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US police officers have quit after using licence plate-reading cameras to track romantic partners.

Former SPLC Exec Arrested: Accused Of Funneling Donor Money To KKK, Neo-Nazi Informants

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) executive Heidi Beirich was arrested in California on Wednesday under a superseding indictment in the Justice Department's ongoing case against the organization, according to a CNN report confirmed by federal officials.

Heidi Beirich. What even...

Beirich, who directed the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project until 2019, faces three counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering. She was expected to make an initial appearance in Riverside later Wednesday.

"I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies' names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described," Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Wednesday. "This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this."

At the center of the allegations is an SPLC program that paid informants embedded in extremist organizations the nonprofit publicly monitored and campaigned against. Prosecutors allege Beirich helped oversee those payments and shared a bank account with one of the informants receiving them.

That informant, identified in charging documents as F-9, allegedly infiltrated the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Prosecutors further allege that Beirich was living with him and romantically involved with him while the payments were being made.

Reporting on the June superseding indictment said roughly $140,000 in donor funds moved from the SPLC's operating account into joint accounts held by Beirich and F-9 between 2015 and 2021. The organization is also alleged to have paid the informant more than $1 million since 2007.

Other payments under the same program allegedly went to separate recipients. The indictment, for example, describes funds reaching an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America - a different individual from the informant with whom Beirich allegedly had a relationship.

According to prosecutors, F-9 also broke into the headquarters of a white supremacist organization and removed approximately 25 boxes of documents. Those materials allegedly became the basis for a 2015 Hatewatch article written by Beirich titled "Chaos at the Compound." A second informant was allegedly paid about $6,000 to take responsibility for the burglary and conceal the identity of the original source.

An attorney for Beirich denied wrongdoing, calling the case meritless and politically motivated and saying she looks forward to presenting her side in court. An SPLC spokesperson had no immediate comment.

The SPLC has contested the government's case from the beginning, arguing that prosecutors are mischaracterizing a long-running intelligence-gathering program designed to monitor violent extremists. Its attorneys have also emphasized that law-enforcement agencies made use of information generated by SPLC informants.

Initial Indictment

A federal grand jury in Montgomery indicted the SPLC on April 21 on 11 counts: six of wire fraud, four of bank fraud, and one of money laundering.

Prosecutors allege the organization funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to at least eight informants associated with groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, and the National Socialist Party of America between 2014 and 2023.

According to the indictment, some of those payments were routed through bank accounts opened in the names of fictitious entities such as Rare Books Warehouse and Tech Writers Group.

"The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence," Blanche said when the original charges were announced.

The SPLC pleaded not guilty in July and moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the prosecution was vindictive and that the administration was retaliating against the organization for identifying and criticizing extremist groups.

On Aug. 7, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks rejected that motion, finding that the SPLC had not demonstrated prosecutorial animus. We covered that ruling here, as well as the unusual timing of an Atlantic story targeting FBI Director Kash Patel three days before the original indictment here.

The FBI severed its relationship with the SPLC in October 2025. In its most recent available filing, the organization reported gross receipts of $339.3 million and assets totaling $822.2 million.

At a June 9 House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Manufacturing Hate, Part II," witnesses testified that the SPLC's "hate group" designations had been used as screening criteria by payment processors, donor-advised funds, corporate-giving platforms, and web-hosting companies.

WATCH: "The SPLC is little more than a highly profitable scam."

ADF's @ryanlbangert delivers his opening statement to @JudiciaryGOP on @splcenter pic.twitter.com/nbxBBhN63a

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) June 9, 2026

In practice, witnesses argued, the SPLC's privately maintained list could carry consequences resembling those of an official government designation, despite there being no formal due-process mechanism for organizations placed on it.

One witness told the committee that his organization lost access to charitable-giving platforms, web hosting, and nonprofit software pricing after appearing on the SPLC's hate map.

Those claims remain witness characterizations rather than judicial findings. But they are now part of the congressional record, and the fact that federal law-enforcement agencies previously relied on intelligence produced by the SPLC is not in dispute.

Beirich left the SPLC in 2019 amid the upheaval that followed the firing of co-founder Morris Dees and the departure of much of the organization's senior leadership. She later co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, where she continued working as an extremism researcher.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:01

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SpaceX Surges Following First Lockup Expiry After Musk Taunts Shorts

SpaceX shares have jumped 35% over five sessions and 22% since Elon Musk responded to our X post on the "massive SPCX shorting," which cited S3 data. He said, "I try to warn them, but they just double down ..."

The post-earnings squeeze has pushed SPCX well above its $135 initial public offering price, easing concerns that future lockup expirations could overwhelm demand, which was certainly the talk of the town across institutional desks and on CNBC.

About 911.5 million shares became eligible for sale on Aug. 6, more than the number issued in SpaceX's record $86 billion IPO in June.

Ahead of Aug. 6, Peter Singlehurst, head of Baillie Gifford's private companies team, commented on the first round of lockup expirations, saying, "We've never seen anything like it. We've never seen anything of this scale, and we've never seen a lockup phased in this way," adding, "We're in uncharted waters."

SpaceX staggered its lockup expirations across nine dates to mitigate potential market impact. As many as 319 million additional shares will be released Aug. 20, followed by similarly sized blocks over the coming months. Musk's 6.4 billion shares remain restricted until June 2027.

Related:

• Mapping SpaceX's Lockup Expirations: HSBC Calculates When The Shares Could Hit The Market

HSBC's Lockup Timeline

via HSBC

"Once investors realized after that first day that it's not going to go into free fall, then they realized they could kind of go back and reassess what happened in the quarter and realize that things are moving along," said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, which holds SpaceX shares.

The stock had tumbled before last week's first expiration, though traders attributed much of that decline to higher-than-expected artificial intelligence spending disclosed in SpaceX's first earnings report as a publicly traded company. Better-than-expected revenue and a smaller loss helped shares recover once fears of insider selling.

Musk told investors that AI/rocket company could reach an annual revenue run rate exceeding $100 billion by year-end and generate $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, or possibly 2029.

"The earnings release was pretty surprising to the upside, and I think that's the antidote to shares coming on the market," said Andrew Plum, managing partner and investment committee head at Loxahatchee Capital, which holds SpaceX shares. 

Plum noted, "You can have very good financial news coming from the company that's going to attract new buyers at these levels, which will allow those shares to exit at a reasonable price and not to put too much pressure on the stock."

Here's how Wall Street currently views the stock:

Looking ahead, UBS analyst Gavin Parsons provided color on the next Starship launch, slated for late August: 

While SpaceX has not yet officially scheduled test Flight 14, an FCC permit application sets 8/28/26 as a target launch date - aligned with earnings call commentary targeting late August for the flight. Per Elon Musk, Flight 14 will target orbit, deploy operational Starlink V3 satellites, and attempt an upper stage/Ship catch. We do not expect a booster catch attempt but see this possible with Flight 15 - a milestone critical to achieving full and rapid reusability. As SpaceX achieves Starship milestones, it enables the ramp-ups in both Connectivity and AI, the primary drivers of growth. Watch the launch via SpaceX stream, read up on our Buy thesis in our Initiation Report, read our Flight 13 recap, and see below for more Flight 14 detail.

Primary test objectives are likely to include the successful launch, achieving orbit, deploying operational Starlink V3 satellites, and catching the upper stage Ship.

• Date: The FCC permit application for Flight 13 originally targeted 5/29, and the flight occurred 7/24, so this is just one indicator that a launch could occur in August. Flights slip for many reasons, but the cadence is generally accelerating, as late August would be a five week turnaround. Elon suggested daily Starship flights is possible within 2027; this would be upside to our more conservative estimate of 32 flights in 2027.
• Curiously the FCC application states "The 1st stage booster will return to the launch site" and does not reference the 2nd stage, which the Flight 13 application did.
• The heat shield problem is solved per Elon (in regard to full and rapid reusability), which he suggested is the single biggest problem to achieving that capability. We expect iterative improvement to continue but the intact tiles on Ship 40 are clearly visible on the vehicle.
• Starlink V3 operational deployment: unclear exactly how many satellites will be deployed, but we think somewhere greater than the 20 on Flight 13 but below the 60 we estimate Starship will eventually have the capability to carry. Elon indicated 1,000 operational V3 satellites is possible within 1H27 - as with our more conservative launch assumption (which is the bottleneck) - this would be upside to our 540 estimate if achieved.

Status of the equipment

The test flight stack will likely be comprised of Booster 21 (Super Heavy booster) and Ship 41 (Starship upper stage).

• Booster 21 is awaiting engine installation in Mega Bay 1. Stacking was completed in late June and cryogenic proof testing was completed on July 20th. We do not.

Professional subscribers can read more on SPCX here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 08:15

The "Big Little Lies" star spoke to British Vogue about having to "adjust" and "adapt" to her "completely unknown" future post-split.