I have spent thirty years in the rooms where American capital actually lives — structuring financial transactions, advising single-family offices, and serving as an expert witness on fiduciary duty. In that time, I have watched taxpayer dollars flow to organizations that would make a used-car salesman look virtuous. The IRS 501(c) system was never meant to subsidize political activities. Yet here we are, with so-called charities and business leagues raking in tax-exempt billions while the rest of us foot the bill. Any organization that fails the statutory test — charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, public-safety, amateur-sports, or prevention-of-cruelty activities — loses its exemption. Everything else can operate, just not on our dime.
The evidence keeps piling up. On April 21, 2026, a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on eleven counts, including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds between 2014 and 2023 to individuals tied to violent extremist groups, the very outfits it publicly claimed to oppose. One paid informant, a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, received more than $270,000, and helped coordinate transportation for several attendees at the SPLC’s direction. The group allegedly used fictitious entities and shell bank accounts to hide the payments from donors and regulators. As someone who has underwritten structured finance transactions for years, I recognize a model ROI when I see one: manufacture the hate, raise the donations, repeat. Scott Glenn’s fireman character in Backdraft (1991) taught us that sometimes the hero showing up is the one who struck the match.
This pattern is not isolated. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — CHIRLA — reported more than $8.7 million in government grants in its latest tax filing covering July 2024 through June 2025, bringing its Biden-era taxpayer haul to over $80.6 million. During that same fiscal year, CHIRLA helped create an anti-ICE rapid-response network in Los Angeles that contributed to the arrest of a union leader and encouraged supporters to rally at a federal building. The protests turned violent. Riots spread across central California for days. Local and federal agencies estimate damages between $32 million and $1 billion. The House Judiciary Committee and Senator Josh Hawley both sent letters demanding records. CHIRLA produced no meaningful compliance. No subpoenas followed. No criminal referrals produced visible results. Taxpayers funded the spark. Taxpayers paid for the cleanup. And the organization continues on with its 501(c)(3) status intact.
The Biden White House took the grift national. His administration declared white nationalism the greatest domestic terrorism threat while the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer said otherwise: American homicide is overwhelmingly intraracial, a pattern the FBI’s own data confirmed year after year. Real victims like Kate Steinle or Laken Riley were laundered out of official crime tallies by sanctuary-city reporting gaps the administration showed no interest in closing. And when a transgender shooter murdered three nine-year-old children and three adults at a Nashville Christian school in March 2023, the Biden-era FBI suppressed the manifesto for over two years while simultaneously publishing threat assessments naming white Christian nationalists the republic’s primary danger. That is not a valid threat assessment. That is a political document.
A class-action lawsuit against the SPLC on behalf of deceived donors would be genuinely poetic justice. Where are the trial lawyers when the grift runs in their direction? Donors who thought they were funding civil rights deserve their money back, not another glossy annual report. The same logic applies to CHIRLA and every other tax-exempt group that converts public money into private political warfare. If the Left wants to play hardball with federal funding, conservatives should demand the same rulebook apply to their team.
DOGE exposed real waste and prompted voluntary federal departures, but it shut down too soon. The All-In Podcast hosts have correctly argued that there should be zero patience for waste and abuse, and that standard must extend without exception to NGOs and so-called nonprofits of questionable purpose. A filing-by-filing verification is long overdue: if an outfit cannot demonstrate that 90% of its resources go to statutorily exempt activities, it loses its exemption. Let them run their operations as for-profit entities or ordinary political organizations. Congress should amend the Internal Revenue Code to require annual certification, backed by third-party audits for any entity reporting over $5 million in annual revenue. The IRS must enforce the Johnson Amendment evenhandedly or repeal it entirely. No more selective prosecution of conservatives while left-wing pulpits and activist nonprofits collect government grants with impunity.
The republic would be stronger, the balance sheet cleaner, and the fire department could finally stop chasing arsonists who hide behind non-profit status.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.
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