The former head of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pushed the organization to become more partisan and target conservative and religious groups, the New York Post reported Thursday.
The report comes after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday charged the organization with fraud and money laundering linked to “violent extremist groups,” per Breitbart News.
The SPLC’s former boss, Margaret Huang, took over in 2020, after which the SPLC took on a more “partisan tone,” the Post article continued:
In a piece published last year, Huang claimed that “hard-right extremist groups” have steadily penetrated American life, politics, and government since President Trump’s 2016 election – arguing his second White House run gave them “an ally in the highest office in the nation.”
“What was once considered a fringe agenda in the modern era is the blueprint from which the country’s president–and the MAGA movement– is operating,” she blasted in an article for Daily Kos, warning that the “hard right” is muscling its way into schools and libraries.
The SPLC targeted the conservative group known as Turning Point USA in 2025 by putting it on a “hate map” with KKK chapters, Breitbart News reported at the time.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who was brutally assassinated during a Utah speaking engagement in September of the same year, reacted to the move in a social media post, calling it “a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.”
The indictment against the SPLC comes after Kirk for many years said its hate-group designations targeted conservatives, Christians, parental rights activists, and his organization, Breitbart News reported Wednesday:
During December 2025 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Turning Point USA Executive Vice President Andrew Sypher stated that Kirk had warned three months before his assassination that the SPLC’s designation of Turning Point USA on its “hate map” would place the organization “in the crosshairs.” Sypher told lawmakers that the warning “proved prophetic” after Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University in September 2025.
In announcing the indictment on Tuesday, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel said the charges against the SPLC included “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.”
Patel wrote:
The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public. They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.
The Post article noted that Huang’s compensation was $522,000 in 2023, adding she was removed in July after huge layoffs and is now a senior adviser at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
