I'm Virginia Allen and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, October 26th.

Here are today's headlines.

The new speaker of the house is already facing critique from the left.

Left-wing media and organizations have rushed to criticize new Republican house speaker Mike Johnson.

The New York Times ran an article saying that Johnson questioned climate science and received substantial donations from the oil and gas industry.

He has also been called an election denier for his role in legally questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Many of Johnson's critics have cited the Southern Poverty Law Center, which you all have heard us talk about on this show many times before.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan organizations into bankruptcy,

but has since changed to labeling mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the group to oust its president and co-founder,

a former employee said the hate accusations were a highly profitable scam.

Tyler O'Neill, who wrote the book Making Hate Pay, the Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,

covered this for the Daily Signal and detailed how left-wing groups like human rights campaign and citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington

cited the Southern Poverty Law Center and claiming that Johnson was linked to a hate group.

That so-called hate group organization is a alliance defending freedom, a religious liberty nonprofit law firm that has won numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

We turn now to a tragic story out of New England where police and Maine are continuing a hunt for a mass shooting suspect named Robert Card.

A series of mass shootings took place in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday night that Maine Governor Janet Mills says left 18 dead and 13 wounded per Fox 9.

There are still many things we don't yet know about these attacks, but the full weight of my administration is behind law enforcement's efforts to capture the person of interest, Robert Card.

To hold whoever's responsible for this atrocity accountable under the full force of state and federal law, and to seek full justice for the victims and their families.

Eight people were killed, Chemingy's bar and grill, and seven were killed at just-in-time recreation bowling alley. Three more died on the way to the hospital.

Maine State Police Colonel William Ross said that 40-year-old Card should be considered armed and dangerous.

According to the Maine Department of Public Safety, Card isn't listed in the U.S. Army Reserve.

He has had a history of troubling health incidents. According to ABC News, Card recently said he was hearing voices and allegedly threatened to shoot up the base he was stationed at at Sako Maine.

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