The Southern Poverty Law Center works to dismantle white supremacy in public forums and online, exposes hate and anti-democracy extremism, and counters disinformation and conspiracy theories with research and community resources. The Intelligence Project monitors and exposes white supremacy and its impact on communities.
Conspiracy propagandists
- The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from notorious conspiracy propagandist Alex Jones, which means a lower court’s order that he pay $1.4 billion in damages to some of the families whose children died during the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut will stand. The families filed the defamation lawsuit against Jones after he repeatedly said the shooting was a hoax and claimed family members were actors paid to push for gun control.
- Former Family Matters TV star Darius McCrary was arrested in early October for failing to pay child support. At his hearing, McCrary said he was a sovereign citizen. He told the court it had no jurisdiction over him, a common claim from sovereign citizens.
- On Oct. 25, Samuel Lee of Manchester, Connecticut, was stopped by police on Interstate 84 and asserted he was “traveling,” not driving. “Traveling” is a term used by sovereign citizens who falsely believe they are free to “travel” the roads without vehicle licenses or registration if they are not taking part in commerce. Lee sped off with officers in pursuit. Reporting indicates Lee shot at officers, was hit by return fire, and had a $1 million court-set bond.
Anti-LGBTQ+ movement
- The results of a recent survey released by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council (FRC) show that in the past 30 years, anti-LGBTQ+ groups have made little headway selling American Christians on the narrow definition of family as exclusive to cisgender, male-female couples and excluding LGBTQ+ families. According to an Oct. 13 press release by FRC, a survey of 1,003 U.S. adults who “attend Christian worship at least monthly” showed that less than half (46%) defined the term “family” as “people united by God’s design: a husband and wife, their children, and relatives.” The press release noted that in the survey, “No demographic or spiritual subgroup reached a clear majority in support of the biblical definition of family.”
- Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines has been added to the Sumner County, Tennessee, library board. “I’m more than excited that Riley has joined the effort to fight this liberal ideology that says becoming something that you’re not, by going through these surgeries to become a girl or a boy at such a young age of 5, 6 years old, this this information, this topic, shouldn’t be in front of children in a cartoon-like book that says this type of activity is OK,” state Rep. Johnny Garrett told local news. Gaines has made a name for herself in recent years, primarily speaking out against transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
Anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim activity
- Anti-Muslim hate leader Brigitte Gabriel of ACT for America published a Substack post on Oct. 21, supporting efforts of Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and other House members to introduce a bill to preserve the United States from Shariah, a set of guiding principles within Islam often demonized by the organized anti-Muslim movement and its political allies. Gabriel’s group has stoked fear about Shariah as part of its anti-Muslim agenda. She called the bill “civilization-saving legislation”from an “alien ideology bent on dismantling our freedoms.” She claims that Shariah “isn’t a benign ritual; it’s Islamic law that binds and governs every devout Muslim by a stone-age code that overrides U.S. law.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., introduced a companion bill in the U.S. Senate, claiming Shariah is “anti-American.” He also warned against admitting Muslim immigrants, pointing to Europe and saying, “Mass migration has destroyed their society.”
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to post white nationalist content and imagery. On Oct. 14, DHS, via its official X account, posted a single word: “Remigrate.” Remigration is a concept popular among European far-right activists that encourages migrants to remigrate to their countries of origin in order to stave off the supposed “great replacement” of white people. On Oct. 27, DHS posted an ICE recruitment ad using an image from the popular video game Halo, calling to “DESTROY THE FLOOD,” an ode to the game’s storyline but also a reference to dehumanizing language arguing that immigrants and migrants have flooded this country. Hatewatch has documented DHS’ deployment of anti-immigrant and white nationalist language.
Male supremacy
- At a late October event hosted by the University of Alabama chapter of Turning Point USA, Bradley Pierce of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion argued that “if people are continuing to commit abortions, we don’t want it to be safe.” The other speaker, Jeff Durbin of End Abortion Now, agreed, arguing: “People will say often that if you criminalize abortion, then women are just going to get back-alley abortions and do it in back alleys. I would say that’s where murder belongs: in back alleys.” Both Pierce’s and Durbin’s organizations are SPLC-designated hate groups who consider themselves “abortion abolitionists.” They promote the extremist worldview that women who seek abortions should be prosecuted under homicide laws and subject to the death penalty, with no exceptions for rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.
Confederate monuments
- In October, Eastern Tennessee State University unveiled a bronze sculpture of Eugene Caruthers, Elizabeth W. Crawford, George L. Nichols, Mary Luellen Wagner and Clarence McKinney — Black students who integrated the school in the 1950s. The unveiling ceremony featured speeches from university leaders, students and alumni.
- An exhibit opened at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art that features defaced and removed Confederate memorials, celebrating their removal and questioning the Lost Cause narrative that led to their installment and glorification. Curators explain that the “Monuments” exhibit “reflects on the histories and legacies of post-Civil War America as they continue to resonate today, bringing together a selection of decommissioned monuments, many of which are Confederate, with contemporary artworks borrowed and newly created for the occasion.”
- The Sons of Confederate Veterans continue to try to use the courts to block the removal of a Confederate memorial in Edenton, North Carolina. In September, the group appealed the court’s dismissal of its case. The memorial was removed from the town center in August. It was a stone monument dedicated “to our Confederate dead.” It has been relocated to a more remote location.
Militia and antigovernment movement activity
- PEN America released its annual report on banned books in October. The organization has documented almost 23,000 book bans in U.S. public schools since 2021. For the 2024-25 academic year, 6,870 individual instances of book banning were recorded, impacting almost 4,000 titles. Florida led the nation in banning books for the third straight year, followed by Texas and Tennessee. Moms for Liberty has been among the anti-student inclusion groups leading book challenges in recent years.
- At the recent national summit of anti-student inclusion group Moms for Liberty, the organization’s cofounder, Tina Descovich, described the backlash that some members have received after running for school boards and challenging books and curriculum in public institutions. She said, “You have lost family, you have lost friends, you have lost neighbors, you’ve lost jobs, you’ve lost whole careers.” She then encouraged attendees “to shake off the shackles of fear and stand for truth or we are going to lose Western civilization as a whole.” The conference also included encouragement to file more lawsuits, with one speaker telling attendees to take their grievances and “bring the heat in court.”
- Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has launched the 10:33 Initiative Pilot Program. 10:33 references the Bible’s parable of the Good Samaritan. Supporters describe the program as “a faith-based initiative to help lift Arkansans out of poverty by connecting the poor with local faith and community partners.” Paula White-Cain, head of the White House Office of Faith, who has ties to the Christian supremacist group the New Apostolic Reformation, spoke at the public launch, saying the 10:33 Pilot was an “unprecedented partnership between government and people of faith.”
- Mark Lamb, a former county sheriff in Arizona and a leader in constitutional sheriff circles, announced he is running for an open U.S. House seat. He lost a Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in 2024. For the past year, Lamb has served as the “law enforcement advisor” for the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform.
- A federal bankruptcy judge has ruled that antigovernment provocateur Ammon Bundy owes St. Luke’s Health System $60.2 million, an increase from the judgment of $52.5 million in the original defamation case. The new figure includes the interest accrued since the original ruling. Following the initial ruling, Bundy fled to Utah from Idaho.
- In October militia groups discussed joining ICE. Longhouse Preparedness shared ICE recruitment posts to its social media on multiple occasions. While no members claimed to have joined ICE, online chats indicated interest but an inability to do so because of personal issues. Members of the Reaper Consultation chat, for example, wrote that they wished they could join part time, while the account Woodland.MM posted that they did not join due to how unstable federal work is depending on the administration.
White nationalist and neo-Nazi movement activity
- Prominent white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes achieved a major milestone with his recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on Oct. 27. Fuentes’ explicit admiration of Adolf Hitler, his antisemitism, accusations of a “cult-like atmosphere” among his fanbase, and his involvement in the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally that brought neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, has left him ostracized in some, though not all, mainstream right-wing circles. Carlson’s podcast has also featured Republican lawmakers, including then-vice-presidential nominee JD Vance. While Carlson’s decision to host Fuentes on his show received significant criticism and pushback, the two-hour-long episode was one of several major appearances by Fuentes on right-wing streaming shows since Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, amid calls among the hard right to blame the left and to advocate for more extreme views and actions.
- Police in Georgia arrested Kenneth Leland Morgan after he was involved in an alleged assault on a Jewish student at the University of Georgia while dressed as a Nazi officer outside a bar in Athens, Georgia, after he was denied entry. Paul Miller, a white supremacist activist who uses the alias “Gypsy Crusader,” shared on his X account his support for Morgan and a link to an online fundraiser on GiveSendGo, a popular site among the far right.
Image at top: Nicholas Fuentes, the notorious white nationalist social media personality, in his streaming studio on Sept. 8, 2025. (Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times/Redux)