Nick Fuentes

Nick Fuentes is a livestreamer who hosts the broadcast “America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes,” founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), and is listed on IRS returns as president and chief executive of the America First Foundation. He was subpoenaed by the House January 6 Select Committee in January 2022 and sued the federal government over air-travel restrictions in a case dismissed for lack of standing in 2023.

In his own 2022 federal pleading he describes himself as “an American journalist, political commentator, activist, and businessman.”

Broadcasting and the America First Show

ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center both date the start of his “America First” show to February 2017, when it was carried on the Right Side Broadcasting Network and he was a student at Boston University. ADL states that he left the university later that year after reporting that he had received threats following his attendance at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; the SPLC dates that attendance to August 12, 2017. ADL further records an April 2018 speaking appearance at the American Renaissance conference and a December 2019 “Groyper Leadership Summit” in Florida co-hosted with Patrick Casey.

The SPLC dates the campaign in which his followers used question-and-answer sessions at Turning Point USA campus events to challenge the organization’s speakers to October and November 2019.

America First Political Action Conference and the America First Foundation

The first AFPAC was held on February 28, 2020, according to the SPLC, and ADL describes the conference as founded that year to sit opposite the annual CPAC gathering. ADL’s published profile states that a fourth conference scheduled for Detroit on June 15, 2024 was cancelled after the venue terminated the booking.

The America First Foundation is a registered 501(c)(4) organization, EIN 85-1088352, with a Chicago, Illinois address and an IRS exemption ruling date of June 2021. Nicholas Fuentes is listed as its president and chief executive on every Form 990 return in the IRS record, from the fiscal 2021 short form through the fiscal 2025 return filed on March 13, 2026. Other officers named across those returns include Jaden McNeil, Michelle Malkin, Vincent Foxx and Jonathan Miller. The returns report revenue of $200,023 in fiscal 2022 and negative revenue of$31,479 against $72,240 of expenses in fiscal 2025. No officer is reported as receiving compensation.

2020 Post-Election Rallies and January 6

In his amended complaint Fuentes states that he attended and spoke at rallies in Lansing, Michigan on November 11, 2020; Washington, D.C. on November 14 and December 12, 2020; Atlanta, Georgia from November 18 to 22, 2020; Phoenix, Arizona from November 28 to 30, 2020; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on December 5, 2020. He says he went to Washington on January 6, 2021 for the rally at the Ellipse, marched to the west side of the Capitol, remained within the permitted demonstration area, and delivered a speech there. ADL’s testimony states that he does not appear to have entered the Capitol building.

On January 19, 2022 the January 6 Select Committee announced subpoenas to Fuentes and Patrick Casey for records and testimony. The committee’s press release describes both as leaders of the “America First” or “Groyper” movement who were present on the Capitol grounds on January 6 and who had spoken at the November 14 and December 12, 2020 events, and refers to public reports that both received tens of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin from a French computer programmer, funds the FBI examined. Fuentes’ own complaint describes two donations from an anonymous donor — 0.135 BTC on August 16, 2020 and 13.5 BTC on December 7, 2020 — and states that he had no communication with the donor beyond two email exchanges.

Litigation Over Air Travel

Fuentes sued President Biden, the Attorney General, the FBI director, the TSA and other federal officials in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on November 23, 2021, seeking a declaration that TSA’s operation of the No Fly List violated his First, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In his amended complaint he alleged that the Justice Department froze his Bank of America account on January 25, 2021, that TSA revoked his PreCheck enrollment on January 27, 2021, that he was unable to board flights beginning on April 25, 2021, and that a March 11, 2022 letter from the Department of Homeland Security told him he had been placed on a “Deny Boarding List” on the basis of statements he made on his broadcast.

On January 27, 2023 Judge Amit P. Mehta granted the government’s motion to dismiss. The court’s findings were narrow and jurisdictional: TSA had removed Fuentes from its Deny Boarding List on November 2, 2021, three weeks before he filed suit; the government submitted a sworn declaration that it would not return him to the list on the information then available; and an airline error rather than a TSA restriction had prevented him from flying on March 19, 2022. Because he could not show an ongoing or certainly impending injury, he lacked standing, and the court did not reach the merits of his constitutional claims.

Platform Access and Cozy.tv

ADL’s testimony states that Fuentes streamed heavily on DLive before being removed from it, that he claims bans from Airbnb, Facebook and Instagram, and that he has been repeatedly suspended from other platforms. ADL records that on October 12, 2021 he launched Cozy.tv, a livestreaming site he described as “the only site on the internet where live-streamers can stream without being censored.” ADL also notes that he describes himself as “the most censored man alive.”

Characterizations by Advocacy Organizations

ADL describes Fuentes as “a white supremacist leader, organizer and podcaster who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream GOP.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as “a white nationalist livestreamer who advocates pulling the Republican Party further to the extreme far-right end of the political spectrum.” Both descriptions are those organizations’ own; this page does not restate them as findings of fact.

Renewed Mainstream Attention, 2025

“The Tucker Carlson Show” published an interview with Fuentes on October 27, 2025. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts released a video on October 30, 2025 defending Carlson; the following day he said Heritage denounces Fuentes’ “vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories.” At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force resigned over the episode, as did the economist Stephen Moore, and Roberts later apologized to staff. Carlson’s show published a follow-up episode on November 20, 2025 titled “Why Is Nick Fuentes So Popular? Nikki Haley’s Son Explains.”

What Is Not Established Here

This page previously asserted in the project’s own voice that Fuentes is a “white nationalist commentator” known for “white nationalist rhetoric,” and that he “remains active in white nationalist organizing.” Those characterizations now appear only where they can be attributed to the organization that made them.

Removed for want of a source that met this project’s standard: the claim that he gained attention “broadcasting pro-Trump commentary during the 2016 election” (the sourced start date for his show is February 2017); the framing of 2018–2020 as a period in which he was banned from “YouTube and other mainstream platforms” (no company statement or first-party record of any specific platform action was located — ADL reports only that Fuentes claims bans from Airbnb, Facebook and Instagram); the claim that he faced “financial deplatforming” and “bans from mainstream payment processors”; the assertion that his suspensions and reinstatements on Twitter were repeated; the characterization of his audience as younger viewers who “describe his content as more provocative than mainstream Republican media”; the claim that he “encourages followers to challenge Republican candidates on immigration, demographics, and foreign policy positions” as a general practice; and the claim of collaboration with Milo Yiannopoulos on America First conferences, for which no record was found — his own pleading records only a single conversation with Yiannopoulos before January 6, 2021. The corresponding milo-yiannopoulos connection was removed.

The “No-Fly List Claims” bullet, which said he “reported being placed on a federal watchlist,” understated a documented record and is replaced by the litigation section above. The court found he was on a TSA Deny Boarding List and had been removed from it on November 2, 2021.

The followerCount field, which read “Hundreds of thousands across livestream and messaging platforms,” was removed: no current figure could be verified, as Instagram and X do not serve automated requests. ADL’s April 2025 update gives roughly 724,000 combined followers as of March 2025, which is an ADL estimate and not a platform figure. The cozy-tv entry was removed from primaryPlatforms because no platforms page with that slug exists in this repository; Cozy.tv is described in the body instead.

The November 22, 2022 Mar-a-Lago dinner with Donald Trump and Ye is stated by ADL and appears as a chapter heading in Carlson’s own 2025 interview, but no first-party record of it was obtained, so it is not asserted as a dated event above. The “assassination attempt on Fuentes” referenced in that same chapter list is likewise unverified and is not described here. His birth year of 1998 rests on the SPLC profile alone; no primary record of his date of birth was located, and the Library of Congress name authority file has no entry for him.