Nearly every year, the Southern Poverty Law Center adds another mainstream conservative organization to its notorious “Hate Map,” and this year, it was Turning Point USA’s turn.
Turning Point USA was listed as an “antigovernment extremist group” in the annual report released Friday by the center, a left-wing mainstay known for its feverish fundraising appeals and lavish headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.
“Turning Point USA’s effort to sow fear and division to enforce social hierarchies rooted in supremacism is emblematic of the hard right’s broader political project to destroy our foundational democratic principles and institutions,” said the report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024.”
Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, was unfazed by the decision to include his organization, calling it a “badge of honor.”
“It’s 2025, and nobody with a functioning brain buys their garbage anymore,” said Mr. Kirk on X. “The SPLC is a laughingstock, a hollowed-out husk of an organization that’s been exposed as a grift time and time again. They’re not just irrelevant — they’re a cautionary tale of how to torch your own credibility.”
Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded in 2012, is known for promoting free-market and limited-government principles through its network on high school and college campuses. The group’s political arm, Turning Point Action, worked in the 2024 election to increase voter turnout for President Trump.
Billionaire Elon Musk was also critical of the SPLC’s targeting of Mr. Kirk’s organization, saying on X that the “SPLC is a scam organization.”
The SPLC has added Turning Point to their ridiculous “hate group” list, right next to the KKK and neo-Nazis, a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades. They somehow still rake in over $100 million a year peddling their “hate map”…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 25, 2025
The SPLC has been plagued by scandal since at least 2019, when founder Morris Dees was abruptly fired amid “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism,” as described in a letter signed by two dozen employees.
Margaret Huang, president and CEO of SPLC, was hired amid a major leadership overhaul in 2020, but the organization has continued to struggle. In August, SPLC union members passed a no-confidence vote after the center announced it would lay off an estimated 80 staff members.
The union said the layoffs, which represented about 25% of the staff, were the result of a $13 million budget deficit, according to the Alabama Reflector.
Conservatives have long decried the center’s “hate map,” accusing the center of seeking to smear reputable right-of-center organizations by listing them alongside racist fringe outfits like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Freedom Network.
In recent years, the center has added Moms for Liberty, Do No Harm, Gays Against Groomers and Parents Defending Education to its lineup, which also includes the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and the Pacific Justice Institute.
Another recent addition is PragerU, the media outlet founded by radio host and author Dennis Prager, which specializes in short educational videos for children and adults that espouse conservative economic and social values.
A PragerU spokesperson said she wasn’t sure when the nonprofit was added to the “hate map,” but that nobody from the SPLC contacted the organization beforehand.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center is labeling @prageru and @DennisPrager — one of the most influential Jewish thinkers in the world — a ‘white supremacist,’” said PragerU spokesperson Marissa Streit in a statement. “That tells you everything you need to know about the SPLC. They are a hate group pretending to be an anti-hate organization.”
Even so, the center remains influential on the left. In 2023, House Republicans launched an investigation into the center’s sway after visitor logs showed that SPLC officials met with White House officials at least 11 times during the Biden administration.
The SPLC hate map was accused of inspiring the 2012 attack on the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., which saw a gunman shoot and injure a security guard. The shooter, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, said he found the FRC listed on the map as an anti-LGBTQ group.
In its latest report, the SPLC said there were 1,371 “hate and antigovernment extremist groups” in 2024, a 5% reduction from the previous year, which the center attributed to their move from activism to government.
“After years of courting politicians and chasing power, hard-right groups are now fully infiltrating our politics and enacting their dangerous ideology into law,” said Ms. Huang in a statement. “Extremists at all levels of government are using cruelty, chaos and constant attacks on communities and our democracy to make us feel powerless. We cannot surrender to fear.”
The report included a section devoted to efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs, calling the campaign “ground zero for hard-right mobilizations to whitewash American society and protect white supremacy.”
“DEI initiatives aim to address systemic disparities and promote inclusivity in an equitable manner,” the center said, but they are “frequently mischaracterized as stand-ins for racial quotas, affirmative action, or a form of ‘reverse racism’ that harms white people.”
One of the biggest stories of 2024 was the anti-Israel outcry on college campuses following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and others, but the center’s latest report failed to cite groups linked to the surge in campus antisemitism.
For example, National Students for Justice in Palestine released a template for an Oct. 12, 2023, “Day of Resistance” that included a Hamas paraglider. The template was used by multiple university chapters.
Only 14 of the 1,371 listings on the latest “hate map” are tagged as “antisemitism.” They include several Nation of Islam chapters, but none of them is known to have been active in the campus protests.
