By Nick Valencia | April 22, 20226

ATLANTA— On Tuesday, President Trump’s Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for secretly running informants inside white supremacist groups. There is one problem with that. It wasn’t a secret.

The Klan has been warning its members about it for decades. It said as much as far back as 1981, when the KKK published a warning to its members that the SPLC had placed people inside their ranks “for the purpose of gathering information.”

So when, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stood before cameras and announced an 11-count federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing the organization of secretly defrauding donors by running a covert paid-informant program inside white supremacist groups, he must not have done his reading.

Strip away the press conference theater and here is what the indictment actually charges.

Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to informants embedded within white supremacist organizations, like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, and others. To protect informant identities, the organization set up bank accounts under fictitious company names. The DOJ alleges wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, because donors were not explicitly told the program existed.

And here is where Blanche’s own indictment turns against him.

Standing at that podium, he claimed the SPLC “was not dismantling these groups” but instead “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose.”

The Fiery Cross from 1981 renders that claim incoherent.

Edited and published by Imperial Wizard Robert M. Shelton, the Fiery Cross was operated out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as the “Official Publication of the United Klans of America.”

In 1981, the paper ran the front-page headline: KLANWATCH, “to warn Klanspeople and our supporters about the purpose of KLANWATCH and the dangers it involves.”

This wasn’t a secret, like acting AG Blanche alleged on Tuesday. This program has been openly talked about for decades.

The KKK’s verdict on the program was that it was “extremely dangerous to American freedom in general.”

Organizations that are not being dismantled do not dedicate their front page to warning members that they are being infiltrated. The Klan was not manufacturing alarm — they were expressing it, in print, under the signature of their own lawyers.

Read that again.

In 1981, the Klan’s own legal staff was so rattled by the SPLC’s informant program that they dedicated their front page to warning members about it. They weren’t confused about what Klanwatch was doing.

That is not what an undetected covert operation looks like. That is what a working one looks like.

The Math Doesn't Add Up

The central word in the government’s case is secretly. The load-bearing wall of the entire legal theory. And the Klan blew it down in 1981.

The Fiery Cross was not an internal memo. It was a publication with a subscription form, bulk rates, and a national mailing list.

John E. Mays, the Klan attorney whose byline appears in the publication’s contributor acknowledgments, was listed as practicing law in Decatur, Alabama. He was not operating in the shadows, but functioning as a public legal officer of the organization, warning members through a widely distributed newsletter that the SPLC had people inside their ranks.

The donors Blanche claims were defrauded? They existed in a world where the Klan’s own lawyers were sounding the alarm about this exact program in a publication available by subscription for six dollars a year.

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An Imperfect Institution

The SPLC is not without its complications, and the reporting record makes that plain.

In 2019, my CNN reporting documented what employees inside the organization described as a “systemic culture of racism and sexism.” Fearing retaliation, then-staffers spoke on background about how an organization built on fighting racial injustice was credibly accused of perpetuating it internally.

The gap between the SPLC’s public mission and its internal conduct deserves continued scrutiny. But legitimate institutional failure and federal criminal fraud are two entirely different categories.

What Blanche announced Tuesday does not survive contact with the historical record—a record that includes the Klan’s own contemporaneous acknowledgment of the program’s existence and effectiveness.

A source based in Alabama with direct knowledge of the SPLC’s internal workings, spoke to Nick Valencia News on background, and was direct.

“It’s ridiculous on its face,” the source said of the indictment. “Infiltrating and undermining extremist groups is a very effective way of dismantling them.”

The political architecture of this indictment is not subtle.

The investigation was reportedly opened, then shut down during the Biden administration, then revived under Trump. The charges were filed in Montgomery, Alabama — the SPLC’s home turf. FBI Director Kash Patel, who severed the bureau’s relationship with the SPLC last year while publicly branding it a “partisan smear machine,” stood at Blanche’s side for the announcement. The SPLC has been among the most consistent institutional critics of this administration’s immigration policy, its racial rhetoric, and its approach to civil rights enforcement.

The pattern is established.

Organizations that have opposed this administration find themselves targeted by a Justice Department whose acting attorney general has publicly stated the president is “closely involved” in its operations.

What About Charlottesville?

There is one allegation in the indictment that demands serious examination and cannot be dismissed. Prosecutors allege that one SPLC informant was part of the leadership group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The event turned deadly when Heather Heyer was killed after a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. The indictment claims the informant helped coordinate transportation to the event.

If accurate, that is a profound moral and operational failure.

What did the SPLC know, and when? What was shared with law enforcement before the rally? Why was that informant still active if their activities extended to facilitating logistics for an event that ended in murder?

A serious investigation would be demanding those answers.

What was announced Tuesday was a fraud case resting on the claim that donors had no knowledge of a program the Klan’s own lawyers were warning their members about in a nationally distributed newsletter in 1981.

This administration has mastered a specific form of political warfare: the headline is the punishment.

A federal indictment announced live, amplified in seconds, stripped of context before it reaches most people—does maximum damage regardless of what happens in court. The trial may never come. An acquittal, if it comes, will be a footnote. The damage is done the moment Blanche steps to the microphone.

The Fiery Cross ran its Klanwatch warning under the motto printed across the top of every issue: “Eternal Vigilance Is The Price of Freedom.” 45 years later, Todd Blanche is counting on no one still being vigilant enough to read it.

Nick Valencia is an independent journalist and founder of Nick Valencia News. He spent nearly 20 years as a CNN correspondent covering race, immigration, and justice across the United States and Latin America. He is a graduate of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and a proud son of Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.

By Nick Valencia | April 20, 2026

ATLANTA, GA— There is a version of 2026 that Democrats appear to have already written in their heads. It is tidy, satisfying, and from what I’ve seen traveling this country for the last eleven months, wrong.

In their version, the backlash to President Donald Trump produces a Blue Wave in the midterms. The win becomes the proof of concept for a durable realignment, particularly with Latino voters, who broke hard for Trump in 2024. In this telling, 2026 is when they “come home.” They will. Just not for the reasons Democrats think.

For Democrats, November is when they win and things go Left. The Sun Belt softens, the party consolidates its gains, and Capital D Democrats are back, baby — just in time to ride a near-perfect midterm performance into 2028 with momentum and a mandate.

Parts of this are true. The wave is coming. But it won’t be about ideology. The swing votes will be less about immigration and more about Epstein and the economy. The biggest vote-getters will be people who buck political norms, wear cowboy boots, and believe in Jesus Christ — but don’t use Him to justify an immigration policy that is unlawful at best and immoral at worst.

It will be about popularity over politics, where voters would rather give a household name a chance — someone familiar — than an established politician. Because for a lot of Americans, politicians really are all the same.

I’ve been in these communities where the change is happening before our eyes.

A “Let’s Go Brandon” flag was taken down by a Latino family in Delano, California. The man who put it up loved that flag — it loomed large over the block. But the broken promise from Trump to immediately release the Epstein files mattered more. When the administration started dragging its feet on their release in late summer 2025, he had seen enough. Down came the flag.

For others, the about-face was more of a slow burn. Like people who voted for him not twice but three times — Trump 2016, Trump 2020, Trump 2024. My friend Jacob in Harlingen was so inspired by Trump that he voted for the first time ever. Now he feels like it was all embellished or fabricated. What began with posts like “That’s my President” turned into something harder.

“Fuck that fool.”

They have had enough.

All it took for Florida Republican Brandon Garrison was for Trump’s immigration enforcement to target his newlywed wife. Garrison now believes he made a terrible mistake voting for Trump — like many others who were told the administration would only go after “the worst of the worst.” Today, Garrison sits and waits for news on his wife Gabriela, hoping that a legal win on her behalf won’t be appealed by ICE and that she will finally be released. She has been held in ICE custody since October 2025.

As I am writing this, Garrison texted to tell me, “I know it’s late. But wanted you to know Gaby’s been released!”

After what they’ve been through, he tells me he won’t ever vote Republican again.

From the flagpole to the “fuck that fool,” Democrats will clean up in 2026. But let me be clear before the confetti falls: the voters Democrats are about to win aren’t converts. They’re auditors.

The Map Looks Good. Look Closer.

I was on the phone recently with a congressional staffer in a heavily Latino, historically Republican district in California — a place that, when we spoke, had just elected its first Democratic mayor in forty years.

The staffer was excited. Understandably. The numbers tell a good story. Just not the whole story.

Here is what I’ve actually seen over the last eleven months on the ground: things are bad enough that Latino voters who pulled the lever for Trump in 2024 are willing to give a Democrat a chance.

Note the precision of that sentence. Willing to give a chance.

That is not the same as switching parties. That is not ideological conversion. That is a provisional transaction — and the terms are stricter than Democrats seem to understand.

These are not voters who have suddenly decided they are Democrats with a capital D. Many of them are still conservative. Latino communities are culturally conservative in ways that coastal Democratic politics continues to underestimate, misread, and condescend to. The Reagan-era amnesty reshuffled California’s Latino electorate a generation ago. But those voters’ children and grandchildren don’t navigate their politics through that history. They are so generationally woven into the fabric of this country that they don’t see themselves the way others see them. They are not immigrants or migrants in their own minds. They are Americans — making choices, not loyalty payments.

Whatever else you want to say about him, Trump understood that people are exhausted by the politician. The performance of representation without the texture of it. Which brings me to South Texas and Grammy-nominated Tejano singer Bobby Pulido — another man who has motivated people by convincing them he is not a politician. That, along with his music fame and household name, will help him win. And that win will have been secured in no small part by voters who went for Trump in 2024 and who will vote for Pulido in 2026.

Those votes will feel more forced than inspired.

Pulido’s opponent, Monica de la Cruz, is losing some of those same voters — not because she’s too conservative, but because they read her as a puppet.

They’re voting for Pulido in large part because he had a hit song in the 90s that echoed across dance halls and quinceañeras. Also, he’s handsome, doesn’t own health insurance because it’s “too expensive,” and most importantly feels like one of them.

That’s the tell. Ideology is almost secondary to the authenticity test. And Democrats, institutionally, are failing that test even as they prepare to benefit from it.

The Window Is Narrower Than the Votes Will Suggest

I have friends from Eagle Rock, Northeast LA, the 34th District. Some of them voted for Trump. Some of them regret it — viscerally, personally — because people they know, family members, have been caught up in Trump’s aggressive immigration raids.

The anger is real. And yes, some of those votes are coming back to Democratic candidates. But as Democrats prepare to ride this wave, the question isn’t whether they’ll take those votes. It’s whether they’ll take them for granted — again.

Democrats are going to win seats in November by being the alternative to something genuinely terrible. That is a legitimate electoral strategy. It is not a governing mandate and it is not a durable realignment. The voters showing up are doing so because they are angry, scared, and out of other options in the short term — not because the Democratic Party has persuaded them of anything.

The party has a window. It will be narrower than the vote totals suggest. And the voters in that window are not patient, not particularly partisan, and even before a single midterm ballot is cast are already watching to see if they’re being played.

The blue wave is real. But a wave doesn't care who it drowns. Votes in 2026 don’t mean loyalty in 2028.

IZALCO, EL SALVADOR— A U.S. citizen has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in El Salvador after being convicted of a crime his attorney says is impossible for him t…

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By Nick Valencia | April 10, 2026

MEXICO CITY— I didn’t expect to feel like this here.

For years, in the U.S. I’ve lived in the in-between and carried the weight …

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ATLANTA, GEORGIA— It showed up quietly. Not at a campaign stop, or in a speech. Instead on Thursday morning, this message came in an ad that slipped discreetly into the YouTube feeds across Georgia.

Sitting Georgia Representative Buddy Carter, who running for U.S. Senate, made a new kind of argument: pause all legal immigration until every undocumented immigrant is deported.

That’s the line and it tells you everything about where this race is heading.

Last night in Chatham County, candidates in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary gathered in Savannah. Both Carter and top primary opponent Republican Rep. Mike Collins made their pitch to people in person much the same way. They each talked about support from President Donald Trump, and how that translated into success in their own districts. Despite Georgia not being a border state, they also talked at length about immigration.

The candidates aren’t debating whether to enforce immigration law. Instead they’re competing over how far to take it. Apparently to add something provocative to his showing on Wednesday night, the next morning Carter took it one step further. The polling in the race might be the reason why.

Collins has been leading the polls at around 30%, ahead of a May primary that will decide who faces off against incumbent Sen. John Osoff. Carter sits behind him Collins, somewhere between 10% and 20%, with Derek Dooley, who is backed by Governor Brian Kemp, rounding out the top tier.

It’s not a runaway race. It’s a squeeze. And in a crowded field, squeezing often leads to escalation. Carter’s proposal fits that pattern because it doesn’t just harden enforcement, it redefines the terms of the debate.

When Legal Immigration Becomes Conditional

For years, the political dividing line was clear: Illegal immigration vs. legal immigration. Under his framing, Carter collapses that distinction. Legal immigration doesn’t stand on its own anymore. It becomes conditional—something that can be paused, turned off, or withheld until enforcement goals are met. We’ve already seen President Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship.

What Carter proposes is a different model entirely. It ties students, workers, and families navigating the legal system to the outcome of deportation policy. It turns immigration into a single lever of “on or off.” Even more, it’s a test of how far the base is willing to go and whether escalation is rewarded on the national stage.

Once legal immigration is on the table and becomes negotiable or conditional, then the question isn’t just about what happens next in this U.S. senate race. It’s about what the system becomes and what the nation starts to look like if people like Rep. Carter have it their way.

By Nick Valencia | April 1, 2026

CHICAGO— The test was simple. Two of the most widel…

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