undermine constitutional rights and secular democracy.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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