The SPLC spent 50 years calling your neighbors racists – and allegedly paid actual racists to keep it going.
Now Florida wants the receipts.
And what's in those documents could end the whole operation.
Uthmeier Drops the Subpoena
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a civil investigative subpoena to the SPLC last week under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The SPLC has until May 25 to hand over documents dating back to 2014 – internal communications, financial records, and marketing materials showing how it raises money from Florida donors.
Uthmeier didn't bury the lead.
"The SPLC raises millions in charitable donations every year, while allegedly paying members and leaders within the very groups it purports to fight," he said. "SPLC appears to be running a deceptive organization that pays informants to manufacture racism on its behalf."
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2051378905358180403?s=20
The subpoena targets everything – how the SPLC pitches donors, what it tells them the money is for, and whether it disclosed that some of those funds went to paid informants inside extremist groups.
Investigators also want communications related to the SPLC's "hate map" – the political blacklist that put Moms for Liberty, the Family Research Council, and Turning Point USA alongside neo-Nazis.
This Isn't New – And That's the Point
The SPLC has been running this play for decades, and the money tells you everything.
The organization held $738 million in endowment funds as of its most recent IRS filing – for an operation that claims it fights poverty and hate.
It keeps a significant chunk of that in offshore Cayman Islands accounts, a fact that caused internal turmoil long before the federal indictment.
Co-founder Morris Dees was fired in 2019 amid allegations of sexual harassment and racial discrimination from the organization's own Black employees.
Two dozen staff members signed a letter accusing SPLC leadership of being complicit in "mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism."
Floyd Lee Corkins understood the fundraising model better than anyone.
In 2012, he walked into the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. with a gun and a bag of Chick-fil-A sandwiches, intending to kill everyone inside and stuff a sandwich in their mouths.
He told FBI agents afterward that he chose his target using the SPLC's hate map.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2051401828772819151?s=20
The SPLC left the FRC on the map after the shooting.
The DOJ Already Moved – Now Florida Is Closing the Trap
Uthmeier's subpoena doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The DOJ indicted the SPLC in April on federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering – alleging the organization used shell companies and prepaid debit cards to funnel more than $3 million to paid informants inside the KKK and the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it exactly what it was: the SPLC was not fighting hate, it was "manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose."
Florida is now hitting the fundraising apparatus from a different angle.
Federal prosecutors can charge the organization criminally.
Florida can expose what donors were actually told – and whether any of it was true.
The SPLC raised millions from Florida residents by telling them it was fighting white supremacy.
Uthmeier wants to know if it was quietly writing checks to white supremacists at the same time.
The Hate Map Always Had One Real Purpose
The SPLC didn't build its hate map to protect anyone.
It built it to generate donor outrage – and to give the left a weapon, a list they could hand to corporations, banks, and social media companies as justification for cutting off conservative organizations.
Amazon used it to screen charities from its AmazonSmile donation program.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2051432951590617341?s=20
Mastercard used it to pressure payment processors into dropping conservative groups.
The FBI's Richmond field office used SPLC research in an internal memo to flag people who attend the Latin Mass as potential domestic terrorism threats.
Every one of those institutions trusted the SPLC because it had spent 50 years positioning itself as a neutral civil rights authority.
Florida's subpoena is going straight at that reputation.
James Uthmeier is making sure the people who wrote those checks find out exactly what they funded.
And once those documents hit the Consumer Protection Division in Fort Lauderdale, the SPLC's fundraising machine – the one that built a $738 million empire on manufactured outrage – is done.
Sources:
- Kennedy Owens, "Attorney General James Uthmeier launches probe into SPLC, alleges deceptive donor practices," Florida Voice News, May 4, 2026.
- Tyler O'Neil, "Why Does a Civil Rights Nonprofit Have Millions in Offshore Accounts?" The Daily Signal, July 9, 2025.
- Andrew Kerr, "SPLC's Offshore Assets Ballooned as Embattled Left-Wing Darling Secretly Funded KKK," Washington Free Beacon, April 2026.
- Michael Kunzelman, "Southern Poverty Law Center fires co-founder Morris Dees," Associated Press, March 14, 2019.
- Katie Pavlich, "FBI Used SPLC's Targeting of Traditional Latin Mass Catholics as Basis for Domestic Terrorism Probe," Townhall, February 9, 2023.
