The Trump admin is doing everything it can to *bankrupt* the Southern Poverty Law Center

Earlier this week, the Department of Justice announced it secured an indictment by a federal grand jury against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a firm that’s spent over 50 years researching, tracking, and fighting violent hate groups nationwide. The SPLC is best known for bringing lawsuits that have bankrupted white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation, as well as publishing annual Hate and Extremism reports that track organizations like the Proud Boys.The charges seem baseless, accusing the SPLC of “misleading their donors” by paying informants to infiltrate groups to collect intelligence, the same thing the FBI does commonly in their investigations. Legal experts say it’s based on a flimsy premise that abuses the power of the DOJ to go after who it sees as its “enemies”, which is the Trump admin’s entire playbook.But what I wasn’t aware of (until today) was it this isn’t just an attempt to derail the SPLC’s important work temporarily, but it’s a direct…