WASHINGTON, DC – In response to today’s arraignment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) Vice President Praveen Fernandes issued the following reaction:

Today’s arraignment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) marks another step in the Trump administration’s march to erode the rights and freedoms of Americans. For more than half a century, SPLC has monitored and documented violence and hate, playing an instrumental role in a civil rights movement that has made our nation freer, fairer, and safer. Today, in a world that often feels upside down, we have a president who has offered clemency to members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, while his administration goes after a nonprofit organization dedicated to monitoring just such dangerous extremist groups. It’s difficult to understand this prosecution except in the larger context of the Trump administration’s campaign of politicized prosecutions aimed at silencing those who have been critical of Trump and his policies.

All Americans, regardless of where on the ideological spectrum they place themselves, should be deeply concerned about the Trump administration’s prosecution of SPLC. And all Americans should also be disappointed by private financial institutions that have reportedly ceased processing donations to SPLC—a decision these financial institutions made before the arraignment had occurred, let alone a verdict had been rendered. If the true goal of the Trump administration’s prosecution of SPLC is to choke off support for this organization and to chill donors along with the work of other nonprofits, then these financial institutions have made themselves complicit.