The Onion to Take over InfoWars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.
No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars..."
Full statement here https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
What exactly does that do? Which web browser?
I’m on mobile right now, so can’t test.
Alternatively, you can disable JavaScript on the website. That lets me view it.
Use uBlock and block javascript by default with NoScript. I saw nothing about cookies and just got the article.
Trump retaliated by calling all of them "low IQ".
Given that Carlson's media company has an investment from the ubiquitous 1789 Capital (Thiel and Trump Jr.), we don't know if this is theater to keep the isolationist MAGA in the fold.
It could also be that they sacrifice Trump in order to accelerate Thiel's and Vance's technocracy.
Anyway, these influencers are still useful for their masters.
Tucker will take any position for money see his entire career!
Plus the guy was advocating the administration should attack Iran for attempting to assassinate trump.
Having to take unscheduled vacations from Fox News over some of his more racist comments.
> ... Fox News ...
Sure but can you link some white nationalist clips when he was the host of Crossfire [1] for 5 years?
Like he's just not principled. If he were to re-join Fox News and Fox were to pivot to being a competitor to BET [2] his comments would change immediately.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program...
There’s no principle, no strategy, no goal. We’re living in the political version of Cube, and just like the movie: it’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
It really doesn't matter how popular or unpopular a candidate is, what matters is if their listeners are still willing to overpay on snake oil. Or if their oil barrons are still giving them a few million dollars for whatever message they want to sell.
AJ is probably the worst in this space. One of the things leaked in his emails is if you give him $20k he'll gladly bring you on the show and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about and sell. You could probably get him to shill for a book about the benefits of communism.
> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.
Which makes me think of a thread years ago I saw on the modern equivalent: a meme so offensive (to literally everyone at once) nobody can see it without having an anger induced aneurism.
The skit would be a comical updated take on the Python skit. A hardened memelord shitposter troll is found dead in his basement, surrounded by rotted pizza boxes, empty energy drink cans, and penis enlargement pills. He had been working for years to create a meme that would simultaneously offend everyone. Something is on his screen. The person who finds it immediately flies into a rage so extreme they have an immediate brain aneurism and die. "We showed the meme to the most hardened Nazi edgelord trolls we could find on the worst Discords, Chans, and Telegram channels. Most did not survive. Some were saved by medical intervention but sustained severe brain damage..."
Zuckerberg already did it.
I'm not sure if it is just what escapes across national boundaries or if social media in other countries is just way more horny, but every time I see a post where the text has been auto-translated from a different language it is thirst trap content. This is true across multiple social media platforms. It's especially prevalent on X for example, especially as they seem to be trying to showcase their Grok translations or something.
I don't know about FB as I quit it several years ago but I saw this happening on Instagram before I quit it too.
Definitely not, FB knows I'm a man and I don't have anything remotely pornographic in my feed with any regularity because I don't interact with it when it does.
This timeline sucks.
It think that's a contradiction: if your latter statement is correct, his experience is a peek at "most people's experience."
My conclusion is not that the algorithm shows you things it THINKS you will engage with, but rather things they WANT you to engage with because it makes them money somehow.
My feed is entirely photos of friends' kids, invitations to local events (things I actually attend), folk-dancing groups I'm involved with, and the like. I have literally never, not once, not ever, seen any rage-bait or political content (other than that directly written by friends - not reposted) in my feed.
No political content or anything I would consider rage bait.
edit - interesting, Google trends shows it spiking over the past few months: https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0m_7t&date=all&ge...
(also a huge spike in 2014, I wonder what that was about?)
I don't think there's any reasonable person who could read the full medical description of the injuries sustained and think "yeah 2.7 mill was too much".
Just with inflation (6.4m) and number of victims (22?) you get a much larger number real quick.
[0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs
This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...
IANAL but it does seems like "sending an entire copy of your clients phone and making no effort to redact it" could be a thing that, you know, is bad counsel.
> his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension
Jones had multiple lawyers throughout the process. That was in fact a big part of the problem that ended up getting him defaulted. Free speech systems (his company) do a depo with one set of lawyers that didn't comply comply with the judges orders, they'd go in unprepared and give the "I'm so sorry I'm brand new on this case" and then he'd have a completely different set of lawyers in the next depo that would rinse and recycle the same rhetoric.
It was also 2 cases, one in Texas and the larger one in Connecticut. But he pulled the same shit in both and got defaulted in both.
> the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case.
The plaintiffs do win by default but he did also get to argue his case still. The trial was focused on how much damage Jones did to the plaintiffs with Jones arguing he did nothing and the plaintiffs showing how crazy it was (Including Jones's fans shooting up his house, getting fired from jobs, having friends accuse them of lying about their kid's deaths).
> And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.
Not really true. He did put forth really bad arguments during the damages calculations. But in both Connecticut and Texas the amount of damage was left up to the Jury to decide. They could have put forward any number from 1 to 80M (I think the highest amount). And in Connecticut the amounts were broken down for each of the victims (including an officer that responded to the shooting). That's part of what's made it impossible for him to unwind because each of the victims got different amounts of damages. There was just like 20 of them which is why the damages went so high.
His lawyers in CT didn't call witnesses but they did cross examine the plaintiffs witnesses. In the TX case they did have AJ take the stand for his own defense, the "Perry Mason" moment was during the cross examination which I'm sure he didn't want to repeat in CT.
That said, his CT lawyer was REALLY bad, far worse than his TX lawyer who famously gave away a copy of his phone by mistake.
If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions.
He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.
This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension.
Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.
If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
I know, I’m a weirdo that wants to see realism and pragmatism in the court systems even if the defendant is a real asshole.
All of the threads related to this topic have had a pile of folks going "the amount was too much!" but hardly any of them say what they think an appropriate punishment would look like...
In criminal cases, I've seen victims getting anywhere between 50% to 10% of what they've demanded, or even nothing even when the judgement has been in their favour.
TL:DR this is never going to be a problem you have, because you'll get a decent lawyer and not be a wildly massive prick about getting your own way.
This is also the result of multiple lost lawsuits as well as additional penalties from not complying with court directives during the cases.
I think it needs to be large enough to be a real deterrent. So it needs to be large enough that there is a real risk of turning substantial profit into substantial loss. "What if we get sued for $existentiallyLargeAmount?" needs to be part of the business math when deciding whether to tell lies for profit.
"More money than exists in the world" would clearly be too much. But I'm absolutely fine with a company and its chief officers being left penniless for such behavior. So I'm definitely fine with taking everything the company has, taking everything the chief officers have, and possibly adding a bit of debt on top of that.
It has to be bigger than what the business can accept as "just a cost of doing business" or it isn't actually a deterrent.
Correct. This is what happens when you go to court and play by the rules and stop doing things when you get an injunction against said behaviors.
When you tell the court to fuck off and you can do whatever you want, repeatedly, this is when you get the deserved massive punitive smack down for being an anti-social dick.
The problem you have is the complete and total lack of ability to put yourself in the shoes of any of the victims here that had got injunctions from the court many times only to have them be ignored and for have the abuse to then scale up even further. Millions in fines does not solve the behavior, he was making more than that in scamming people. A fine that is lower than profits is just a cost of doing business.
They did not. Jones was given years and dozens of opportunities to comply. He defaulted in 2 cases because he failed to comply in both cases. He was also defaulted after being warned he'd be defaulted. The cases literally started in 2018 and resolved in 2022. The reason they dragged out for so long is primarily due to Jones not complying with court orders. Constantly having to retake depositions where the same incomplete and non-compliant answers were given.
And he appealed (and lost) the appeal for the default.
Multiple judges saw his default and concluded "This was a reasonable way to handle an unreasonable litigant".
Yes he was. Jones didn't have 1 set of lawyers from start to finish on the cases. He went through about 20 different lawyers in both cases.
That doesn't happen if a client isn't personally directing the lawyers.
His strategy was very clearly to bring in new lawyers at each depo that didn't comply with the court order. When challenged, the lawyers would say "Oh, sorry, it's my first day on this case. We'll be sure to bring it next time".
He did the same thing with the corporate representatives. He had at least 3 different people show up as the corporate representative that were supposed to bring the finances. None of them complied.
Example: they sent a copy of his cell phone to the prosecuting attorney on accident and didn't request it back in time, so 2 years of his text messages were used against him.
And the reason his lawyers were so objectively bad was because they all had about 1 month working on the case before getting fired and replaced by a new lawyer.
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs had exactly 1 set of lawyers representing them (1 in TX and one in CT).
I'm not joking when I say that Jones went through about 20 different sets of lawyers throughout the cases. You can listen to his various depositions and there's not a repeat defense lawyer in any one of the depos. I highly doubt they were all just uniquely terrible, especially given how much money Jones has. A few were really terrible (Norm, Barnes). Reynolds was actually one of Jones's better lawyers, he just messed up. Unsurprising given how little time he was on the case.
IIRC, the reason for the phone copy getting shared was because of the case hand-off between reynolds and the previous lawyers. The TX lawyers were CCed when they shouldn't have been. And in the process of getting ready for trial, reynolds missed the email informing him of the mistake.
No, his lawyers were deliberately bad. There is a massive difference.
While no direct evidence, it's almost certain that Jones when to a good lawyer at first who told him that "He was most utterly and unanimously fucked" in which Jones did the you better call Saul and got himself lawyers that would try anything at all to muck up the system. While your first response may be "No bar lawyer would do something that could lose their license", after many years doing computer work in the Texas legal system and seeing myriads of interactions, my response is "Yes they fucking would".
Jones chose poor lawyers because good ones ran away screaming after he told them what he wanted to do.
This punishment reflects not just the conduct at question by the law suit, but also the conduct during the law suit.
Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up.
The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.
Never underestimate Trump's ability in decreeing something and hoping for it to stick long enough to cause real damage before the courts eventually strike it down - it took almost a year until the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, by the time the first large corporations get their refunds it will be over a year, and honestly I'd be surprised if the first consumers get refunds by the end of 2026.
Trump's ability to do that is solely caused by a lot of people across all branches and levels of government too afraid to say "no" to him and getting on the receiving end of "you're fired".
Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting.
The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...
Because what he did wasn't criminal, many people wanted a maximal civil settlement in substitution.
The man made a fortune destroying the reputations of some people, and he did so by (provably) intentionally lying about them, without their consent and with nothing paid to them. They deserve every peny of that - he stole their reputations and as with all theft, reparations are logical.
In addition he grew his following with those lies, and that following will continue to give him money. This is the interest and dividends of those lies.... it's the result of him investing the reputatoins he destroyed. Since you can't sell a following, but it's still a profit generating asset, it's fair to make Jones turn over those dividends. This ensures that he'll be turning over those dividends for a long time.
Finally there's a punative component - making sure he doesn't continue to maliciously destroy reputations for profit. It's a good idea to make sure such a pile of shit thinks twice about he tells more lies to the morons and trash that follow him.
The only lesson he's learned is to hire a better legal team in the future for civil (not criminal) suits.
Is there any real reason to believe that the problem was his legal teams? You know there were a lot of them, right? Aside from the singular example late in the case, it is plausible that most/all of his legal teams were quite competent.
It's a bit messier than that. For example if he's going to set up a new media empire things like banks will give a pretty big fuck you to loans and such if they think all your assets will be captured by the court and they'll be left holding the bag.
This doesn't stop him from putting together money in other ways, but massively increases the difficulty on his part as every time he does he'll find a suit showing up to collect it from him.
And as others have said, this has nothing to do with good/bad lawyers. The good lawyers came in at first and told him he was totally screwed, and because he's such a pompous ass he could not handle that.
However the notion that Jones has learned something is so utterly preposterous that not even his fans are stupid enough to believe it
It was shit like him saying "noooo I didn't enrich myself, I actually lost money and popularity on site because of it", then court going "okay, could we see your financial records and site visits?"
And him just not delivering. Or not showing up at all, multiple times. Also asking for someone to deliver the head of the opposition's lawyer on a pike for a reward(that's not even exaggerating his words).
The resulting amount is basically "fuck you", and mostly coz he didn't even showed to defend himself so it wasn't challenged by court
Indeed, the government is not prosecuting him or trying to suppress his first amendment rights. But that doesn't mean he can say anything he wants about anyone he wants and not have any civil liability, so it seems like the system is working.
The billion dollar verdict is his own fault. He got sued by a bunch of people, and it is pretty normal to shoot for a high amount and settle for less. If he had not noped out of the entire process he would have been liable for a whole lot less (or even nothing, depending on the jury). No sympathy from me.
The case didn’t even make it to trial because he refused to turn over documents, likely because they would prove guilt.
Free speech protects your right to say your opinion, but it does not protect you from willingly causing harm to others for personal gain.
Also he is not a frontman for shit. He's a narcissistic rage baiter who has never exposed any true story. Your nonsensical belief however is nowhere near the standard for defamation.
Alex Jones is a severely damaged man and a known liar. His story about his father has changed radically over the years and within days of his telling, each time mythologizing his Dad by way of making Jones himself special, or from special people. Was Jones’ grandmother psychic? Is he himself? Does God give him downloads of information over chicken sandwiches and in the middle of the night with clock time ‘proofs’? Why did Jones receive the download to go rescue Gene Hackman and then just not do so, if the battle against the Actual Devil is so important?
> So as he is quoted at the top "Something I talked about like 15 times, six, seven, eight years ago." This appears to be true when he said it, judging from the rest of the site's content.
I haven’t reviewed the site but Jones was the head of a whole media operation that knowingly defamed these people in a bitter time, and to sell dick pills. The depositions for these things are public and you can watch them yourself. Jones himself admits in these depositions his role behind the scenes, sending Halbig on his mad journey and what not.
The $1B judgement is startling but it’s based entirely on Jones’ own statement of impact in the depositions. If you’re being sued for the profit you made from lies, maybe don’t claim the majority of humanity tunes into your show and website every day.
Also, Jones has already set up a new media company he totally doesn’t own, no sir. He’ll move his operation when he finally loses InfoWars.
But I think Dan and Jordan are interesting enough as personalities and bring really good analysis and there are plenty of other worthy targets. So I do think things would change in a significant way if they ever had to veer away from Alex Jones stuff, but I would believe in their ability to reinvent themselves and train their fire on new targets.
It is openly and proudly personal. It is also political, also openly.
This keeps it out of that ecosystem, which I think is a really good thing.
"I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity”.
Fucking hell that's a funny line.
Of course it's personal. Alex Jones is an arsehole manufacturing outrage for profit. Being made fun of is the least of his problems
Yeah, it seems hard to believe that anyone would take Alex Jones' behaviour so personally. He only suggested that the murder of 20 young children and 6 adults in a school shooting was faked for political reasons.
(Are you serious?!)
This one seems to have some info:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/04/21/the-on...
Tldr; it isn't a done deal
"The deal is not for The Onion to own Infowars, but rather to have a temporary license to the intellectual property of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems.
Papers filed in state court indicate that the deal entails The Onion paying $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, as reported by KOUW,"
https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-onion-has-agreed-to-a-new-d...
"The deal calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, which the receiver says will "cover carrying costs to preserve and protect the assets of the receivership estate" until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale."
One of the things I've discovered in my long career of people being wrong about everything is how strong the team sports dynamic of social politics really is. I was high school friends with a writer for the Daily Show and the thing I realized is how humor and dismissal was a way of creating social superiority and evasion of legitimate arguments.
Right now, the world is changing greatly. Lots of people are retreating into a shell of humor in order to avoid it. Mass cognitive dissonance about the nature of reality. But reality and life goes on.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/20/the-onion-al...
See previous discussion linked in sibling as well.
I just recall seeing this story over a year ago... not sure at this point. and not having read the paywalled article.
Judgements demanding he pay billions keep coming out and he just says he's not paying, and nobody has forced him to either. Even if infowars' brand changes hands, that's the extent of it.
can someone explain the difference between what alex jones said about sandy hook and what other people say about 9/11 being an inside job, hologram planes, fake this fake that etc
This was not that.
This was a civil defamation case; the parents bought a case of actual material harm and harrassment of epic proportions before two seperate judges in two seperate states and both courts made the finding that Jones had indeed caused harm and harrassment .. and continued to do so over years.
If you mean higher bar for litigation, then maybe this lawsuit and its outcome shows that the bar isn't as high as you think when it comes to defamation?
To my understanding the case outcome is pretty much what I would expect, even considering the first amendment raising the bar. It's also interesting that there's been so many legal shenanigans in the case that it's hard to even keep track of them all.
That sealed the case outcome as, IIRC, at least one of the judges just ruled against them for not mounting any defence.
This is the biggest difference - no one is claiming that all of the people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks were actually actors paid to pretend that they were grieving for their parents and children and friends. No one was encouraged to personally attack said victims and survivors to "expose their lies" because of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Furthermore, defamation law works very differently for claims against public personalities ("Bush did 9/11!") compared to claims against private persons ("this random child shown crying in news reports after her classmates were supposedly killed is actually pretending!"). Also, vague accusations of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy / cover up are far harder to litigate than very clear claims of massive fraud. Finally, the Sandy Hook victims were generally able to show specific damages they suffered, attacks against them by people in their community, because of Jones' actions; Dick Cheney may have been more generally hated because of claims about 9/11 conspiracies, but was not directly harasses in the same way.
If I were to bring a civil suit against you because the comment above offended my sensibilities, it would be quickly thrown out of court because it is your first amendment right to say anything you like, with certain exceptions that the government recognizes as limitations of this right.
Even though this is a civil matter, it is still a judgement on government law. This is not some contract dispute where the parties are simply seeking arbitration, with no government involvement except as a "service provider" for this arbitration.
He did take actions that, by civil law, created civil liabilities. He was sued over those liabilities. He failed to participate in the civil litigation process and lost badly as a result.
Civil and criminal law are not the same thing and your insistence otherwise doesn't change the reality.
Alex Jones is only liable because there exists a law that the government created that says that defamation is illegal. Since this is a law, it could have been in conflict with the first ammendment - and, in fact, there have been legal challenges on this very line that reached the SC. But the Supreme Court has found that this is an acceptable limitation on the first amendment rights, with the specific limitations.
But, for example, if the US government wanted to adopt the English law on defamation, it would not be constitutional in the USA, it would run foul of the first ammendment.
Right, and I think this example is more about maintaining a civil society than it is strictly about freedom of speech. I think it's pretty clear to say that "freedom of speech" has limitations, making the word "freedom" contextually debatable.
Alex Jones can continue to say whatever he wants, from a criminal perspective. He may be somewhat more aware of the potential costs of being a professional liar now, which might cause him to make different decisions as he analyzes the cost/benefit ratio for something he wants to say.
The government won't stop him from saying whatever he chooses to say. The government might enforce costs, should he be sued for what he says and is found liable.
This is just a shell game of limiting speech.
The government/congress/states can't make a law or regulation that says "you have a right to never hear anyone signing in the rain". Even if such a law somehow passes, when you bring a civil suit against someone singing in the rain because you claim they violated your right (enshrined in this law) to not hear such singing, you will lose your case, as the law you based it on infringes on the first amendment rights of the singer.
Note that things would be very different if, instead of a law, you had a HOA which enacted a rule saying "singing in the rain is not allowed on the premises; violators will be fined 1000$". Assuming any signage about this is clear enough and so on, you could be forced in court to pay such a fine to the HOA, and may even end up doing jail time if you refuse even after losing a lawsuit with the HOA. The first amendment is a limitation of the state's ability to create laws, it doesn't limit private entities from limiting speech, nor the government's ability to enforce property rights behind such an ability.
I'm sorry, is there something in the constitution that gives you the right to not be defamed?
Have you considered that there's a significant cultural difference between you and the framers of the Constitution?
Those guys were mostly "gentlemen" in the 18th and 19th century sense. Lying, sullying someone's good name, and otherwise dragging them into disrepute was decidedly "ungentlemanly" conduct. I don't think most of them would consider it "free speech" that could pass without censure, no matter what the text of the constitution said. Let's not forget Alexander Hamilton died in a duel because of some words he didn't even recall saying.
Consider also that the line for what was permissible speech has moved over time. Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law#Pa...
You could make any instance of "government upholds the law" into "constitutional violation" that way.
A ruling in a civil court is very obviously not a prosecution. Because prosecutors can't, by definition, make rulings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876627 this argument is far more persuasive to me btw.
A ruling in a civil court that is enforced by a government is the same thing as the government ruling it, but through transitive properties. It can't be not enforced and enforced at the same time (the argument that civil is somehow not judicial).
In reality we are just griping that our government is too pussy to amend the constitution, and we've already written laws that subvert it, and those are being upheld by a corrupt/politicized supreme court and bullshit case law.
The federal government can't amend the constitution.
> we've already written laws that subvert it
If you want to see an actual violation of the First Amendment by the government here's one that Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Croswell
Not even all the Founding Fathers believed in complete freedom of speech.
Now in reality there are political and other influences on court behavior. But the government is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant.
The government provides the venue, the decider, the rules of engagement, and enforces the decision. The government stands on the side of the plaintiff, ready to turn the resolution (that the government decided) into the same result as if it were law.
The distinction is nonsense to me.
> The government stands on the side of the plaintiff
The executive stands on the side of whoever the judiciary ruled in favor of. It's an important distinction.
What you're thinking more of is contract law - where two parties go before a judge simply to adjudicate a matter that is entirely of their own invention. If we had signed a contract that said I can touch your fence but in touching it I left a hand print on it, I might think the contract allowed me to do so, while you may think that the hand print constitutes wrecking your fence, and we can go before a judge to decide and enforce said decision. The judge then won't look at any state/federal laws, they will look only at the terms of our contract (assuming the contract itself doesn't violate any laws, of course).
However, the first amendment is not absolute. Defamation is still a thing in the US. The first amendment creates a higher bar than many other countries (especially for public figures, but the victims in this case aren't public figures), but it is still possible.
Would you say that if a court allows that and awards you damages it is a violation of my 2nd Amendment rights with more steps?
The first amendment does not protect you from the results of your speech, like someone deciding they don't like you because of what you said. That person is free to dislike you for what you said and the first amendment has nothing to do with it.
Similarly, if you say things that are untrue and cause damage to others, you may be held civilly liable for the damage if they sue you and convince a jury that you lied with knowledge and intent to lie. The first amendment has nothing to do with this.
Those "other people" were also Alex Jones.
Piker is the left equivalent of Charlie Kirk - saying outrageous things for attention, but he has constantly called for violence, while Kirk never did.
Not saying that’s justified, just that there is a difference there.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdal/pr/federal-grand-jury-char...
Even beyond that, there's pretty clear evidence of the level of professional conduct of the department being pretty low, like their lawyers literally informing a judge that they lied about the basis of their arguments[0], cases getting dismissed because they were filed by someone who wasn't even a valid US Attorney[1] but who continued to claim to be one for another couple of months until a court order threatening her with contempt charges (by a Trump-appointed judge, for what it's worth)[2], and in one instance a lawyer literally requesting that a judge hold them in contempt because their job "sucks"[3].
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-court-arrests-ice-j... [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/24/halligan-dismissed-... [2]: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-orders-lindsey-halligan... [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney...
What a weird lie to parrot.
The man was making money off of lying about dead children. Where's the comedy in that?
This is a blatant lie.
In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."
“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.
“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/120547/presumption-regularity-t...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-...
[3] https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/statement-from-the-lawyers-...
And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years.
Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I missing something?