“The question before the Court is: Under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, may schools maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females? In other words, may schools determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex? The answer is yes,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Kavanaugh’s opinion. Thomas and Gorsuch wrote concurring opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Jackson, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote another opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

The court’s decision applied to combined cases from Idaho and West Virginia. The cases of Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. will affect 25 states with laws preventing biological males from competing in women’s sports.

Trump signed an executive order in 2025 to withhold federal funds from states that allow biological males to compete in women’s sports.

In 2020, Idaho lawmakers enacted the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, banning men and boys from competing in women’s and girls’ sports across all ages and levels of competition.

Lindsay Hecox, a male athlete who identifies as female and who wanted to be on the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, sued the state, and lower courts sided with the athlete, including the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the West Virginia case, a middle school student who claimed to identify as transgender wanted to play on the female sports teams at his school. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled West Virginia’s law violates Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sexual discrimination in educational programs and school athletics.

Thomas’ Concurrence

“A man does not have a legal right to compete against women just because he believes he is a woman,” Justice Thomas wrote in his concurrence.

He wrote separately to focus on two points.

Thomas wrote that “transgender status is not a suspect class requiring heightened equal-protection scrutiny.” Those who are described as “transgender” are more accurately considered people with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex), Thomas wrote.

“Because ‘gender dysphoria’ is a mutable mental state that is the object of psychiatric treatment, it does not resemble the immutable characteristics on the basis of which our precedents have applied heightened scrutiny—race, sex, or national origin,” he added. “Instead, gender dysphoria resembles other characteristics on the basis of which legislatures may classify with a merely rational basis,” and “legislatures have many obvious rational bases to keep men who believe they are women out of teams and private spaces reserved for women.”

Second, Thomas insisted that “men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women and girls, even if they believe that they are.”

He noted that “sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic; it is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex.”

“To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’—is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens ‘as equal[s],’” he wrote, ,citing Josef Pieper.

Sotomayor’s Opinion

Justice Sotomayor wrote that “an outstanding factual dispute should have prevented the court’s resolution” of B.P.J.’s case. She argued that the case should turn on whether athletes such as B.P.J. actually have an “athletic advantage,” as determined by the facts on a case-by-case basis.

“The ban is absolute, so B.P.J. cannot practice on girls’ teams, even if she would not take anyone’s spot in an eventual competition, even if everyone who tries out for the team makes it, and even if having the chance to participate could aid immensely in treating B.P.J.’s gender dysphoria.”

She wrote that the court’s majority was “moving the goalposts” to resolve “this important, divisive issue without knowing all the facts even though the validity of the means-ends fit depends on them.”

Sotomayor agreed, however, that West Virginia’s law did not violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

This article was originally published on the Daily Signal.

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The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down the 90-year-old precedent in Humphrey’s Executor that insulated deep state actors even when the president sought to fire them.

“Nearly 250 years ago, the Framers decided to vest ‘[t]he executive Power’ in one person—’a President of the United States of America,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The choice was not made lightly.”

Roberts noted that “several delegates to the Constitutional Convention pushed for a multimember council instead of ‘unity in the Executive magistracy,’ which they feared would serve as ‘the foetus of monarchy.’ But unity won out.”

“Our Constitution’s drafters knew from experience that a ‘plurality in the executive’—the model in use by most States at the time—not only ‘diminishe[s]’ the ‘activity, secrecy, and dispatch’ necessary to ensure ‘good government’ but ‘tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility,’” he added.

Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, which Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined in full. Justice Clarence Thomas joined every part of the opinion except one, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Roberts wrote that executive officers “were to serve as envoys of the president, not his equals. ... Because these officers were subject to the president’s superintendence, they had to be removable by him at will.”

The chief justice noted that Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, wrote that the “unity” of the executive branch would be “Destroyed” if it were vested “ostensibly in one man, subject in whole or in part to the control and co-operation of others, in the capacity of counselors to him.”

“But that is precisely what would occur if the president’s so-called assistants could exercise his power against his wishes,” Roberts noted.

The Supreme Court did not just uphold all of President Trump’s hiring decisions, however. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the 5-4 opinion in Trump v. Cook, holding that President Trump could not fire members of the Federal Reserve Board without cause.

The Dissent

Justice Sotomayor, an appointee of President Barack Obama, noted in her dissent that “Congress and the president together have decided that some government functions should operate at a distance from partisan politics.”

She echoed the spirit of the “Progressive” movement, stating that “the wisdom of the centuries has taught that some decisions should depend not only on who is in office—much less on who is disfavored or owed a favor by those in office—but also on judgment, expertise, and the public good.”

Sotomayor accused the court of discarding a “democratic regime” in favor of “one that distorts the structure of government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control.”

The “Progressive” movement claimed that scientific experts, not political officials, should make policy decisions and should be insulated from political changes. The court’s ruling illustrates how such a policy can undermine the logic of the America’s constitutional form of government.

Deep State Ramifications

This ruling will weaken bureaucrats’ ability to undermine a president’s agenda from within the administrative state. This sort of “deep state” threat notably emerged in the first Trump administration, but arguably persisted under President Joe Biden, especially when members of his own administration opposed his policies on Israel.

An RMG Research poll last year found that 75% of Washington, D.C.-area federal employees who made at least $150,000 a year and who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 would disobey a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy.

Trump v. Slaughter involved President Donald Trump’s ouster of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but it will affect other federal boards and commissions with members appointed by Republican and Democrat presidents.

The so-called independent boards and commissions have members appointed by Republican and Democrat presidents who, in theory, operate without political concerns. They serve for a set term, regardless of whether a new president of a different party assumes office during that term.

Slaughter’s lawyer argued that independent commissions have existed in some form since the 1790s and added that such bodies don’t operate with unchecked power, since members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 prohibited the president from firing a commissioner for any reason other than “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the high court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting the power of a president to fire executive officials of an independent agency.

This article was originally published on the Daily Signal.

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Companies have been dialing back their LGBTQ+ Pride messaging since President Donald Trump took office last year, and analysts say that contributes to a less divisive marketplace.

“This is both a market correction and a cultural correction,” Allen Mendenhall, a senior adviser for The Heritage Foundation’s Free Enterprise Initiative, told the Daily Signal. “After years of performative corporate activism, companies are rediscovering that their customers—particularly families—do not want firms serving as vehicles for ideological agendas.”

“Businesses are increasingly rejecting pressure from activist investors and corporate bureaucracies in favor of listening to consumers and respecting longstanding moral and religious convictions,” he added. “Top-down cultural engineering is losing its grip.”

Many companies have adopted Pride messaging as a result of the environmental, social, and governance investing movement. Investors used ESG standards to direct their dollars, and they often relied on the Human Rights Campaign‘s Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies based on their pro-LGBTQ+ policies and statements, to determine where money went.

Yet Trump issued executive orders combating so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion, noting that discrimination in favor of racial minorities and those who identify as LGBTQ+ still violates federal civil rights laws. This has inspired many companies to opt out of HRC’s index, though some had already begun to do so in 2024.

The Human Rights Campaign recently surveyed consumers who identify as LGBTQ+, finding that these consumers identified five companies perceived as pulling back their commitment to the LGBTQ+ community: Target, Walmart, Amazon, Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot.

The Daily Signal reached out to each of the companies below for comment, but only Amazon and Puma responded.

1. Amazon

Amazon launched a “Pride Out Loud” campaign in 2021, and LGBTQ+ consumers named it as one of the more pro-LGBTQ+ brands between 2017 and 2022, according to the HRC survey.

The online retailer made news for withdrawing its sponsorship of Pride Amsterdam last year, however.

The company declined to comment on how many Pride events it has ceased sponsoring and stated that it supports employee-led groups that seek to sponsor such events.

“We’re committed to building a workforce that helps us build the best range of products and services for the most globally diverse customers in the world,” an Amazon spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “We support our employees with opportunities that allow them to grow, thrive, and connect internally and in their communities.”

2. Facebook/Meta

In 2018, Facebook launched a “Happy Pride” page for creators and introduced LGBTQ+ themes for Facebook Messenger in 2021. The company dropped those themes last year, while embracing policy changes that allowed more criticism of transgender ideology on Facebook. The company also appeared to release fewer posts celebrating Pride.

3. Home Depot

Home Depot has reportedly dialed back its Pride messaging, removing a DEI section from its website and withdrawing its sponsorship for Toronto Pride.

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4. McDonald’s

In 2022, McDonald’s released a statement celebrating Pride, offering “gender reassignment support,” announcing a “House of Pride” parade, and hosting a float in Chicago’s parade. McDonald’s exited the HRC index last year, however, and seems not to be pushing Pride messaging.

5. Nike

Nike launched a “Be True” product line focused on Pride messaging, but appears to have dialed it back in 2024, and while the company still sells “Be True” products, observers noted that it did not launch a new 2026 product line.

6. PepsiCo

In 2022, PepsiCo ran a Pride Month marketing campaign and donated $100,000 to “LGBT+ safe spaces hit hard by COVID-19.” This year, PepsiCo scaled back sponsorship of NYC Pride.

7. Puma

While the athletic wear company Puma launched a Pride collection last year, it does not appear to have done so this year.

“PUMA continues to view diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as an integral part of its company culture,” Anne Putz, senior director of corporate communications, told the Daily Signal. She noted the company’s support for the LGBTQ+ event Christopher Street Day in Nuremberg, Germany, near the company’s headquarters.

“At the same time, PUMA is currently undergoing a transformation, during which we are further sharpening our product portfolio,” Putz added. “This strategic focus does not change the importance we attach to DEI, which remains firmly embedded in our culture.”

8. Target

Target appears to have faced backlash for its loud LGBTQ+ marketing back in 2023, and it removed itself from the HRC Corporate Equality Index last year.

9. Walmart

Walmart has reportedly dialed back its Pride messaging and opted out of the HRC index.

10. YouTube

Last year, YouTube Creator and Artist Stories published a celebration of Pride, but it appears not to have done so this year.

A Warning

“On one hand, many major companies have scaled back overt ideological messaging and refocused on core business priorities that serve their customers and shareholders,” Doug Napier, executive chairman and CEO of 1792 Exchange, told the Daily Signal. “However, others that publicly pledged to exit the activism business continue to support divisive causes, revealing a gap between rhetoric and genuine commitment.”

“Corporate leaders must implement structural changes that prioritize integrity and core business functions over radical social causes,” he added.

This article was originally published at The Daily Signal.

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Major employers systematically—though perhaps unintentionally—blacklist conservative nonprofits from their employee charitable giving programs through a third party.

Corporate generosity platforms such as Benevity act as middlemen, connecting employers such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Starbucks to a host of nonprofits. Benevity, for example, connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them.

But these middleman platforms often refuse to partner with mainstream conservative or Christian nonprofits, because yet another third party—the Southern Poverty Law Center—puts those nonprofits on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.

The SPLC, which gained its reputation by suing Klan groups into bankruptcy, now stands accused of funneling money to Klan members, propping up the hate threat in order to raise money by claiming to oppose it. The SPLC claims it paid these Klan members as informants, to snuff out violent threats, but a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC for wire fraud and bank fraud based on claims that the SPLC paid for Klan robes and reimbursed a cross-burning, among other things.

At least one of these corporate generosity platforms has stopped using the SPLC in its entirety, but others continue to use it.

Calls to Stop Using SPLC

1792 Exchange, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing ideological balance back to public companies, and Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm on the SPLC “hate map,” called on corporate generosity platforms to stop using the SPLC.

“The scandal-ridden, federally indicted Southern Poverty Law Center has demonstrated for decades that it is a laughably unserious organization,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told the Daily Signal. “Its defamatory ‘Hate List’ is nothing more than a blacklist used to smear mainstream conservative, pro-life, and Christian organizations.”

“Charity processing platforms like Benevity, Deed, and YourCause should immediately stop relying on the SPLC to ban legitimate nonprofits from corporate generosity programs,” Scott added.

“Unfortunately, many business leaders still don’t realize their companies are indirectly relying on the SPLC’s thoroughly discredited ‘hate map’ to make important business decisions—imposing viewpoint discrimination on their own workforce and customer base in the process,” ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco told the Daily Signal.

“No business leader wants to explain to their board why they’re outsourcing decisions to a federally indicted organization,” he added. “The reputational and legal risks of continuing to rely on the SPLC are entirely unjustified—and the only responsible move is to cut ties completely.”

Some companies have directed their corporate generosity platforms to stop using the SPLC to screen eligible nonprofits. DoorDash directed the platform Deed to stop using the SPLC for this purpose. According to Bowyer Research and previous reporting, companies that use Benevity have opted out of using the SPLC, including American Express, AT&T, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Nvidia, and Salesforce. Verizon directed CyberGrants, another such platform, to stop using the SPLC for its employee giving.

Only one of these platforms has sworn off the SPLC, however.

Benevity

“Benevity’s platform is designed to give clients flexibility and control over which nonprofits are eligible for their programs, including which third-party data sources, if any, they choose to apply,” a company spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “These options are not a default setting.”

Scott has disputed this claim, saying it is “hard to square with [Benevity’s] own history.”

In 2021, then-Benevity CEO Kelly Schmitt delivered a PowerPoint presentation explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.”

Bonterra

Bonterra, the company that owns Deed and the similar platform CyberGrants, told the Daily Signal that it is giving the companies that use its services the option to stop using the SPLC as a filter and to remove the SPLC from the program as a recipient of grants.

“Bonterra is actively monitoring the SPLC indictment and evaluating any implications for our platform and the programs we support,” Melanie Mahaffey, senior director of strategic communications at Bonterra, told the Daily Signal. “We maintain nonprofit eligibility standards grounded in a robust internal compliance framework, which we review on an ongoing basis to ensure they remain current and defensible.”

“In light of this developing situation, we are giving our customers two options: the ability to disable SPLC-based vetting within their program, and the ability to remove SPLC as an eligible nonprofit organization within their platform — both at their discretion,” she said.

Groundswell

Groundswell, a similar platform that offers “workplace giving, volunteering, matching, and grantmaking technology,” said it no longer uses third-party vetting systems like the SPLC “hate map.”

“Historically, Groundswell incorporated third-party nonprofit data sources, including SPLC designations, as part of platform-level eligibility screening in line with common industry practices at the time,” Sarah Kuntsal, the company’s head of product marketing, told the Daily Signal.

In 2024, however, the company “introduced enhanced controls that give customers more granular authority over nonprofit eligibility and restrictions,” Kuntsal explained. “As a result, Groundswell no longer applies platform-level restrictions based on any single third-party designation system.”

The platform encourages employers to give workers “broad opportunities for participation and giving.” Groundswell “does not prescribe or advocate for any particular nonprofit screening methodology,” and it “does not discuss the specific configurations, preferences, or decisions of individual customers.”

Groundswell’s frequently asked questions page stated that the platform “does not process donations to organizations denoted as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center” as recently as December 2025, but the page no longer includes this language.

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Millie Giving

Millie Giving, another corporate generosity platform, published a blog post in 2022 citing the SPLC on “hate groups.” The blog post claims that “vetting for hate groups in-house would be very difficult,” and states that “All vetting for the Millie database is even through the SPLC!”

Millie Giving did not respond to the Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

2 More Platforms

Two other corporate generosity platforms partner with companies but have not said they use SPLC “hate map.”

The Daily Signal also reached out to Submittable, which runs a similar corporate giving platform, and Blackbaud, which owns the corporate generosity platform YourCause. Neither of these companies has publicly stated any use of the SPLC “hate map” in the past, and neither responded to requests for comment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

This article was originally published at The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE WOKETOPUS—A conservative Christian leader is challenging the Southern Poverty Law Center’s incoming CEO to debate about whether Christian organizations that follow the Bible’s teachings on sexuality are “hate groups” that belong on a map along chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.

Ryan Haygood, who serves as president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, will formally join the SPLC in August. Haygood’s LinkedIn profile references Micah 6:8 and describes him as “saved by God’s grace,” also citing 2 Timothy 1:7. The SPLC’s selection may represent an attempt to counter accusations that the center is anti-Christian because it condemns biblical Christian doctrine as a form of “hate.”

“It’s really ironic he’s calling himself a Christian and yet he goes out of his way to attack benevolent, loving Christian organizations because of their Christian beliefs and Christian worldview,” Brad Dacus, founder of the Pacific Justice Institute, told The Woketopus in an interview Thursday.

“You can’t declare yourself Christian on Sunday morning and go to church and then on Monday, be the enemy of Christians, Christian organizations and ministries, because of their biblical worldview,” Dacus explained.

“It’s not real. It’s fake. It’s disingenuous,” he argued.

Dacus is sending the SPLC an open letter, inviting Haygood to “have an open, raw, unedited interview.”

“If they have a case against Pacific Justice Institute, bring it on,” the conservative leader said.

The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, but it now weaponizes that reputation by putting mainstream conservative and Christian organizations on a “hate map” with Klan chapters—a map the SPLC claims reveals the “infrastructure of white supremacy.”

Condemning Christian Doctrine

The SPLC claims it puts groups like PJI on the "hate map” because they vilify people who identify as LGBTQ, but the center also advocates LGBTQ causes and has repeatedly condemned traditional Christian doctrine.

When the SPLC justified placing the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to helping victims of the Sexual Revolution, on the “hate map,” it cited as evidence of “hate” a direct quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“The church is very clear that same-sex sexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can never be morally acceptable,” Ruth Institute Founder Jennifer Roback Morse said in 2012.

Morse’s words weren’t an aberration; they came directly from the Catechism, the binding faith document for 1 billion Catholics across the world. If that qualifies as “hate,” then every small-o orthodox Catholic church belongs on the map.

The SPLC website maintains a page of answers to “frequently asked questions about hate groups.” For years, that page included a response to the “major misconception” that the SPLC is anti-Christian.

The SPLC called this claim “false,” noting that “there are many organizations, such as Focus on the Family, that oppose same-sex marriage or oppose homosexuality on strictly Biblical grounds that the SPLC does not list as hate groups.”

That language no longer appears on the SPLC website, because the SPLC added Focus on the Family to the “hate map” last year.

In doing so, the SPLC eliminated its own primary piece of evidence that it isn’t anti-Christian.

The SPLC didn’t just add Focus on the Family—the oldest and most well-established of conservative Christian nonprofits—to the “hate map.” SPLC analyst R.G. Cravens justified the move by demonizing traditional Christian beliefs about sexuality.

He said that Focus on the Family sows “division and ideas that tear families apart by perpetuating political notions that LGBTQ people can’t be, for example, truly Christian unless they deny who they are, and that’s, one, just patently false, and, two, it’s really dangerous, because it sets families against one another.”

Cravens’ argument relies on conflating someone who feels same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria and someone who places their identity in those feelings. Conservative Christians like Dacus don’t say you can’t be Christian if you experience these feelings, but they do hold to the traditional view that same-sex activity and transgender identity are sinful, and therefore true Christians cannot take “pride” in them.

A Hate ‘Racket’

Dacus didn’t just invite Haygood to debate; he also condemned the SPLC for exaggerating “hate.”

“The bottom line is, this organization, Tyler, as you well know, is a racket,” the PJI leader said. “It’s a money-making racket and what they sell is hate and division.”

In April, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering. According to the indictment, the SPLC directed donor dollars it raised in the name of fighting the Klan to Klan members in a scheme to prop up the very hate the SPLC claims it exists to oppose.

The SPLC claims it was funding informants who would bring down the Klan from within, but the indictment says the SPLC directed the racist posts of a 2017 Charlottesville organizer and paid for Klan hoods and cross-burning materials.

The accusations come after years of criticism that the SPLC exaggerates hate by highlighting “groups” that barely exist and smearing mainstream conservative groups. In 2023, I analyzed the map and found that it exaggerated hate by at least 267%.

“The fact that they’re willing to actually take money out of their own coffers ... to create this image that they can raise money from, is so unethical,” Dacus said.

“They create new enemies, vilify new groups, and their goal is not just to silence but also to vilify and destroy,” Dacus said.

He was referring to a 2007 speech in which former SPLC spokesman Mark Potok said the SPLC’s “aim in life” is to “destroy these groups,” referring to the groups on the “hate map.” Potok later clarified that he did not mean law enforcement would destroy the groups, but that the SPLC would so “mortally embarrass” the groups that they would be destroyed.

Dacus previously invited the SPLC’s outgoing CEO, Bryan Fair, to debate him, but received no response.

The Southern Poverty Law Center faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy for sending $3 million to members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. This indictment led me to update the book I wrote in 2020, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” At the end of the update, I give a list of concrete ways you can take action against the SPLC.

Select passages from the update follow.

Back in 2019, the SPLC smeared conservative Christian groups as “anti-LGBT hate groups,” [its education arm] Teaching Tolerance was spreading critical race theory and transgender ideology, and the SPLC was trying to convince donor-advised funds to blacklist “hate groups.”

In the intervening years, however, things only got worse. …

In 2023, the SPLC released its “hate map” for 2022, and it included 702 “antigovernment extremist groups.” Prominent among these “antigovernment extremists” was the “anti-student inclusion movement.” The “hate map” featured no fewer than 230 chapters of Moms for Liberty, along with the policy group Parents Defending Education.

The next year, the SPLC added groups led by medical professionals, such as Do No Harm and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, to the “hate map,” branding them “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” because they oppose experimental transgender “medicine” to make men appear female and vice versa. The SPLC even branded Gays Against Groomers—a group of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who oppose the sexualization of children and transgender ideology—an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” suggesting that their key target of hate is… themselves.

The following year, the center added Turning Point USA, the largest conservative grassroots youth organization in the country, to the map, stating that its “primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack.” The SPLC also added PragerU, a conservative group that makes YouTube videos to educate the public, to the map. …

Despite the SPLC’s many scandals, President Joe Biden’s administration welcomed this morally bankrupt smear factory with open arms. …

Documents showed that R.G. Cravens, manager of research and analysis at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, spoke at a conference for Justice Department prosecutors on Nov. 7, 2023. A program for the event noted that Cravens would focus on “the anti-LGBTQ movement” and “help investigators and prosecutors identify potential evidence and motivations for bias crime.”

Under President Donald Trump, the FBI has officially distanced itself from the SPLC. FBI Director Kash Patel told The Daily Signal that the SPLC’s “disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership. Even so, Democrats’ defenses of the SPLC suggest that it may return to federal influence should another Democrat follow President Trump in the White House in 2029. …

Why, exactly, does the SPLC face criminal charges?

Before acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the criminal charges on April 21, 2026, the SPLC put out its own statement. The SPLC announced that it faced a criminal investigation for what it described as the use of “paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”

SPLC Interim CEO Bryan Fair said the informants were “necessary” to protect the SPLC from “countless credible threats.” He added that while the SPLC fed information to law enforcement, it did not “share our use of informants broadly with anyone.” He said the group no longer works with paid informants, even though they previously “saved lives.”

The indictment claims, however, that the SPLC was funding the very “hate” it claimed it exists to destroy. The indictment refers to the payees as “field sources” or “Fs.”

The list includes F-37, “a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” The indictment states that this field source “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly paid this field source more than $270,000.

The SPLC does not face charges merely for paying members of white nationalist groups, but for defrauding donors, lying to banks, and conspiring to cover up the activity. …

The indictment confirms my suspicions that the SPLC had not just been exaggerating “hate” by smearing conservatives, but also by supporting racist extremists. It also underlines the key warning of “Making Hate Pay”: that the SPLC has become a corrupt smear factory. If the SPLC lied to banks, as the indictment suggests, it will be very difficult for the center to weasel its way out of a guilty verdict. …

What You Can Do Against SPLC

If you work at a company that works with [the software company] Benevity, please consider asking your employer to opt out of using the SPLC “hate map” filter.

If you notice Learning for Justice materials in your school, please speak up.

If you worked for a company that the SPLC and its allies bullied into blacklisting “hate groups,” and are willing to speak on record or anonymously, I’d love to hear from you.

If you hear someone considering giving to the SPLC, please let them know how corrupt this smear factory is.

The Trump administration and conservatives increasingly know the truth about the SPLC—we need to make it so obvious that Democrats and the Left cannot ignore it.

This article was originally published at the Daily Signal.

Transgender “medicine” has suffered tremendous setbacks in the last two years, but it remains entrenched in much of America’s medical establishment.

Although hundreds of health care facilities have distanced themselves from the transgender orthodoxy demanded by the LGBTQ+ activist group the Human Rights Campaign, hundreds of others remain committed to it.

HRC ranks health care facilities on a “Healthcare Equality Index” according to several criteria, including their promotion of transgender orthodoxy and their coverage of experimental transgender medical interventions euphemistically described as “gender-affirming care.”

“Declining participation in the HRC health care equality index proves our fight against identity politics in medicine is working and we must keep our foot on the gas,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Do No Harm, told the Daily Signal.

The Numbers

In 2024, 1,056 health care facilities across the country took part in the HRC survey, and 384 of them received a 100% perfect score (called “leaders”), while 462 received a score between 80% and 95% (called “high performers”).

This year, only 741 took part in the survey, 323 scored 100%, and 343 achieved the status of “high performers.” This represents about a 30% drop in participation, a 15% drop in “leaders,” and a 26% drop in “high performers.”

The survey considers four major criteria for scoring: non-discrimination and staff training (35 points), patient services and support (30 points), employee benefits and policies (20 points), and patient and community engagement (10 points). It also considers “responsible citizenship,” a criterion on which HRC can deduct either 5 or 25 points, depending on whether the health care provider has committed “major offenses to the LGBTQ+.”

The criteria require “baseline” coverage for “gender diverse employees,” including “hormone replacement therapies,” “puberty blockers for youth,” and “coverage for reconstructive surgical procedures related to gender affirming surgery.” This accounts for 5 points, and entities cannot achieve a perfect score without it.

Other criteria encourage hospitals and other entities to “have an LGBTQ+ specific clinic,” “offer gender-transition related medical and mental health care,” “have a multidisciplinary gender affirming clinic for adults and/or youth,” provide coverage for “gender affirming care above baseline requirements for coverage,” and more.

HRC has been bleeding allies recently. While 377 of the Fortune 500 companies participated in a similar survey for businesses in 2025, the number dropped to 131 this year.

The Human Rights Campaign did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

‘Gender-Affirming Care’

While activists claim that teens who suffer from gender dysphoria—the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex—need experimental medical interventions to prevent suicide, the Department of Health and Human Services concluded there is little evidence for positive impacts from such “treatments” for minors.

Studies have suggested these interventions cause harm, from increased cancer risks to higher risk of suicidal thoughts.

A jury awarded a detransitioner $2 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit in February, and psychiatrists reportedly agreed to settle another detransitioner’s medical malpractice claim in January.

Texas Children’s Hospital announced last month that it would close its gender clinic and open the first detransition clinic.

“HHS continues to fight to protect America’s children from irreversible harm outlined in the department’s peer-reviewed report,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard told the Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “These detrimental procedures do not meet professionally recognized standards of health care, and practitioners who perform sex-rejecting procedures on minors would be deemed out of compliance with those standards.”

‘Deeper Work Lies Ahead’

“Both at the state and federal level, protections are being put in place to stop pediatric sex changes and end DEI in taxpayer funded programs and institutions,” Miceli, the Do No Harm leader, told the Daily Signal. “Those efforts are a response to years of work by our organization, other coalition members, and countless medical professionals exposing the harms of identity politics.”

“However, many hospitals and medical organization continue to hide behind a nonexistent medical consensus pushed by the American Medical Association, Endocrine Society, American Academy of Pediatrics and others that ignore evidence revealing that dangers of child sex changes,” he added. “The fight is far from over.”

Genspect, a group of medical professionals, transgender people, detransitioners (those who formerly identified as transgender), and parents who advocate against gender medicalization, celebrated the move against HRC but noted that it will not be easy to uproot transgender orthodoxy from the medical community.

“I would hesitate to describe this as a wholesale retreat,” Genspect Director Stella O’Malley told the Daily Signal.

“The claims once presented as settled science are now being subjected to the kind of scrutiny that should always have existed,” she explained.

“The truth is that there is no reliable, replicable evidence base to support medical transition,” O’Malley added. “These interventions might be intensely desired but they do not offer good long-term outcomes.”

O’Malley warned that “this issue cannot be solved simply by shutting down a few clinics,” however. “Medical pathways can migrate online or across borders and trans tourism and [do-it-yourself] hormones are a major growth industry. What ultimately matters is whether the general public comes to a deeper understanding of the trans phenomenon.”

“There has been progress, but the deeper work lies ahead,” she urged. “Medicine changes slowly.”

This article was originally published at the Daily Signal.

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