The World and Everything in It: June 10, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning, I’m Hunter Baker.

Every week on Washington Wednesday we try to look past the headlines and ask what’s really driving the story. Sometimes the answer is politics, but most of the time it’s culture, worldview, and what you believe about God and the Bible. Often it’s a mix of all of the above. 

And that’s what makes WORLD so different. 

At a time when so much news coverage stops at what happened, WORLD keeps asking why it happened—and what it means.

If that kind of journalism matters to you, I hope you'll support WORLD during this June Giving Drive: WNG.org/donate.

I’ll be back in less than 10 minutes … lots to talk about.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Washington Wednesday: a political newcomer more than survives. Graham Platner energizes Democrats.

GRAHAM PLATNER: Oh, boy. Well, thank you, Maine!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hunter Baker is standing by with analysis on last night’s key races.

Also today, WORLD Tour: Peru picks yet another president, the ninth in 10 years.

And later, blueberry farmers face a tough growing season.

JASON DRIPPS: I probably lost half of my crop just because of that one night.

And the Southern Poverty Law Center ducks questions on Capitol Hill.

BROWN: It’s Wednesday, June 10th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. strikes Iran after Apache incident » The U.S. military struck several sites in Iran Tuesday, pursuing targets like air defense systems and radar installations. The defensive airstrikes were in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz.

A U.S. official says the helicopter collided with an Iranian drone and it’s not clear if the collision was intentional. But President Trump blamed the crash on Iran and said the U.S. must respond.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson…

JOHNSON: We lament that that has become necessary. And the reason it did, as you all know, is because Iran struck U.S. assets and personnel.

Johnson says he was notified of the strikes ahead of time… and spent several hours Tuesday in The Situation Room with the president and his team.

In a military first, an unmanned drone boat rescued the two American aviators who’d been operating the downed aircraft. President Trump says both service members are safe and uninjured.

Iran has vowed to respond to the American airstrikes, putting further stress on the fragile ceasefire that’s been in place for two months.

House passes ICE & CBP funding » On Capitol Hill…

AUDIO: On this vote, the yeas are 214. The nays are 212. The bill is passed.

Legislation providing $70 billion dollars to fund Immigration & Customs Enforcement, ICE, and Customs & Border Protection, CBP, is headed to President Trump’s desk. After the Senate passed the bill last week, the House -as you just heard- narrowly followed suit Tuesday.

Democrats objected to funding ICE and CBP without changes in immigration enforcement tactics… resulting in a lengthy partial government shutdown. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries continued to rail against the bill Tuesday.

JEFFRIES: Immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, it should be just, and it should be humane. That’s not what is going on right now as it relates to Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine.

Republicans ended up moving the funding into a reconciliation bill… which only needs a simple majority to pass, rather than the typical 60-vote Senate threshold.

But even that got delayed after bipartisan concerns over the creation of a fund meant to compensate people who thought the government had been weaponized against them. The White House dropped the idea for that fund last week.

Trump sticks with Pulte amid FISA reauthorization fight » President Trump is doubling down on his pick of Bill Pulte to serve as acting Director of National Intelligence… even as Democrats threaten to hold up a key national security measure over the move.

Trump says Pulte will take over as acting DNI on June 19th. Democrats say Pulte has no national security experience, and is only ascending to the role because he’s a Trump ally.

They say they won’t reauthorize Section 702 of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, until Pulte is withdrawn. Democratic California Congressman Pete Aguilar…

AGUILAR: Look, pull back Bill Pulte… and then nominate someone who actually has national security or defense background.

Section 702 of FISA expires this week. It allows U.S. intelligence to collect communications from foreign targets without a warrant.

Pulte’s appointment is only temporary, and House Speaker Mike Johnson says the president is getting close to naming a nominee to permanently lead the office of national intelligence.

Hilton makes California governor general election, Platner wins Maine primary » Republican Steve Hilton has advanced to face Democrat Xavier Becerra in November’s election for California governor.

After a week of counting mail-in ballots… several news organizations on Tuesday projected Hilton, a former Fox News host, as the second-place vote-getter in last week’s primary. He beat out billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer for the right to face Becerra, who had the most primary votes.

A few states held fresh primary elections last night, including Maine… where the controversial Graham Platner won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Platner, who’s facing a slew of accusations ranging from violent to lewd behavior, wasted no time addressing his supporters.

PLATNER: Now the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for… that one headline, that one moment in my life, that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all… This is a movement about us. 

He’ll try to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the fall.

Voters in Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina also headed to the polls Tuesday.

Karmelo Anthony guilty verdict » Near Dallas, Texas… a jury has convicted a teenager of murder and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for killing a fellow athlete at a track meet last year.

Karmelo Anthony is now 19. He stabbed Austin Metcalf, a competitor from a rival team, to death… after an altercation over Anthony’s refusal to leave a tent that belonged to Metcalf’s team. Witnesses say Anthony provoked Metcalf, Metcalf shoved Anthony, and Anthony then stabbed Metcalf in the chest.

The case created a firestorm as social media posts amplified the killing in racial terms. Anthony is Black, Metcalf was white. Tempers were running high Tuesday as protesters on both sides confronted one another outside the courthouse.

SOUND: [Protesters clash]

Lawyers on both sides told the jury the tragedy had nothing to do with race.

Anthony’s lawyers claimed self defense, but the jury rejected that.

Hegseth to visit troops in Cuba » Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth is traveling to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba today. And, as WORLD’s Travis Kircher reports, his visit could signal more significant action ahead.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: The U.S. already has an oil blockade in effect against Cuba… and President Trump has threatened to oust the country’s communist leaders by force, similar to the U.S. military’s removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro earlier this year.

The U.S. recently indicted former Cuban leader Raul Castro on federal charges.

President Trump has repeatedly said Cuba is next on his foreign policy agenda after the conflict in Iran comes to a close.

In addition to visiting U.S. troops in Cuba today, Hegseth is also visiting service members at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Florida.

For WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

And I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is here for Washington Wednesday. And later, leadership of the Southern Poverty Law Center… testifying before Congress as the organization faces federal charges.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 10th of June.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up: The Democratic Party just made a very consequential bet.

Democrats in Maine have nominated Graham Platner for the U.S. Senate … despite weeks of controversy surrounding the candidate and open anxiety from parts of the party establishment.

Platner now advances to face Republican Susan Collins in a race that could help determine control of the U.S. Senate. The question is whether Democrats have nominated their strategically strongest candidate—or simply the one who excited voters the most.

BROWN: It’s Washington Wednesday and political scientist Hunter Baker joins us now … Good morning Hunter.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

BROWN: This was no normal primary. Platner spent the closing weeks answering questions about his personal conduct, past comments, and other controversies. Yet Democratic voters seem to have stuck with him anyway. That’s the kind of devotion President Trump has inspired. Did Democrats just decide the stakes are high enough that none of the background stuff mattered?

BAKER: I think that what has really happened is that if we were to go back to the 1970s and look at a plot of all the votes by all of the senators, Republican and Democrat, we would have seen a lot of overlap, right?

We would have seen Republicans who were voting more in the center, or even sometimes on the left. We would have seen Democrats who voted in the center, or sometimes on the right—a very unpredictable maze of different votes by members of both parties.

That is absolutely not the case, and it hasn't been the case for quite a while now. Nowadays, you're going to see Republicans voting almost exclusively on the right. You're going to see Democrats voting almost exclusively on the left.

People are going to be frustrated by me saying this, but understand that I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive. I am describing reality. I am not prescribing reality.

The descriptive reality is that voters look at a situation like this, and they're not going to vote for the Republican just because they think they're a better person. They're not necessarily going to vote for somebody on the left because they think they're a better person. They're going to vote to try to fulfill their own policy agenda. They're not going to punish themselves by enabling the other side, even when you have an unfortunate choice, such as Graham Plattner.

He has a much better chance than I think people realize. But let me say this: Susan Collins has been an outlier. She has been the Republican to hang on statewide in the Northeast. She has hung on to that seat for a long time, including in 2020, which would have been a tough time. I think she trailed in the polls and still won.

She's going to give Graham Platner quite a fight.

EICHER: Hunter, listen. My takeaway from Maine, seriously, beyond just the pure weirdness of this candidate, Graham Plattner, is his issue set.

He doesn't just have a Nazi tattoo, he has National Socialist positions on issues you cannot distinguish him from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or AOC. It's full-strength socialism, is it not?

BAKER: That is the direction where a lot of Democrats are going these days.

I can remember when the Cold War ended. At that time we had the New Democrats. They were going away from the left. They were running toward the center.

Bill Clinton—as improbable as this may seem to people—was trying to reach the NASCAR demographic. That's who he wanted to vote for him, and he was pretty successful at that.

But now the opportunity seems to be on the left, and it really depresses me.

There's a really interesting story that illustrates this. They asked people in England where they thought they fell in terms of lifestyle and per-capita GDP relative to the American states. People in England said probably about as high as the seventh-best American state.

In actuality, English GDP is lower than all of the American states—lower than Mississippi, lower than Louisiana.

The American economic model works pretty well, especially over against the European model. If we looked at overall productivity and what it was 30 years ago versus what it is now, that difference would be very striking.

But Americans just seem not to realize this, at least not in the big cities. They seem to think that socialism is some kind of elixir, and I really feel that economically it's been very badly undermined.

EICHER: Hunter, let's move to South Carolina.

Republicans there delivered another reminder last night that President Trump's endorsement still carries enormous weight. Senator Lindsey Graham easily cleared the field and avoided a runoff, despite a challenge from conservatives who had argued he was not sufficiently aligned with the MAGA movement.

At the same time, Trump's preferred candidate for governor—Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette—advanced to a runoff rather than winning outright, suggesting that even in a state that Trump dominates, his endorsement isn't always enough to settle a race.

What do you take away from South Carolina Republicans last night?

BAKER: First of all, those of us old enough to remember the Cold War would talk about who's going to survive a nuclear bomb, and the answer was cockroaches.

I'm going to tell you: it's cockroaches and it's Lindsey Graham.

Lindsey Graham is a survivor. He went up hard against Trump in the 2015–2016 period.

EICHER: You mean this as a compliment, right?

BAKER: Tough, right? Yes, he's tough, and he knows what he's doing.

I'm in the same state as Lindsey Graham. I'm in South Carolina. I've had plenty of opportunity to observe him.

He does not just go off to Washington, D.C., and forget about South Carolina. He's around when we have the big pro-life dinners. Lindsey Graham is there, and he makes himself known at those events.

He regularly holds events with pastors. I don't know how religious a guy Lindsey Graham is, but he is in touch with the people in the churches. He is not letting anybody get to his right.

I'm not surprised that he has survived and thrived and is very close with Trump. I think those two respect each other.

With regard to Pam Evette, she was the lieutenant governor of the state. She was also, I think, one of the first American politicians—not only in South Carolina but in America, period—to endorse Donald Trump back around 2015–2016.

Trump came in with a very late endorsement, almost as late as it gets, but it seems to have carried her over the finish line to get into that runoff.

BROWN: Well, Hunter, we can't let you go without talking about California. The waiting may finally be over.

A week after Election Day, enough ballots have been counted to confirm the state's governor's race will feature Democrat Xavier Becerra against Republican Steve Hilton this fall. But one of the more unusual stories came in Los Angeles, where reality-TV personality Spencer Pratt briefly appeared positioned to make the mayoral runoff before late-counted ballots pushed him out of contention. The slow count has once again become part of the political story in California.

Hunter, what stands out to you: the Becerra-Hilton matchup, the Spencer Pratt phenomenon, or the fact that California still takes days—and sometimes weeks—to settle major races?

BAKER: First thing I would say is I'm really sorry not to see Spencer Pratt make that runoff.

I'm not familiar with the reality show for which he is famous. I just know that there was one. But I listened to him in this campaign, and what I heard was somebody voters should have listened to.

We're talking about the city of Los Angeles. Foreign policy doesn't matter that much. The big ideological points are not really what matters in a city race.

I can't remember who used to say it, but the old line is that there's no Republican or Democrat way to take out the garbage.

In Los Angeles, what we saw was this question of the fire departments. Spencer Pratt famously ran because his house burned down, and he was addressing those kinds of issues.

He was saying, "Look, the parks need to be clean. We need not to have needles all over the place. We need not to have threatening, potentially mentally deranged homeless people wandering all over the city. When we have fires, they need to be put out. We need to make sure that we have water that can be accessed to put out the fires."

I thought that was going to be a very effective message. I think it was. He did well.

That takes us to this question of these long, drawn-out vote counts.

Look, I haven't done an empirical study, and I don't know what the postmortem will really be, but I think that the California way of counting votes is intolerable.

Basically, you have this system where anybody can have a mail-in ballot, and they can present it at virtually any time. They don't even have to have it postdated. They can date it themselves.

Of course, they have ballot harvesting, where essentially you have motivated activists who can go to any neighborhood where they think they might have an advantage in terms of the voting population and collect everybody's ballots and submit those ballots for them.

I think there's very little integrity to this voting process. Whether it works or not, it is custom-built to make people suspicious and angry.

I think we're going to hear more about that as time goes on.

EICHER: Political scientist Hunter Baker. He is provost at North Greenville University.

Hunter, great conversation. Thanks. See you next week.

BAKER: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

This week in Peru, votes are being counted to find out Peruvians’ ninth president in ten years.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Two candidates competed in the runoff election… both promising solutions to violence and poverty in the country.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: Over the past year, gangs have been killing Peruvian transportation workers who refuse to pay for ‘protection.’

SOUND: [Peru protest]

Last fall, those workers held strikes and protests that ended in police violence and Congress impeaching their second president of that year.

They held elections last weekend to determine a replacement, but it’s coming down to just a few percentage points, so counting the votes could take anywhere from a few days to a month.

ROBERTO SANCHEZ: [Spanish] We're almost there, we're almost there -- to achieve a resounding social majority that will restore faith in our Peru, restore faith in our homeland, and restore our sense of Peruvian identity. We must put a stop to corruption

That’s candidate Roberto Sanchez telling supporters after the vote that they’re close to securing a majority that will restore faith in the country and end corruption.

He’s with the Together for Peru party—a liberal party that promotes socialist policies. One of the biggest issues for Peruvians is stopping violent crime, Sanchez’s solution involves joint police and military operations.

KEIKO FUJIMORI: [Spanish] The first thing we’re going to do is restore order… we’ll stand our ground to defeat crime.

The other candidate is Keiko Fujimori. She has her own security proposals, saying the first thing she’ll do is restore order and defeat crime. She’s the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. He served from 1990 to 2000 and then spent 16 years in prison for crimes against humanity.

FUJIMORI: [Spanish] We will also amend the criminal code so that the impunity we currently face is over, but also so that inmates have to work for their food.

She wants harsher punishments, and prisoners to work for their food. Her father used the same tactics.

But no matter who wins, the real challenge will be staying in office.

CYNTHIA MCCLINTOCK: Impeachment is very easy in Peru—impeachment as the firing or removal of the president.

George Washington University’s Cynthia McClintock.

MCCLINTOCK: The only ground is a very vague one of, quote, “permanent moral incapacity.”

McClintock says Peruvian politicians frequently resort to lawfare to get what they want in Congress. Meaning often the President is guilty or complicit in some sort of corruption, but everyone else is too, and Congress decides when it’s no longer acceptable

The President’s term is supposed to be five years long, but over the past ten years, no President has lasted longer than two.

She says the short tenures exacerbate violence.

MCCLINTOCK: When the presidents have short terms, the new president brings in a new team. And that new team will often include new people, you know, at the interior ministry, which is primarily responsible for the, for the crime problem.

Meanwhile, on the international stage, China is increasing its investments in the country. Particularly, the Chancay Port. That’s a deep-water port north of Peru’s capital.

China has invested over a billion dollars into it and hails it as the “gateway” between China and South America.

MCCLINTOCK: The port is going to increase their trade with Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, that it's going to put Peru on the map as the site for which trade from other Latin American countries, trade from Brazil gets to China.

Peru is also a major exporter of copper, controlling 10% of the world’s supply.

Those two factors mean Washington wants the winner to work with them. But McClintock says Peruvian voters are much more concerned about the country’s violence than geopolitics. She was in Peru in November and says upper-class neighborhoods in cities are generally safe, but lower-income Peruvians are feeling the brunt of unstable politics.

MCCLINTOCK: My sense is that everybody walking in those neighborhoods nowadays feels very safe. So it can be done, but it does take resources, it takes coordination among these different police groups.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Authorities in Australia say they've made the biggest seizure of exotic invertebrates in the history of the country.

Officials confiscated from a breeder more than 100,000 live cockroaches.

Not the ordinary household variety.

These were Madagascar hissing cockroaches—and here you thought cockroaches couldn’t get any worse.

These dudes are big and they’re commonly used for reptile food.

Authorities valued them at $2 Aussie dollars each: works out to about $140,000 U.S.

But they’re illegal to import, keep, breed, or sell in Australia.

Officials say the roaches will be euthanized.

No word on how, but I suspect Roach Motels, remember those old ads?

AUDIO: Roaches check in but they don't check out!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 10th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Blueberries. They’re one of Americans’ top ten most-preferred fruit. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we Americans consume about a pound and half of blueberries per person each year. Which seems way too low … impossible to believe but true … we checked it out. 

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I'm a blueberry outlier. If it’s a day ending with “Y” it’s yogurt & blueberries for breakfast. But here’s some alarming news. Some of those who grow blueberries are having a tough year. Here’s WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON: Jason Dripps owns First Fruits Farm in Summit, Mississippi.

JASON DRIPPS: You see that stamen inside there, or pistil, I'm not sure which one it is. But that's the little baby berry form right there inside that little cup . . .

He mainly grows blueberries and blackberries. In March, Jason took a homeschool group through his rows of blueberry bushes.

JASON: Couple weeks, we'll see the actual berries setting and forming on there.

CHILD: Are the birds a problem to your berries?

JASON: Well, I have so many berries, it doesn't matter. I'm willing to share.

Jason has berries to spare because he has so many bushes. 14,000 bushes to be exact. In a good year, they produce 150,000 pounds of blueberries. And although he’s willing to share, Jason is a little concerned about the season ahead.

JASON: Monday night it got down to 26 here, and I probably lost half of my crop just because of that one night, but you see all the little brown flowers, they killed them, and as we walk through there, you'll see the little cups there falling off.

Jason and his wife, Alma, run the 76-acre farm. Blueberry bushes take up 16 of those acres. First Fruits Farm is a beautiful place with wide open fields and wildflowers. But it’s also a business.

JASON: All right, we'll walk up to the harvester, and I'll show you all how it works.

The harvester is an impressive machine. It’s huge, and it combines mechanical shaking with a type of conveyor collection. The goal is to gather berries with minimal damage.

SOUND: [MACHINE CRANKING]

Jason uses it in the commercial side of their operation. They also open the farm to customers who pick for themselves.

RHONDA LOVE: There's a batch of blueberries, and you just take your hand and pull them off . . .

And 10 weeks later, that’s what Rhonda Love is doing—taking advantage of the U-Pick opportunity. It’s June now, and thunder is rumbling in the distance as she works to fill her pail. The berries are midnight blue, the size of a marble. Sweet and juicy.

LOVE: Usually they're in, see, like this, the groups. Some end up on the ground. [Thunder.] Girl, me and you may go together out here . . .

But picking is limited. That cold spurt turned 2026 into a bad year for First Fruits Farm.

ALMA DRIPPS: There's nothing you can do. It's at the mercy of the Lord in the weather, so that's what happened.

Alma Dripps remembers their high hopes.

ALMA: We got on the golf cart that Sunday after church, rode through the field, took pictures, more blooms than we had had in many years.

Then it froze that night.

JASON: It's about as bad as it can get. As far as the blueberry crop, we're not picking anything commercially.

ALMA: We have over a hundred rows, and there's about six rows. That's really what people are picking on . . .

So the harvester won’t be running. It’s about a $50,000 loss.

Other blueberry farmers in the region are hurting, too. It’s been a wet spring. Even birds can be a threat.

JASON: One farmer I know told me that he estimated he lost around 100,000 pounds due to migratory birds that came in and just were decimating his crop.

Blueberries are a volatile business, and foreign competition has made it more difficult.

JASON: When we first bought the farm in 2015, we were pretty much able to go all frozen berries, which meant it was a lot easier to pick . .

But demand changed, and growers realized frozen berries aren’t consumers’ top pick.

JASON: Chile, Peru, Brazil, Mexico started producing fresh berries in our off season.

The family used to belong to a growers cooperative, 200 members strong. Then it got down to six farmers. Now it’s disbanded.

ALMA: Only way you can really make any money is to sell fresh, and it's a lot easier to sell for frozen because they're not as sensitive, but when you sell for fresh, the berry has to be—what did you say, have a life of?

JASON: The grocery stores like a four- to five-week shelf life on the berries.

So now they sell fresh berries, but not this year. Well, not commercially.

It’s a good thing that for the Dripps, farming is a side business. They’re not subsidized by the government. They don’t have crop insurance.

But they’re ok with the loss. And all the work that went into it. Even the constant mowing.

JASON: It gives me time to put my earbuds in, and I'll listen to John MacArthur sermons for four or five hours at a time.

Like many family farms, the Dripps have dabbled in agritourism. The farm has hosted a wedding and had a pumpkin patch. An old pump house-turned-airbnb on the property brings in guests from all over the globe.

ALMA: We've had people from Spain, South Africa, France, Scotland, England, and then all over the U.S. They love the idea of staying on the farm. We use that as an opportunity to share the gospel, if we meet the people. I have a lot of Bible verse things in there . . .

So they take the bad blueberry years in stride.

JASON: The farmer's motto, I tell everybody, is next year. We always look forward to next year.

For customers like Rhonda Love, this year’s berries, the ones that survived the freeze, are perfect.

LOVE: I may make a blueberry cobbler this evening. That sounds good.

ALMA: Right now we're bagging up her treasure. She did all the work . . . She picked her two gallons. There you go. Very good.

LOVE: Thank you so much. I had a good time.

And like most of the farm’s blueberry customers, Rhonda plans to come back next year.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Summit, Mississippi.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The Southern Poverty Law Center built its reputation exposing hate groups and extremists. Now a federal grand jury has accused the organization of something very different.

EICHER: A superseding indictment last week alleges the SPLC paid sources inside white supremacist organizations and, in some cases, helped sustain the very movements it publicly condemned.

Yesterday, Congress had some questions.

Here is WORLD Opinions commentator Tyler O’Neil.

TYLER O’NEIL: On Capitol Hill yesterday, the acting head of the Southern Poverty Law Center was handed what should have been an easy opportunity.

A federal grand jury has accused the SPLC of helping sustain and grow extremist organizations through a network of paid field sources. The allegations strike at the heart of the SPLC’s mission and credibility.

So House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan asked a series of straightforward questions: Did the SPLC use donor money to place sources inside extremist groups? Did it use donor money to help grow those groups? Did it recruit members? Did it finance activities later cited as evidence of rising extremism?

More than five different times in just five minutes, interim SPLC president Bryan Fair declined to address the specifics.

BRYAN FAIR: Mr. Chairman, the indictment will be managed and responded to by counsel in the criminal case.

Jordan tried again.

FAIR: Again, those issues will be resolved in the pending allegations against the SPLC.

And again.

FAIR: All of the allegations that you are referring to, Chairman Jordan, will be (Well how about this?) responded to by our counsel in the Middle District of Alabama.

And again.

FAIR: Chairman Jordan? (Yeah.) Our counsel will respond to all the allegations in the indictment.

And still again.

FAIR: That’s an allegation in the indictment that will be responded to by counsel in the Middle District of Alabama.

To be clear, Fair also repeatedly stated that the allegations are false. But there's no doubt the SPLC paid sources inside white nationalist organizations. That fact alone is not necessarily scandalous. Journalists, law enforcement agencies, and advocacy groups all use confidential sources.

The deeper question is what happened next.

The indictment alleges that several members of extremist groups wanted out. Instead, prosecutors say the SPLC paid them to remain. If true, that would represent a stunning reversal of mission. An organization devoted to fighting hate would have acquired a financial interest in keeping extremists where they were.

The indictment goes further.

Prosecutors allege that SPLC-funded sources used money connected to the arrangement to attend rallies, organize events, recruit members, and produce racist materials.One allegedly rose into a leadership role within a white nationalist organization.

Jordan highlighted one particularly striking allegation.

JORDAN: Who’s the president of the National Socialist Party? You know? You paid him $70,000. He was field source number 30. I just want to know who he is. You know who he is? 

FAIR: Mr. Chairman, that’s an allegation in the indictment that will be responded to by counsel in the Middle District of Alabama.

The Southern Poverty Law Center built its reputation fighting the Ku Klux Klan, yet today it trades on its history of suing Klan groups into bankruptcy to smear mainstream conservative and Christian groups, placing them on a hate map with Klan chapters and claiming this map reveals the infrastructure upholding white supremacy in the United States today.

This strategy exaggerated hate and led the SPLC to be able to raise more money. As groups like the Klan declined, the SPLC expanded its definition of extremism and continued raising money by warning Americans about threats from hate groups.

Critics have long argued that the organization has a vested interest in keeping those threats front and center. The indictment raises a more troubling possibility. What if the organization became dependent not merely on exposing extremism, but on sustaining it?

Imagine an exterminator who secretly releases rats into people's homes, or a firefighter who quietly sets fires and then rushes to the scene.

The question is not simply whether the SPLC monitored extremist groups. The question is whether it helped keep them alive.

The SPLC denies it, and the courts will decide. But Congress is asking reasonable questions, and so far the answers seem to have been outsourced to counsel.

For WORLD, I’m Tyler O’Neil.

EICHER: Tyler O’Neil is senior investigative reporter at The Daily Signal, and author of the book Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Congress is on deadline to renew an intelligence gathering law. We’ll have a report. 

And, a surgeon cares for the sick as the African ebola outbreak spreads. That and more, tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “A servant who deals wisely will rule over a son who acts shamefully and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers. The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the LORD tests hearts.” —Proverbs 17:2, 3

Go now in grace and peace.

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