Washington, D.C. — House Republicans held a hearing last week to attack one of the country’s oldest civil rights organizations, the right’s favorite disinformation shop testified before Congress to smear environmental nonprofits, and the House’s self-proclaimed corruption watchdogs were nowhere to be found as a wave of Trump scandals broke in a single week. It’s a busy time to be in the business of holding power accountable.
House Republicans Hold Sham Hearing Against the SPLC
The House Judiciary Committee convened a hearing last week to smear the Southern Poverty Law Center, the latest chapter in Republicans’ campaign to discredit an organization that spent decades dismantling the Ku Klux Klan and sharing intelligence directly with the FBI. The three witnesses Republicans called told you everything you need to know about how seriously this “oversight” should be taken.
Tyler O’Neil is a right-wing media operative who wrote a book attacking the SPLC’s work tracking neo-Nazis and Klan chapters, and who during his time at The Daily Signal routinely praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Carol Swain left Vanderbilt University in 2017 after students called for her suspension and has long-standing ties to the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission. And Tony Perkins leads the Family Research Council, which the SPLC designated an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group in 2010. Before joining FRC, Perkins paid former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke $82,500 for his mailing list and delivered a paid speech to the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens.
Capital Research Center Testifies Before Congress to Attack Environmental Nonprofits
The Capital Research Center took its disinformation operation to Capitol Hill last week, sending a representative to testify before the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for a hearing titled “The Profit Engine Driving Environmental Nonprofits.”
CRC’s witness, Ken Braun, suggested that environmental nonprofits like the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the Rocky Mountain Institute should be cut off from government grants because of their policy positions on energy. He pointed to legal fee recoveries at groups like the Center for Biological Diversity as evidence of potential abuse, while conveniently benchmarking them against right-wing litigation shops CRC favors.
Let’s be clear about what CRC is and what it does. It is a right-wing opposition research outfit whose core function is manufacturing suspicion about civil society organizations that challenge corporate interests and hold government accountable. Its testimony before Congress is not independent analysis. It is the same attack content it produces for its funders, now stamped with the imprimatur of a congressional hearing. The organizations CRC targeted do legitimate public-interest work. The only “profit engine” on display here is CRC’s own business model: generate attacks on nonprofits, launder them through friendly committees, and hand the results to an administration that is already systematically defunding and investigating groups it dislikes. Then Capital Research Center turns around and points to this “success” to raise more money from their right wing funders.
Comer and Jordan Asleep at the Wheel on Trump Corruption
James Comer and Jim Jordan spent years on television lecturing America about supposed corruption, conflicts of interest, and the abuse of power. They issued subpoenas, held hearings, and positioned themselves as the last line of defense against government self-dealing. Now, in a single week, the following happened:
Trump is dropping a $10 billion IRS lawsuit in exchange for a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund he’ll control, with no obligation to disclose procedures or the identities of recipients. Federal disclosures revealed Trump made more than 3,600 individual stock trades in the first three months of 2026. And Trump’s Justice Department is preparing to drop all charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who was indicted in 2024 for a $265 million bribery and fraud scheme, after Adani hired one of Trump’s own personal lawyers.
Comer and Jordan have nothing to say about any of it. The men who turned congressional oversight into a partisan weapon are silent while the president enriches himself in plain sight.
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