Philadelphia’s founding years were rife with conspiracy fears about ‘godless’ Freemasons and the Illuminati by Derek Arnold

 

How conspiracies spread has changed immensely over the history of the United States, as technology and media have evolved. But the nature of conspiracies has not.

I teach communications courses at Villanova University, 12 miles from Philadelphia, on how conspiracy theories are created and disseminated.

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, I have been thinking about the early history of Philadelphia and the controversial people, stories and ideas, including conspiracies, that permeated the city during the second half of the 1700s.

Conspiracy theories describe alternative versions of events – such as the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 – that contrast with the official, accepted versions of events. Conspiracies, however, involve small groups of people who act in secret for their own gain and against the common good. Examples of conspiracies include the Watergate scandal by President Richard Nixon and members of his administration, or the Tuskegee experiments in which U.S. public health professionals treated unsuspecting African Americans with syphilis with a placebo.

Colonial America was rife with perceived conspiratorial agendas. Many of these stemmed from the uneasy coexistence of political parties with religion – which was newly protected by the First Amendment – and with the Catholic Church in particular.

 Freemasons in the cradle of liberty

Philadelphia was the country’s political center during the American Revolution, which began in 1775.

 

After the war ended in American victory in 1781, Philadelphia served as the capital of the U.S. beginning in 1790, until Washington, D.C., was chosen as America’s permanent capital in 1800.

During this period, the U.S. depended on contributions from its political and civic figures to develop future leaders with skills and intelligence. Among this group and some of the country’s leaders were Freemasons, the independent “brethren” of skilled stonemasons.

In England, landowners or even royalty owned many masons, but some masons were self-sufficient and enjoyed their freedom to work as they wished. When they made their way to America by the 1720s, their high standards of workmanship, fair trade and reason as they taught their craft made them influential in society.

Being a Freemason was a mark of sophistication. Freemasons were high-status, wealthy men. The fraternity provided a forum for networking – not just for stone shapers but other men who were successful in business, trade or even Colonial administration.

By the late 1740s, almost all of Philadelphia’s Freemasons were also merchants, shipowners or successful artisans. They were considered political, intellectual and creative leaders in Colonial Philadelphia.

 

Freemasons built notable structures throughout the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey areas as well as in New York, Boston and other parts of New England.

But because the group’s rituals and oaths were shielded from public view and performed in clandestine sessions in Masonic temples, rumors spread about their activities. Some people believed Freemasons secretly conspired against American values – especially religion.

Freemasons believed in principles such as rationalism, which views science and logic – rather than sensory experiences – as the foundations of knowledge. Freemasons also held that everything in the universe is the result of natural causes rather than the supernatural or divine.

They treated all religions equally. They allowed participation in them but believed no faith was to be favored as possessing the one true God. This was in contrast with religions that argued their doctrine exclusively expressed the truth. In 1738, Pope Clement XII banned Freemasons from joining the Catholic Church, a prohibition that still exists today. 

 

The ‘godless’ Illuminati

“Another "secret society” also peaked at this time in various parts of Europe, and it drew suspicion among Americans that members exerted influence over the new nation.

Members of the Illuminati, a movement that started in Germany in 1776, promoted Enlightenment values and ideas, including logic, secularism and education. Like Freemasons, they rejected superstition. Unlike Freemasons, however, they also rejected religion and its influence on society.

Europe mostly outlawed the movement before 1790 due to the group’s attempts to greatly lessen religious influence. The Illuminati occupied key roles in the educational system and government of Bavaria, where they weakened clerical authority.

The normally secretive Illuminati attracted attention through their attempts to attend and participate within Masonic temples. They used Freemason ideas along with their own ideas to recruit followers through these networks, hoping to promote an even stronger “one-world” government led by reason instead of religion and spiritualism.

As a result, religious – and specifically Catholic – leaders suspected an association between the philosophically consistent Illuminati and Freemasons.

In a letter to George Washington in 1798, Rev. G. W. Snyder from Maryland attempted to awaken Washington to the danger of the Illuminati and their influence on Freemasons. He wrote about a recently published book by the Scottish physicist John Robison called “Proofs of a Conspiracy” that, according to Snyder, “gives a full Account of a Society of Freemasons, that distinguishes itself by the name ‘of Illuminati,’ whose Plan is to overturn all Government and all Religion, even natural; and who endeavour to eradicate every Idea of a Supreme Being.”

Even today, conspiracy theories still promote the Illuminati’s existence, even after they were formally outlawed in Europe. Such theories suggest the Illuminati still work to degrade religious influence through civil upheaval. A myth survives that the Illuminati still operate secretly, support a world government and guide various governments on how to economically control the world.

But the Illuminati in the late 1700s seemed to dovetail with what people assumed were the basic ideas and agenda of Freemasons in America. Some in America suspected without obvious evidence that Freemasons used their status to boost fellow Freemasons to various governmental positions. They worried this would drive America to become godless, or even Satanic.

Concerns about the influence of Freemasons persisted in part because American presidents Washington and James Monroe were Freemasons. The American public was suspicious that these members reached high levels of government due to the influence of Freemasons. In fact, as many as 25 of the 55 men who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were Freemasons. Founding father Benjamin Franklin was a devout Freemason for over 50 years. Thomas Jefferson was widely thought to be a Freemason, though there is little evidence to support this.

 Many of these American leaders, including Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson, had spent time in Europe, especially France, during the late 1700s. Americans feared that European Illuminati members could directly access these political leaders and gain power and influence over the U.S. None of the leaders admitted to having any connection with the Illuminati.

 

Conspiracy fears climax

Fears around the Freemasons and Illuminati came to a head in the dramatic and vitriolic U.S. presidential elections of 1796 and 1800.

In the 1796 election, Jefferson’s Republican Party accused Adams of wanting to be a king and also grooming his son, John Quincy Adams, to become president immediately after his father.

Adams’ Federalist Party and an anonymous writer in newspapers – suspected to be Alexander Hamilton writing under the pseudonym “Phocion” – spread rumors attacking Jefferson. Phocion suggested that while Jefferson was U.S. secretary of state in France during Washington’s presidency, the Illuminati influenced him in ways that would cause him to turn his back on religion.

Phocion also accused Jefferson of fathering children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, whom he “kept as a concubine” when he returned with her from France in 1789. Historians believe Jefferson did, in fact, have up to six children with Hemings. The accusations also said Jefferson would free all enslaved people in America if elected.

Adams won in 1796 by just three electoral votes, but Jefferson defeated him in 1800.

Freemasons today

Freemasons today have largely shrunk from their once quite prestigious influence in American society. Today they are a mostly philanthropic organization that supports many causes, such as children’s hospitals, homes for the aged and community services.

There are about 1 million members in America, according to an estimate from 2020. That’s down from a high of over 4 million in 1959. 

 

Visitors to Philadelphia might consider two stops where they can be reminded of the conspiracy theories that circulated 250 years ago.

A marker at 175 Front St. notes where Tun Tavern, one of America’s first brew houses, stood from 1691 until it burned down in 1781. It was a hangout for Freemasons, including Franklin and other famous patrons such as John Adams.

Most of the Masonic lodges the city constructed early in its history do not exist today. The first Masonic temple built in Philadelphia was erected in 1809 on Chestnut Street, between 7th and 8th streets, but burned down in 1819.

 

Trust in vaccines is cratering. I've seen it happen by Slater, Jonathan . The Washington Post

 

This November, the Pan American Health Organization will review whether the United States has lost its measles elimination status - a designation held since 2000. As of April 23, 1,792 confirmed cases have been reported across the U.S. Utah is the latest epicenter: more than 600 cases since last summer. At one to three deaths per thousand cases, the arithmetic is clear: Deaths are coming.

Last year's measles outbreak was the worst since 1992: 2,288 cases, three deaths. A 6-year-old unvaccinated girl died of measles pneumonia in Lubbock, Texas, in February 2025 - the first measles death in the U.S. in a decade. A second unvaccinated 8-year-old girl died in the same city weeks later.

A simulation model in JAMA projects an 83 percent probability that measles will become endemic again in the U.S. within 21 years at current vaccination rates. Under a 50 percent decline in childhood vaccination, the model projects up to 159,200 deaths over 25 years from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles alone would account for 51.2 million projected cases.

Among kindergartners in the 2023-2024 school year, coverage fell below 93 percent - compared with 95 percent in 2019-2020 - while nonmedical exemptions was roughly 3 percent. In total, approximately 280,000 kindergartners - 7.3 percent - lacked documentation of full MMR vaccination, leaving them potentially susceptible to measles. A 2026 county-level analysis found exemptions increased more than fivefold since 2010-2011, jumping sharply after the pandemic. A 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found 91 percent of measles patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

The pandemic cut off children from vaccination schedules at critical windows. But it also accelerated a more corrosive collapse of institutional trust. In my practice, I see parents who read the studies, identify methodological limitations and remain unconvinced. This is not ignorance. It is a trust failure so complete that no evidence can ever be sufficient.

That trust has continued to erode. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of an influential immunization advisory panel and replaced them with vaccine-skeptical appointees. The CDC reduced the childhood vaccine schedule from 17 diseases to 11. The American Academy of Pediatrics broke with the CDC's schedule for the first time, publishing its own guidance endorsed by 12 major medical organizations.

Against this backdrop, clinicians are doing the work anyway. Michael Rosenbaum, a pediatrician colleague, estimates an 80 to 90 percent success rate in persuading patients to get essential vaccines - often over multiple visits with hesitant families through motivational interviewing. The AAP recommends this practice, and a 2022 study found it cut vaccination refusals from 31.5 to 17.6 per 100 patients in the U.S.

Rosenbaum begins with an open question: "Tell me more about what concerns you." He affirms the family's values before pivoting to the reflection almost every parent accepts: The main focus of your decision is what is best for the baby after weighing the benefits and risks of vaccinating. Then there's the final summary: "How do you think we can do that?"

When they question pertussis vaccination, he describes the potential apnea of whooping cough in infancy. When they question vaccinations for Haemophilus influenzae type B, he tells them what meningitis wards looked like before 1985. "Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in children when I was a resident. It was horrible." He names his uncle who had polio and was debilitated for his entire life. He says: "The risks of this vaccine are minimal and the benefits potentially priceless." He refers back to a tragic case of measles encephalitis he saw as an intern when necessary.

Some children can't be vaccinated because they are immunocompromised and can't receive live vaccines or because they had a concerning but not debilitating reaction to a vaccine. Their safety depends upon their peers. Some parents remain resistant to some or all vaccines for religious reasons or because they attribute an illness they had (such as cancer) or their child had (such as encephalitis) to vaccines.

In Utah, state lawmakers introduced exemption-expansion legislation during the middle of the measles outbreak. A pediatric infectious-disease physician reached for the right analogy: "It's kind of like if you were a firefighter trying to put out a house fire," he said, "and somebody is standing on the hose."

Florida announced plans last year to end vaccine mandates for hepatitis B, chicken pox and bacterial meningitis, with seven additional diseases to follow.

There are positive signs. In congressional testimony last month, Kennedy repeatedly backed away from his criticism of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. He told the Senate Finance Committee: "We have advised every child to get the MMR. That's what we do." President Donald Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz, a physician who has supported childhood vaccination, to lead the CDC.

Routine immunization has averted 154 million deaths since 1974, nearly all among young children. Sustaining that requires trustworthy, consistent and transparent institutions. We know that eliminating nonmedical exemptions works. We know motivational interviewing works. We know the diseases vaccines prevent, because clinicians were trained in an era when those diseases still filled pediatric wards. The diseases eliminated by vaccination did not disappear because people stopped fearing them. They disappeared because institutions, clinicians and communities sustained the effort to keep them gone.

Jonathan Slater is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Pentagon official: Iran war has cost $25B by Connor O'Brien and Leo Shane III

 The figure is the most specific price tag the administration has provided on the U.S. military conflict. 

 The Iran war has already cost the Pentagon $25 billion, a top Defense Department official said Wednesday, providing the first official price tag for a U.S. military campaign with little public support that has stretched two months.

Acting Pentagon comptroller Jules Hurst gave the figure during a House Armed Services Committee hearing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine on the department’s budget. It’s the most specific number the Trump administration has attached to an effort that, despite a recent ceasefire, has no clear end. 

 

“Approximately [to] this day, we’re spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury, most of that in munitions,” Hurst said. “There is part of that, it’s obviously [operations and maintenance] and equipment replacement.”

But that figure falls far behind many outside estimates, given the torrid pace of air and sea operations and the costs to restock expensive air defenses. It is also dwarfed by reports that the administration could seek hundreds of billions of dollars to cover the Middle East campaign.

Hurst told attendees at a March defense summit in Washington that the first week of the Iran war cost roughly $11 billion. The $25 billion price tag comes as administration officials discuss a supplemental request of up to $200 billion to pay for the conflict and weapons replenishment. Officials, though, have stressed publicly that they haven’t yet settled on a price tag for a supplemental request.

 

The Pentagon is expected to submit a supplemental funding request soon. Hurst told lawmakers the administration will make it “once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict.”

Ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who asked about the war’s cost, appeared surprised by the Pentagon budget chief’s specificity.

“I’m glad you answered that question, because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time, and no one’s given us the number,” Smith told Hurst. “So if you could get those details over to us, that would be great.”

 

The hearing, ostensibly about the administration’s 2027 budget request, quickly turned to Iran and whether the military conflict has produced any real strategic wins for America.

“As we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started,” Smith said. “They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.”

But Hegseth preemptively hit skeptics of the war.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats,” he said, “and some Republicans.” 

 

Teslas are aging like old smartphones you can't upgrade by Joann Muller

 

Tesla's admission that millions of its older cars can't support full self-driving underscores a new reality: software-driven vehicles are starting to age like smartphones — but without an easy upgrade path.

Why it matters: Cars last far longer than phones — about 13 years on average — setting up costly headaches as their hardware struggles to keep up with rapidly evolving features.

The big picture: AI software is improving much faster than the chips and sensors behind it — an expensive hardware ceiling for automobiles that could soon hit millions of non-Teslas, too.

• The risk is that your car's capabilities might expire before the car itself is ready for the junkyard.

Between the lines: The hardware gap isn't exclusive to Tesla.

• "This is just an early sign of a bigger, forever problem that will affect any privately owned autonomous vehicle technology," autonomy expert Phil Koopman, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, told Axios.
• "Cell phones and laptops get tossed when the technology ages out in perhaps five years," he said. "Cars still have a dozen or two years left on the road with obsolete computers. What's the plan for that?"

Driving the news: For this week, it is a Tesla problem. CEO Elon Musk has long envisioned a world in which cars get better with age through regular software updates.

• He's assured Tesla owners that cars produced since 2019 have all the hardware they need to eventually drive themselves.
• Last week during the company's quarterly earnings, he reversed course, telling investors the computers in Teslas built before 2024 lack sufficient memory to achieve fully autonomous driving.

The broken promise has already triggered an avalanche of lawsuits from Tesla owners, many of whom paid thousands of dollars upfront for a feature they'll never get to use.

Tesla is offering two solutions, and both will be expensive, considering an estimated 3.5 million vehicles — 40% of all Teslas on the road worldwide — are affected.

• Customers can get a discount to trade in their car for a new one equipped with the latest hardware.

 

• Or they can upgrade their car by having the computer, cameras and wiring replaced, requiring a quasi-rebuild of the vehicle.

Reality check: Upgrading the hardware is the equivalent of major brain surgery, a process that Musk previously acknowledged would be painful and difficult.

• Tesla hasn't said how much the hardware upgrades will cost, or when retrofits will be available.
• As a stopgap, it's planning an "FSD v14 Lite" software update for older cars to provide improved assisted-driving capability that's still short of full autonomy.

What they're saying: Not every Tesla owner will take action, but even if only 1 million vehicles are retrofitted at $3,000 to $5,000 per vehicle, the liability would be $3 billion to $5 billion, figures Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research, per the Wall Street Journal.

What we're watching: For a while, expect manufacturers to offer a "mid-life upgrade strategy" for cars, similar to Tesla's current plan, Koopman said.

• Eventually, though, carmakers have an incentive to stop providing software updates in older — but perfectly operable vehicles.

The bottom line: After all, manufacturers would probably rather sell a new car than upgrade an old one.

‘Lefty’ Pope Leo’s a thorn for new Maga Catholics by Gerard Baker

 

Republican converts of the JD Vance variety are coming up against the reality of a Pope who doesn’t do their politics

 

It is politely forgotten now but we are occasionally reminded that the United States was born in part in a fit of anti-Catholic paranoia. Among the “Intolerable Acts” of King George III and parliament identified by the authors of the Declaration of Independence as the basis for their revolutionary urge was the Quebec Act of 1774. After victory over the French in Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had the thorny task of managing a colony whose inhabitants were predominantly Roman Catholic. And so the act established for the first time wide-ranging civil rights for Catholics under English rule.

This was regarded with alarm by colonists in neighbouring New England. John Adams, son of a deacon of the Congregational Church in Massachusetts, and later the second president of the United States, declared it “Dangerous to the Interests of the Protestant Religion and of these Colonies”.

It was only one of the colonists’ objections to British rule, of course, and when they wrote their constitution a decade later the founding fathers placed freedom of worship near the top of the Bill of Rights. But it is a helpful reminder that the US is a Protestant creation, forged by settlers of a puritan sensibility whose pilgrimage west had been driven by consternation that the Anglican church was far too Romanish for their tastes.

• How Trump found Jesus at 78

No one would mistake Donald Trump for a puritan but his skirmish with Pope Leo XIV is another hint of the lingering American suspicion that God’s country is only a popish plot away from subjugation by the Bishop of Rome.

 hat the pontiff is an American adds a piquancy to this church-state tension. Leo’s condemnations of the war against Iran have sparked outrage among Trump supporters and calls that the pontiff should keep his ferula out of the Oval Office. Trump denounced the Pope, treating him like a political opponent who he said was “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy”. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” he posted.

 

Calls to keep religion out of politics sound odd from a Republican Party that has become more or less the political wing of evangelical Christianity in the past 50 years. Trump’s comments came days after a Holy Week prayer event at the White House in which Franklin Graham, a preacher whose services are barely distinguishable from Maga rallies, compared the president to a heroic biblical figure. God had “raised up President Trump” to defeat the modern day Persians, as he had with the prophet Esther. Paula White, the White House’s official “spiritual adviser”, who has built a highly lucrative ministry on televised public exorcisms and speaking in tongues, suggested Trump was like Jesus Christ on Good Friday — “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused”.

• Hugo Rifkind: My Week: Pope Donald I*

This harnessing of religious doctrine and symbolism to a political cause is nothing new. But the rift between the Republican leadership and the Catholic church is fresh and comes in the context of a sharp elevation of Catholic thinking in elite conservative American circles in the past 20 years.

Unlike evangelicals, American Catholics tend to vote like the country at large, split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. But since the turn of the century the Pope’s flock has been augmented by conservatives, political and doctrinal, who have seen in the church a more hospitable home for their beliefs. A steady flow of prominent converts (perhaps most famously JD Vance, the vice-president) have been attracted by the intellectual framework for faith developed from Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Merton, and a traditionalism in rite and dogma that sits comfortably within the conservative mindset.

 

Many of the so-called “postliberals” who have been in the forefront of rationalising modern populist nationalism, such as Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame, are also Catholics. Conservative Catholics have come to dominate the upper reaches of the judiciary — five of the six-member conservative majority of the Supreme Court are Catholics.

• Why Leo took on Donald — inside the Pope’s fight with Trump

Just as important, Rome’s part in the victory over godless communism at the end of the Cold War fostered a sense among conservative Americans that the church was their ally. St John Paul II, the fierce anti-communist credited with helping bring down the Soviet Union, was also an outspoken intendant of traditional moral teaching on issues such as abortion, gay rights and euthanasia.

 

All this seems to have created the mistaken impression for a lot of religiously inclined Americans that the Catholic church was the new Republican Party at prayer. But they had forgotten or ignored that the church’s fundamental social principles were all along rooted in the message of Jesus Christ and the primacy of Christian charity. For all his doctrinal and moral conservatism, John Paul frequently reminded followers of the church’s commitment to social justice, with condemnations of material inequality and the excesses of capitalism, asserting the moral imperative of support for the poor, the immigrant, the marginalised — as well as a strong aversion to wars of choice.

Some years ago a wag on Twitter captured this dissonance for many American Catholics. “Every lifelong Catholic I’ve ever met is like ‘I think we’re supposed to give this food to poor people’ and every adult convert is like ‘the Archon of Constantinople’s epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn’t have driver’s licenses’,” wrote @agraybee.

 For Maga-first Catholics Leo’s apostasy is a dismaying revelation that the Pope is after all a “Marxist”, as more than one prominent Trump supporter has described him this month. They may even start to consider that those colonists had it right all along.

Why Trump wants to spend $1 billion on Great Salt Lake by Saige Miller

 

At its peak, Great Salt Lake, located right outside the state's capital of Salt Lake City, was bigger than the state of Delaware, covering roughly 2,300 square miles, with a thriving ecosystem and the main reason Utah claimed to have "the greatest snow on Earth." Now, due to a severe water shortage caused by excessive water consumption and lackluster winters, the lake is a shadow of what it once was.

It's been labeled Utah's "environmental nuclear bomb" and it has the attention of the president of the United States.

"Very important to save The Great Salt Lake in Utah. This is an Environmental hazard that must be worked on, IMMEDIATELY — It is of tremendous interest to me," Trump wrote on Feb. 21 on Truth Social.

 

He ended the post with a twist on his trademark slogan, "MAKE 'THE LAKE' GREAT AGAIN!"

But a man from New York City didn't conveniently stumble upon a big, dying, salty lake located in the arid mountain west. The issue landed in front of Trump because someone in his inner circle gave him a nudge, which led to a meeting and the chance to do something no country has ever accomplished – the successful restoration of a terminal saline lake.

The survival of the lake – the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere – has been a priority for Utah leaders over the last several years. But they knew it couldn't conquer the colossal task on its own. That's why Utah, a state that prides itself on sovereignty and small-government, is seeking federal help to revive a landmark that is culturally, environmentally and economically vital to the region.

"If we are able to pull off this saline lake rescue, it will truly be a world first," said Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University.

 Utah's Republican Gov. Spencer Cox walked into the White House on a Monday in late February with a pitch to the president: join Utah in the fight to save Great Salt Lake.

 

The day before Cox hopped on a plane to Washington D.C. for the National Governors Association conference and White House dinner, he received a phone call, said Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah division of national resources.

"He got a call from the White House saying, 'Hey, President Trump would like to meet with you and a few other governors. Bring a couple of your top issues you guys can discuss,'" said Ferry. Ferry wasn't at the meeting but as one of Cox's closest advisors on the lake, he helped the governor prepare the pitch to the president.

It was a monumental moment for the state of Utah. Cox brought the problem of Great Salt Lake to the president's doorstep.

What was once water lies more than a thousand square miles of exposed lakebed. The parched playa is filled with heavy metals and toxins, such as arsenic, that pose serious respiratory health risks to approximately 2.5 million people. The toxic dust floats to neighboring states, such as Wyoming and Idaho during strong wind events. It's a primary source of fertilizer used to grow tree nuts. Critical minerals, such as lithium and magnesium are mined from the lake.

Its salty waters also hold up to 50% of the world's brine shrimp supply, which is the primary protein source for the farmed fish and shrimp consumed at restaurants and home dining tables globally. Millions of migratory birds pay a visit to Great Salt Lake every year and it supports an entire ecosystem that has been on the precipice of collapse for years because it fails to maintain adequate water levels.

 The lake's primary water source comes from Utah's snowpack. During bad snow years – and 2026 was Utah's worst snowfall on record – the lake suffers more. Water from the three main tributaries that feed into Great Salt Lake is often diverted for other purposes before it ever makes its way to the lake.

 

"For the past two years now, we've been working on a federal ask," said Abbott. The BYU professor studies saline lakes and is also the director of Grow the Flow, an advocacy organization centered around water conservation and shepherding water to Great Salt Lake.

Environmental stewardship isn't something Trump campaigned on so those lobbying for the lake knew they needed another way to appeal to the president.

Since returning to office, Trump has stripped billions of dollars in climate research, rolled back environmental regulations on emissions, incentivized companies to ditch renewable energy projects and has canceled billions of dollars in approved funding for clean energy projects. He's called climate change a "hoax" and frequently touts the U.S. is flushed with oil thanks to the "drill baby drill" mindset.

Trump didn't invite Cox inside his home on his own volition. One friend to the president got the ball rolling – Mark Burnett.

The former executive producer of NBC's The Apprentice, the reality TV show starring Trump, is now special envoy of the United Kingdom under the Trump administration. And he is a Great Salt Lake fan. He is a Utah transplant, a board member of Grow the Flow and involved in various other organizations focused on saving Great Salt Lake.

"So Mark and others have been talking with the federal government about the need for this coordination," Abbott said.

While Abbott tips his hat to Burnett for starting the conversation, Cox is the one who laid out the specifics to Trump in-person about why he should invest in the lake.

 Cox declined NPR's interview request but Ferry is one of the people who prepped the governor ahead of the meeting. Though, Ferry says Cox didn't need much prepping. Great Salt Lake is an issue Utah leaders have been working to resuscitate for nearly a decade; Cox knew the talking points.

 

"It was really just telling the story," Ferry said, "It's the largest lake west of the Mississippi. And it is in decline. It is disappearing. It is something that we can, if we put enough resources towards it and we do enough, we can change the trajectory."

From Ferry's perspective, the message resonated with Trump. The meeting, Ferry said, was originally scheduled for fifteen minutes. It lasted an hour and half. Trump made a commitment in that meeting, Ferry said, to make history.

Then, at the Feb. 21 White House dinner with governors, Trump pointed at Cox and reiterated the promise he made.

"We're going to save it. We're not going to let that go. That is what I call an environment, a real environmental problem," Trump told the audience.

 

The Trump effect

Since the initial meeting, Trump has made three mentions of the lake on social media. The most recent one, posted on March 10, declared he is the only one who can make it happen.

"I am also saving The Great Salt Lake, in Utah, which, in a short period of time, if nothing is done, will have no water. This is on top of everything else I am doing. Only 'TRUMP' CAN DO IT!," he wrote.

To stop the lake's decline and begin recovery, Abbott, the ecologist, said Great Salt Lake needs between 500,000 to 800,000 acre feet of water every year. If the goal is to return Great Salt Lake to what it once was, especially before Utah welcomes the world back for the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, Abbott estimates around one million acre feet of water annually must go to the lake.

"It's an enormous amount of water," Abbott said. "I don't know what political approach we need, except that it's got to be bold. It's got to be adaptive. We've got to try something new. And we've got to disrupt the status quo."

 

It'll also be very expensive. So Utah leaders are capitalizing on a Republican president in the White House and a narrow majority in Congress to hopefully get a huge budget request across the finish line. Cox told Utah reporters in February that he asked for one billion dollars in federal funds to help get water to the lake.

When Cox posed the figure, he said Trump "didn't flinch at all."

While Utah leaders have been strategizing how to get federal funding for years, they were successful this time around thanks to creative lobbying. The president's 2027 fiscal budget – which seeks cuts in many areas such as health care and other environmental priorities – includes the full $1 billion funding request for Great Salt Lake.

Congress, of course, will have the final say.

Civil rights groups condemn Southern Poverty Law Center’s indictment and prepare for legal fights by MATT BROWN

 

The criminal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center this week was met with much outrage but little surprise from civil rights leaders, who have for more than a year prepared for heightened legal scrutiny from the Trump administration, and how to mount a coordinated response.

In rounds of calls immediately following the indictment, advocates discussed how to support the SPLC, a Montgomery, Alabama-based civil rights group founded in 1971 that has tracked white supremacist groups and been outspoken on voting rights, immigration and policing. Organizers on one call agreed that winning in the court of public opinion would be crucial as judicial proceedings began, leading to dozens of public statements of support and planned rallies.

And legal advisors to civil rights groups urged organizers to prepare for similar criminal indictments, protracted legal action that may exhaust their resources and audits of their staff and internal documents. 

 The flurry of behind-the-scenes coordination represented a marked mobilization by activist groups that, like many universities, law firms and non-profits, have been at odds with the federal government since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year. 

 

“There’s a muscle that has been built among these organizations learned from the law firm debacle,” said Vanita Gupta, a former associate attorney general of the Justice Department during the Biden administration, referring to deals some major law firms made with the administration. Gupta led one of the calls that convened activists.

“The government’s goal is often to shut down and paralyze an organization, so that their work has to stop while they defend themselves. And the hope here is that with this broad effort to defend the SPLC, that will not happen,” said Gupta.

Organizers say they are prepared to back the SPLC in its legal fight.

 

“It’s a blatantly obvious attack on civil rights and civil liberties to whitewash the foot soldiers of the great replacement theory and other extremists. This coalition isn’t going silent,” said Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella organization of hundreds of civil rights groups.

Without addressing the indictment, a coalition of more than 100 activist groups on Tuesday published a letter vowing solidarity with groups that are “unjustly targeted” by the federal government. SPLC was a signatory to the pact.

“An attack on one is an attack on all,” the coalition declared. “We will share knowledge, resources, and support with any organization threatened by abuses of power.”

 

DOJ alleges criminal conduct in SPLC’s longtime informant network

The Justice Department alleges that the SPLC, which rose to prominence for its work prosecuting and tracking hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, violated federal law through its network of paid informants in extremist groups. The DOJ claims the payments funded hate groups and misled the SPLC’s donors.

The SPLC now faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought in the federal court in Alabama, where the organization is based.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at a press conference announcing the charges. Blanche promised the department “will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable.”

Longtime civil rights activists found the claims to be a disingenuous and partisan move that may empower extremist groups.

“The indictment is nakedly political and represents the Justice Department turning on itself,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “It places the Justice Department in the posture of, in effect, defending white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and others.”

Advocates also view the indictment as part of the administration’s broader upending of civil rights law and the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump’s political opponents.

The SPLC in recent years became a bogeyman among conservatives who resented that the watchdog designated several rightwing organizations that engage in Republican politics as hateful or extremist.

 

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which the SPLC has designated as a hate group, said the government should not only pursue convictions, but also restitution for those the SPLC has harmed.

“For years, the SPLC has used its platform to label and target organizations with whom it disagrees, often blurring the line between legitimate concern and ideological attack,” Perkins said in a statement. “That kind of reckless characterization doesn’t just damage reputations, it has put lives at risk.”

In October, FBI Director Kash Patel cancelled the agency’s longtime anti-extremism partnerships with the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism. Patel at the time called the SPLC a “partisan smear machine.”

 The Justice Department and SPLC did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Indictment represents marked shift for civil rights work

Advocates dispute the DOJ’s characterization of the SPLC’s work.

“The problem is that the indictment essentially claims that it was a fraud on SPLC’s donors to use their funds to fight the Klan, the Neo Nazis and other white supremacist groups, when that is exactly why people gave to the organization,” said Norm Eisen, founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a group that works with organizations in legal disputes with the Trump administration.

Eisen added: “The notion that there’s something wrong with using informants and protecting their identities to prevent white supremacist violence is belied by the fact that that is not only what the SPLC did, but it is also the stock and trade of the FBI itself.”

 

Civil rights organizations are now preparing for further legal action. Organizations have reviewed their document retention, tax compliance and auditing policies over the last year to safeguard against any probes or lawsuits.

Some civil rights organizations have also floated creating new organizational structures that may better withstand legal scrutiny. On another recent call, activists floated restructuring some groups into for-profit entities, or potentially crafting new financial conduits for donors to ensure that staff could receive pay if an organization’s assets were seized or frozen.

The preparations represent a marked shift for many civil rights leaders, who in recent years counted the Justice Department under both Democratic and Republican administrations as a reliable ally in key civil rights battles.

“What we are seeing in real time is an administration seeking to leverage its position to target individuals and organizations that do not agree with its political thought,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who said the Justice Department has been “weaponized by dangerous forces.”

But for other leaders, the SPLC indictment raised the specter of a return to a previous era, when the Justice Department monitored civil rights leaders to disrupt their activities.

“We’re not backing down, but we are clear-eyed. Everyone could be in some form of jeopardy if you’re in the crosshairs of this administration,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group suing the Trump administration over executive orders addressing birthright citizenship and mail-in voting.

“That’s what they’re looking for; they want this to have a chilling effect,” Proaño said.