The Southern Poverty Law Center is &#8220;doxxing&#8221; the staff of the site Not the Bee, the website affiliated with The Babylon Bee that writes lighthearted news stories highlighting the absurdities of the Left.
SPLC published its piece on The Babylon Bee on Tuesday afternoon. It revealed the identities of six authors from Not The Bee from around the country who contribute to the site. SPLC published their names, where they lived, and their professions, which ranged from fitness instructor to high school teacher.
The Babylon Bee&#8217;s leadership team got ahead of SPLC&#8217;s story on Tuesday morning. Dan Dillon, CEO of Not The Bee, which publishes true stories so absurd that they seem like parodies, said SPLC managed to extract the identities of contributors who write under pseudonyms, and contacted the website saying it plans to publish their identities.
“They&#8217;ve taken personal information about our authors and pieced together a story that is meant to ‘expose’ our anonymous staff to their employers and the general public,” he said on X. “While we take the actual issue of doxxing very seriously and will defend those on staff that wish to stay anonymous, what we don&#8217;t take seriously is this organization that&#8217;s behind the attack. They are angry, bitter, resentful hacks that feel like their ability to pummel people into worldview submission is slipping away.”
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, said that his companies are still working to figure out how exactly the identities were extracted by SPLC, but he already knows exactly why it was done.
&#8220;They did it because they’re left-wing activists masquerading as journalists,&#8221; Dillon said. &#8220;They did it because they lack principles. They did it because they’re vindictive bullies who&#8217;ve admitted their aim is to &#8216;completely destroy&#8217; individuals and organizations they disagree with by making them pay a steep price for speaking freely.&#8221;
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The discredited, scandal-ridden smear factory known as the SPLC is about to publish a hit piece doxxing several of our “Not the Bee” writers who wished to remain anonymous so they could speak freely, without fear. The SPLC extracted sensitive information from our site, then used… <a href="https://t.co/toQLfga5SU">pic.twitter.com/toQLfga5SU</a>
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1858869596146811053?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 19, 2024</a></blockquote>
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SPLC was founded in 1971 by mail-order salesman Morris Dees. Dees had worked for notorious segregationist George Wallace, but with the advent of widespread revulsion at white supremacy, he saw an opportunity to apply his trade to raising money to oppose groups like the KKK. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees would say of SPLC&#8217;s business model.
Since such groups were, even then, essentially eradicated, it began declaring increasingly moderate groups — often Christian ones — to be “extremists,” keeping the fundraising going.
According to its 2022 <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/630598743/202430449349301428/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tax form</a>, it took in $170 million that year, and had about $700 million stashed away as “private investment funds.” $26 million was stored in “Central America and the Caribbean.” The <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/southern-poverty-law-center-transfers-millions-in-cash-to-offshore-entities/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Free Beacon</a> reported in 2019 that tax documents from 2014 showed it transferring millions of dollars to the Cayman Islands, a tax haven.
The group now has little to do with poverty in the South, and according to a former employee’s <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-reckoning-of-morris-dees-and-the-southern-poverty-law-center" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2019 essay</a>, almost all of its employees were white and straight. Dees was fired in 2019 after minority and female staffers said he engaged in racism and sexual harassment.
SPLC now functions as a smear factory, allowing reputable groups like legacy media outlets to call center-right groups extremists without engaging in defamation because they attribute it to SPLC, a nominal expert, instead of saying it themselves. In 2012, a left-wing gunman stormed the conservative think tank Family Research Council because he saw it listed as “anti-gay” by SPLC. He was later convicted of terrorism for the attack.
In 2018, SPLC’s insurance company <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-nawaz-v-splc/562646/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paid</a> British activist Maajid Nawaz $3.4 million because the group falsely named him an “anti-Muslim extremist.” Last year, a judge ruled that a defamation suit from the Dustin Inman Society could proceed after SPLC called it an “anti-immigrant hate group… vilifying all immigrants,” when the Society says it simply opposes illegal immigration.
Among the blog authors doxxed by SPLC were names such as &#8220;Planet Moron.&#8221;
The request for comment posted by Not The Bee said, “This is Creede Newton, a journalist with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.” It said that it had identified the real name of the pseudonymous “Planet Moron”’ and planned to publish the employment and residency information of the author because he is a “prolific writer on culture-war issues.”
Prominent conservatives defended The Babylon Bee ahead of the SPLC piece. Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro praised Dillon for going after SPLC rather than waiting for the smear to come out.
&#8220;This is the right strategy,&#8221; Shapiro wrote on X.
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This is the right strategy <a href="https://t.co/D93GP4xl0P">https://t.co/D93GP4xl0P</a>
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1858887276383645900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 19, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Chris Rufo, a journalist and activist, said on X that the fact that SPLC was going after a comedy site “proves that ‘systemic racism’ is such a marginal problem in American life that organizations supposedly dedicated to fighting it do things like this instead.”

SPLC

Left-Wing ‘Smear Factory’ SPLC Doxxes Babylon Bee-Linked Writers

Comedy

Social Media Censorship

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

A couple of weeks ago, I covered the large round of layoffs at the Left-wing activist group known as Media Matters. 
Many conservatives celebrated the news because of course, Media Matters exists for the sole purpose of smearing the opponents of the Democratic Party. They misrepresent people&#8217;s words, stalk them on social media, and so on. But Media Matters&#8217; dishonest attack on Elon Musk and Twitter appears to have been a bridge too far. Elon Musk fought back with a massive lawsuit, which Media Matters&#8217; management cited as one reason for the layoffs.
For my part, I wasn&#8217;t particularly thrilled with Media Matters&#8217; collapse because, as I said at the time, they essentially function as my PR agency. They keep clipping segments from my show and broadcasting them all over the place, apparently thinking they&#8217;ve found a &#8220;gotcha&#8221; moment. But really it&#8217;s always something that my own team was going to post online anyway. And they did all of this without taking or even requesting any compensation whatsoever from me. In fact, I never really even thanked them for the pro bono services they&#8217;ve provided dependably and frankly obsessively over the years. So Media Matters&#8217; downfall was something of a bittersweet moment for me.
Fast-forward just a couple of weeks, and yet another Left-wing smear factory appears to be on the decline. This time it&#8217;s the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). And this is a collapse I will openly celebrate because the SPLC is a substantially more effective organization than Media Matters could ever hope to be — more effective at actually advancing Left wing goals. Less effective as a defacto PR agency for us. So the worst of all worlds. If Media Matters is the B-team of Democratic Party hatchetmen, the SPLC is the A-team. And by that I mean, they&#8217;re still evil, but they have a lot more influence.
Thankfully, on Thursday, the SPLC announced it&#8217;s laying off 60 workers, or roughly a quarter of its staff. The union at the SPLC — because for some reason a nonprofit has a union — has said the cuts will have a &#8220;catastrophic impact&#8221; on SPLC&#8217;s day-to-day operations.They won&#8217;t be able to save democracy and fight white supremacy anymore, we&#8217;re told.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1387-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
This is an important story for two reasons. First of all, we&#8217;re just five months away from Election Day. Two of the Democrats&#8217; biggest propaganda outfits getting gutted at a pivotal time like this is a really bad sign for the party&#8217;s messaging efforts, and a great sign for the country. It also suggests that there might be a lot more internal discord within the party than we realized, which I&#8217;ll get into in a second. But the other reason this is an important story is that the SPLC has a direct line to federal law enforcement and Joe Biden&#8217;s DOJ.
We know that because the SPLC was one of the sources for the FBI&#8217;s memo last year proclaiming that, “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology&#8221; has attracted &#8220;racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.&#8221; The FBI warned that these &#8220;radical traditionalist&#8221; Catholics, or RTCs, can be identified by their, &#8220;frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.&#8221; The memo concluded by noting that these radical Catholic terrorists, &#8220;present opportunities for threat mitigation.&#8221;
The FBI&#8217;s memo, which was written by the Richmond field office, then went on to directly cite the SPLC: &#8220;Following are the nine RTC hate groups operating in the United States in 2021 as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center, followed by the location of their organizational headquarters.&#8221; The FBI then copy-pasted a webpage from the SPLC.
In other words, the SPLC functions a bit like the FBI&#8217;s cutout. They produce agenda-driven &#8220;threat assessments&#8221; or whatever, and then the FBI — pretending the SPLC is some sort of impartial arbiter — cites the SPLC to go after groups that the Democratic Party doesn&#8217;t like.
When he was asked about this under oath last year, the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, said he was &#8220;aghast&#8221; that the agency had cited the SPLC. He said he immediately had the memo removed from FBI systems. Watch:
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Christopher Wray says it was just one field office making an innocent little mistake, and that it won&#8217;t happen again. But no part of that statement appears to be true. The testimony you just saw was from March of last year. Seven months later, senators Chuck Grassley and James Lankford found that, &#8220;FBI Director Christopher Wray has yet to fully own up to the extent of the memo’s origins – even in congressional testimony. During a September FBI briefing to Senate staff, it was clear the FBI still relies on SPLC information.&#8221;
So the head of the FBI admits under oath that the SPLC is a garbage source. But the FBI is still apparently citing the SPLC in private briefings with the Senate. This is obviously a major problem — and it may constitute perjury by the FBI director — but it&#8217;s not really surprising. In an interview a couple of years ago, Wray admitted that the FBI also regularly works with another partisan and totally discredited Left-wing organization, the ADL. Here&#8217;s Wray speaking directly with the head of the ADL:
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FBI director Christopher Wray admitted on a call with Jonathan Greenblatt that the FBI works directly with the ADL for tips and targeting of those they have labeled “anti-semites.” This can be as straight forward as someone criticizing Israel. <a href="https://t.co/UiQBcPwwC6">pic.twitter.com/UiQBcPwwC6</a>
&mdash; Henrik Palmgren 🇸🇪 ᛟ (@Henrik_Palmgren) <a href="https://twitter.com/Henrik_Palmgren/status/1484401987789594626?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;It&#8217;s the FBI that works directly with the ADL every day,&#8221; says the head of the ADL. And the FBI director agrees, saying that the ADL apparently participates in law enforcement investigations.
This is the same ADL that sent out a memo warning about &#8220;extremist&#8221; parents at school board meetings who dare to question &#8220;COVID-19 mandates&#8221; and &#8220;Critical Race Theory.&#8221; (You might remember that Merrick Garland&#8217;s DOJ then began investigating these school board meetings, coincidentally enough). This is the same ADL that published a definition on its website saying that it&#8217;s impossible to be racist against white people. According to a definition that was on the ADL&#8217;s website for several years, racism means, &#8220;the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color.&#8221;
I could give many more examples, including the ADL&#8217;s political targeting of Elon Musk on behalf of the Democratic Party, or their various calls to censor conservative commentators and their lies about the so-called &#8220;great replacement theory.&#8221; The point is that this is not an organization that a nonpartisan FBI would ever dream of working with. But we don&#8217;t have a nonpartisan FBI, so instead, the FBI director is openly bragging about working directly with Left-wing activists. He only apologizes when he&#8217;s caught. And then he goes right back to doing the same thing.
Decades ago, back in the 70s, you could make a plausible case that the FBI should be working with groups like the SPLC. They were founded initially, supposedly, to fight various forms of discrimination in court — with the goal of alleviating the root causes of Southern poverty, particularly in the black community. But about a decade in, the SPLC decided to give up the idea of solving southern poverty — which as you may have noticed, is still quite pervasive. And instead, the SPLC morphed into a smear factory. They&#8217;ve gone after pretty much everyone with a position on abortion or immigration or Islamic extremism that they disagree with.
Some of the allegedly radical and hateful groups identified by the SPLC include such well-known domestic terror organizations as The Federalist Society, PragerU, the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Immigration Studies, the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, and the Family Research Council (which an SPLC follower targeted in an attempted mass murder back in 2012). These are all mainstream conservative organizations, as you probably know. But that didn&#8217;t faze the SPLC. They&#8217;ve also targeted people like Ben Carson, Dennis Prager, and Franklin Graham. Ben Carson, for example, appeared on the SPLC&#8217;s hate list because he holds the radical, unthinkable view that marriage is between one man and one woman — you know, that tenet of Christianity that&#8217;s also been a universal view for pretty much all of human history. (They later halfheartedly apologized for the hit on Carson, saying their smear job labeling him as an &#8220;extremist&#8221; didn&#8217;t meet their nonexistent “standards&#8221;). Not surprisingly, the SPLC also has a page on their website dedicated to exposing and cataloging the crimes of the dangerous extremist whose show you’re watching right now.
But all those attacks pale in comparison to SPLC&#8217;s efforts to defame Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz. They appeared in the SPLC&#8217;s &#8220;Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists&#8221; for the crime of denouncing violent Islamic extremism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the leading human rights activists alive, and she suffered female genital mutilation at the hands of actual extremists, but according to the SPLC, she has no right to criticize Islamic extremism. These claims were so absurd that the SPLC pulled its &#8220;field guide&#8221; on extremism entirely. They also publicly apologized for calling Nawaz an extremist and paid several million dollars in a settlement.
Again, this is the group that the FBI apparently still relies on for investigative information. That&#8217;s why we should all celebrate the fact that the SPLC has been gutted. It may mean fewer coordinated Left-wing assaults on pro-life organizations and pro-life activists, for one thing.
Unfortunately, like Media Matters, or any other form of highly invasive and malignant cancer, the SPLC probably will not go away entirely. It&#8217;s not shutting down, at least not right now. And they don&#8217;t appear to be having financial issues either, since they&#8217;re historically very well-funded — and they reportedly still receive donations from liberals who think defaming innocent people is some kind of public service. That&#8217;s according to the SPLC&#8217;s union, which tweeted yesterday:
<blockquote>Today, [SPLC] &#8211; an organization with nearly a billion dollars in reserves, given an F rating by CharityWatch for &#8216;hoarding&#8217; donations &#8211; gutted its staff by a quarter. SPLC’s decision has a catastrophic impact on the organization’s work in support of immigrants seeking justice and its mission to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance human rights through support of educators.</blockquote>
So there&#8217;s a bit of infighting going on at the SPLC. And that post does raise an interesting question: If it&#8217;s true that the SPLC is financially sound, why are they firing a bunch of employees? Over at Hot Air, <a href="https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/06/13/lots-of-layoffs-at-the-splc-n3790189" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Storm theorizes</a> that SPLC is laying off the far-Left fringe of its workforce because they&#8217;ve become unruly. That would explain why the SPLC&#8217;s union is lashing out at the SPLC right now on Twitter: 
<blockquote>As the Democrats rely more on radical activists,&#8221; Storm writes, &#8220;they can lose control of the messaging and direction. Younger folks who are now getting hired genuinely believe the world is on fire, that White Supremacy is on the rise, that settler colonialists are oppressing the natives, and that the borders must be open. The people at the top generally use the issues to collect money to help Democrats and slander Republicans. Suddenly they are facing revolts. I suspect that is part of what is at work here. The SPLC isn&#8217;t going broke, so it&#8217;s likely that they are dumping the most troublesome employees under the guise of a restructuring.</blockquote>
If that&#8217;s the case, then unfortunately, SPLC will probably stick around. But at least, like Media Matters, they&#8217;ll have to orchestrate their smears from now on with a lot less manpower. That means I&#8217;ll have fewer unpaid PR representatives going forward, spreading clips of my best moments all over the Internet. And yes, that&#8217;s a bummer, for me at least. But it also means that, without the SPLC running at full capacity, Joe Biden&#8217;s DOJ will have a harder time cooking up fake justifications to harass their political enemies. And with just a few months to go until the election, that&#8217;s unquestionably a big win for the &#8220;democracy&#8221; that Media Matters and the SPLC pretend to care so much about.
* * *
Correction: This article has been edited to correct the name of the SPLC in one instance from Southern Policy Law Center to Southern Poverty Law Center.

Businessman carrying box with personal belongings on sunny day

The Nation Rejoices As Another Left-Wing Smear Factory Suffers Mass Layoffs

Democrats

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Media Matters For America

Opinion

Readers Pass

After 9/11, dozens of state-run &#8220;Fusion Centers&#8221; <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-fusion-centers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">popped</a> up all over the country. Now there are roughly 79 of them in operation, and they exist in virtually every state. The point of these centers is supposedly to facilitate cooperation between the federal government and the states in order to gather intelligence and prevent terrorist attacks and other serious threats to the homeland. But here&#8217;s the strange thing: They don&#8217;t appear to be doing that.
A couple years ago, investigative reporters at The Nation <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-fusion-centers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that the Fusion Center in Central Florida was investigating, &#8220;Criminal and Violent Extremist Use of Emojis.&#8221; The Fort Worth Fusion Center, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a plot to break the Netflix star Joe Exotic out of prison, while the Capital Region Fusion Center was busy looking into viral TikTok challenges. The Washington State Fusion Center, for its part, opened an investigation into a report , “concerning a homeowner working on cars in his driveway and letting oil run down the street into Mission Creek in Olympia.”
In any other context, this would be considered fraud. These state governments are taking money to fight terrorism, but they&#8217;re not remotely attempting to do that. In fact, they don&#8217;t appear to be doing anything of consequence whatsoever, which in this context is especially strange. Normally, when federal and state governments give themselves vast powers of surveillance and lofty new mandates, they don&#8217;t waste their time chasing down homeowners who are being a little sloppy while they work on their cars. They usually start using their expanded powers as quickly as possible.
One of two things is happening here: Either these Fusion Centers are a massive and long-standing fraud, or there&#8217;s something else going on.
For a while now, there have been signs that the latter explanation is the more plausible one. In their investigation, the Nation obtained documentation indicating that one area of focus for these Fusion Centers is, &#8220;First Amendment-Protected Events.&#8221; But the journalists weren&#8217;t able to provide much more clarity, probably because the government redacted information on their investigations in this area. So, we learned all about the TikTok investigations at these Fusion Centers, but not so much about their crackdown on the First Amendment. And that&#8217;s where things have stood for the past several years.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1301-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
But yesterday, thanks to a <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/24/exclusive-adl-urged-law-enforcement-target-opponents-transgender-ideology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> by Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Signal, we have some indication of the actual mission of these Fusion Centers, and what &#8220;First Amendment-protected events&#8221; they might be interested in. The Daily Signal obtained an email sent in February of 2023 by the Anti-Defamation League (or ADL) to the Washington State Fusion Center. That&#8217;s the same Fusion Center that was looking into that homeowner working on his car.
Here&#8217;s the subject line: &#8220;White Supremacist Fight Clubs, Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate.&#8221; In the body of the email, the ADL warns about “online amplifiers of LGBTQ+ Hate” promoting “false narratives, escalating harassment of LGBTQ+ individuals.”
This alleged hate includes, &#8220;the vilification of drag shows&#8221; and “baseless claims of ‘child grooming’ by LGBTQ+ people.” According to the ADL&#8217;s email to this Washington state counterterrorism center, this vilification, “further endangered and isolated an already at-risk community.&#8221; 
According to the Daily Signal, the email then appears to link to an ADL blog post, which identifies the purveyors of this supposedly dangerous hatred as Libs of TikTok, Gays Against Groomers, Blaze Media, Christopher Rufo, and of course that infamous international terrorist who goes by the name Matt Walsh. The post states, “The ADL is advocating for government partners to strengthen laws against perpetrators of online hate, as well as consulting with law enforcement partners to act on online hate speech that incites violence and/or credible threats.&#8221; The ADL says it&#8217;s teamed up with GLAAD as well, and they&#8217;re all apparently working with law enforcement.
In other words, the ADL told a counterterrorism agency to investigate journalists and political commentators because we&#8217;re saying things they don&#8217;t like. They don&#8217;t even claim we violated any law. Instead, they&#8217;re saying that because we oppose the chemical and physical castration of children, and because we believe in biology, therefore we&#8217;re &#8220;inciting violence.&#8221; So they call on law enforcement to &#8220;act.&#8221; The Daily Signal reached out to the Washington State Patrol about this. They&#8217;re one of the state agencies that participates in this &#8220;Fusion Center.&#8221; They indicated they take emails from the ADL and various other interest groups under advisement, but they denied opening any investigation on the basis of the ADL&#8217;s email.
Obviously we have no idea whether that&#8217;s true or not. It would certainly be strange for the ADL to send an email like this to a counterterrorism center, if they thought it would just be ignored. We also have no idea how many similar emails the ADL has sent to this particular Fusion Center. What we do know is the ADL has a very long history of not simply advising law enforcement agencies, but participating directly in law enforcement functions.
This is a from a <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/the-fbi-and-the-adl-working-toward-a-world-without-hate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech</a> that James Comey, who was the FBI director at the time, delivered to the ADL&#8217;s leadership summit back in 2014. &#8220;The FBI works with the ADL to host civil rights and hate crime training for our state and local counterparts through a number of programs. &#8230; And the ADL, of course, has even greater reach; you trained more than 12,000 law enforcement personnel last year alone, and I want to thank you for that.&#8221;
So this is not a typical political nonprofit we&#8217;re talking about here. The ADL is conducting training for law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. And these partnerships have only <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/24/exclusive-adl-urged-law-enforcement-target-opponents-transgender-ideology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accelerated</a> in recent years, post-BLM. As the ADL states on its website, “In 2020 alone, ADL’s Center on Extremism provided law enforcement with critical intelligence about extremism over 1,000 times and tracked over 5,000 new incidents of hate on our online, interactive H.E.A.T. Map.” In other words, the ADL — which supposedly was founded to combat &#8220;antisemitism&#8221; — is now a de facto intelligence agency for federal and state law enforcement. This is the organization that&#8217;s now advising the Washington Fusion Center to investigate me and several other commentators for having offensive opinions.
If you know anything about the history of the ADL, this probably doesn&#8217;t surprise you. The ADL has a long and well-documented history of working with law enforcement — even going so far as to actively participate in law enforcement investigations. One of the more famous cases <a href="https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1993/eirv20n08-19930219/eirv20n08-19930219_057-the_adl_makes_strange_bedfellows.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">took place</a> in the 1960s, when an ADL director <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/08/archives/inquiry-on-fbi-in-klan-death-urged.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised money</a> for the FBI to pay some klansmen $36,000 in an effort to set up other klansmen. That incident led to a shootout and the death of one klan member. Whatever you make of that operation, journalists <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/08/archives/inquiry-on-fbi-in-klan-death-urged.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a> at the time that it was obviously a little strange for a private, tax-exempt organization to be involved in it. The ACLU <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/08/archives/inquiry-on-fbi-in-klan-death-urged.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> for an investigation. But in the end, no one seemed to mind. The ADL adopted a pseudo-law enforcement assistant role, which they&#8217;ve retained ever since.
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I&#8217;ve focused on the ADL so far, mainly because they&#8217;re the group that&#8217;s trying to have me investigated. But there are many other organizations like the ADL doing the same thing. Maybe the most notable is the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC. You might remember that the FBI <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/25/senate-candidates-virginia-pledge-investigate-splcs-federal-ties-attack-moms-liberty/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cited</a> the SPLC in its infamous <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/02/08/whistleblower-docs-fbi-cites-southern-poverty-law-center-in-report-on-radical-traditionalist-catholic-ideology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">memo</a> claiming that &#8220;Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology&#8221; is a significant terror threat. The FBI tried to hide that memo but a whistleblower came forward and released it. The SPLC is a completely discredited group; they&#8217;ve even had to pay out <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/southern-poverty-law-center-maajid-nawaz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">defamation</a> settlements for some of their more egregious hack jobs. And the bureau knows that, according to the whistleblower. But the FBI tried to cite them anyway, in order to justify the targeted surveillance of Catholics on the basis of their religious beliefs.
We&#8217;ve seen many examples of similar misconduct in recent years, in which the government partners with some supposedly independent, private entity in order to lend some legitimacy to its obviously illegitimate investigations. During the Trump campaign, the FBI effectively teamed up with the Washington Post in order to obtain secret surveillance warrants against the Trump team. The FBI even <a href="https://twitter.com/gregg_re/status/1658213172568793112" target="_blank" rel="noopener">copy-pasted</a> from a debunked Washington Post editorial in its FISA warrant application against Carter Page. 
More recently, the DOJ has been investigating Doctor Eithan Haim because he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-doctor-blew-the-whistle-on-his-hospitals-transgender-clinic-now-the-feds-are-trying-to-ruin-his-life" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blew the whistle</a> on Texas Children&#8217;s Hospital, which claimed to stop butchering children but kept doing it in secret. That got the attention of trans activists and their various advocacy groups, which in turn led the DOJ to knock on Haim&#8217;s door. They know they don&#8217;t have a legal case against him. They know it&#8217;s not a violation of patient privacy to disclose the existence of unlawful and unethical procedures, without disclosing patient identities. But they&#8217;re harassing him anyway. They want to send him to prison and take away his medical license.
It&#8217;s not hard to see where this leads. As I told the Daily Signal, I have no doubt that if Biden wins another term, we will actually see prominent conservative commentators arrested on hate crime and terrorism charges. They are laying the groundwork right now. First they open investigations and start surveillance. And then, once that&#8217;s normalized, they escalate things.
I recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/slippery-slope-confirmed-again-50-year-old-man-competes-against-13-year-old-girls" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote about</a> slippery slopes in relation to trans ideology. This is yet another slippery slope that we&#8217;re on. The ADL is telling government counterterrorism centers to suppress political dissent. Unless they pay a price for this — and unless law enforcement agencies stop taking marching orders from these compromised activist groups — then they will continue to make these demands. And eventually they&#8217;ll get what they want.
At that point, if it gets that far, the only real question will be which of us do they hit first and try to make an example out of.

Screenshot 2024-01-25 at 2.35.57 PM copy

The ADL Pushes Law Enforcement To Investigate Me For The Crime Of Having Opinions

Anti-Defamation League

Department of Homeland Security

The founders of Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group, plan to sue the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/southern-poverty-law-center-splc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> (SPLC) for defamation after it labeled the coalition an extremist group.
The Florida-based Moms for Liberty launched in 2021 after COVID restrictions paused typical schooling and moved education behind masks or online. The results for students caught in the pandemic were disastrous as mental health issues <a href="https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/pediatric-childrens-mental-health-crisis-ECRI-top-safety-concern/644731/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jumped</a> and test scores <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/schools-are-back-and-confronting-devastating-learning-losses-11662472087" target="_blank" rel="noopener">slumped</a>.
Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice co-founded Moms for Liberty with Bridget Ziegler, who has since exited the group, leaving Descovich and Justice in charge. The trio founded the group not only to push back against detrimental health policies, but to reinforce parental authority over a child’s education as well. Since its founding, Moms for Liberty has expanded to include hundreds of chapters across almost every state in the U.S.
In 2022, the SPLC in its annual Year in Hate and Extremism <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> called Moms for Liberty an “extremist” coalition of “far-right antigovernment parents” known for “intimidating and harassing teachers and school officials.” It said Moms for Liberty is “one of the most recognized names in the anti-student inclusion movement” for the group’s opposition to explicit and Critical Race Theory materials being available and taught to students at school.
The designation is false and libelous, Justice told The Daily Wire. Descovich and Justice are in the early stages of planning a lawsuit against the SPLC for defamation.
“We’re not threatening to do it, we’re going to do it if we feel that we have an ability to do that,” Justice said. “Defamation is a hard claim in court, but it is certainly affecting our chapters and hurting our chapters all over the country, and intentionally so is the point. And it’s totally unfounded.”
The SPLC’s designation places Moms for Liberty alongside neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, as well as conservative Christian groups such as the Family Research Council, an example of critics’ observation that the SPLC often conflates mainstream conservatives and activists with racists and bigots.
“The designation is being used widely by the media. There are people, liberal activists, that are using it to try to hurt our chapters, to try to hurt our moms,” she continued. “The SPLC has put a target on the back of every American mom and dad. Shame on them.”
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Justice said the main Moms for Liberty office in Florida is receiving examples of how the SPLC designation and description of the group is impacting members’ ability to conduct outreach. In one example reported in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-do-not-co-parent-with-the-government-justice-descovich-education-rights-d9609fc6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Wall Street Journal</a>, a Moms for Liberty event planned to take place at Milwaukee’s Italian Community Center was canceled after a reporter inquired to the event space’s booker about the group. In the ensuing article about the cancelation, the reporter described Moms for Liberty as “a group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist antigovernment organization.”
“The SPLC needs to be held accountable,” Justice said, “and we’re going to work to do everything we can to make sure that they’re held accountable.”
Justice said she also suspects that Moms for Liberty has been singled out for pressure from the federal government. She said she has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of Justice and the White House for information on how the SPLC listing might be used.
“We want to know, how is this list being used? How is the federal government using this list? Are they using it?” Justice said, pointing out that President Joe Biden has <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/05/white-house-records-biden-personally-met-splc-staff-6-times-foreshadowing-renewed-attacks-parent-groups/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">met</a> with representatives of the SPLC multiple times in the White House. “What are they discussing? What are they talking about?”
“The American people want to know. American people are tired of the federal government being weaponized against us. We will not be shamed or silenced out of defending our parental rights and our children and the future of our country. And so we’re going to do everything that we need to do to get the right information to be able to hold the SPLC accountable,” she said.

Tiffany Justice

Moms For Liberty Promises Legal Action Over SPLC ‘Hate And Extremism’ Report

Courts

Department of Justice

Florida

U.S.

White House

Death threats and political attacks against the parental rights group Moms for Liberty have ramped up after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) put them on its &#8220;<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hate map</a>&#8221; alongside the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.
Moms for Liberty said it has received more death threats and hateful messages over the last few weeks since June 6, when the SPLC released its “The Year in Hate and Extremism” <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/introduction#hateextremism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> for 2022.
The SPLC, an uber-leftist civil rights watchdog, frequently brands conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” and this year, that <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moms-liberty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">included</a> Moms for Liberty as well as other parental rights groups like Parents Defending Education.
“Schools, especially, have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks, frequently through the guise of ‘parents’ rights’ groups,” the SPLC said in its report.
Moms for Liberty is “at the forefront of this mobilization,” the SPLC said.
Moms for Liberty said it has received the threats through voicemails, emails, and responses on its “Contact Us” page.
“I will personally eradicate you from Massachusetts,” one person <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/10/exclusive-moms-for-liberty-undaunted-by-death-threats-being-treated-as-subhuman-after-splc-attack/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, calling them &#8220;nasty sows.&#8221;
A person who put their name as “Execute All-Nazis” wrote, “Piece of s*** fascists like you deserve to be dragged against a wall and force-fed hot lead. Eat s*** and die.”
“You women have no soul, no morals, for quoting Adolf Hitler in your newsletter,” another person wrote. “The state should remove your kids and/or grand kids from your homes. Evil, evil, evil people you are!”
Last month, a Moms for Liberty chapter <a href="https://apnews.com/article/moms-for-liberty-adolf-hitler-newsletter-quote-bcce698e901b9e782970030ccd710512#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">included</a> in their newsletter the quote, “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,” and cited Hitler. It later updated the newsletter with more context, saying the &#8220;quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert.&#8221;
Another person appeared to reference the SPLC&#8217;s report, calling Moms for Liberty &#8220;extremest [sic]&#8221; and &#8220;biggoted [sic]&#8221; in a profanity-laced rant.
A person who put their name as “Satan Anti-Christ” wrote that Moms for Liberty “will answer for the crimes YOU committed against our LGBTQ children (legally of course).”
Even an elected official joined in the name-calling.
&#8220;Assholes with casseroles, taliban in minivan,&#8221; tweeted Democrat New Hampshire state Representative Catherine Sofikitis.
https://twitter.com/nashuaward7/status/1678141739847090177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1678141739847090177%7Ctwgr%5E8f75a918a71ef29aeae1932f2dea4461f0e9d250%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&#038;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Fdemocrat-state-rep-calls-moms-liberty-members-taliban-targeted-tweet
Tina Descovich, a Moms for Liberty co-founder, referenced the 2012 shooting at the conservative Family Research Council&#8217;s headquarters, which the shooter targeted after he found them online through the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I don’t think you have to look any further than at the Family Research Council and how they were threatened by a shooter because of the designation as a ‘hate group,&#8217;” Descovich <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/10/exclusive-moms-for-liberty-undaunted-by-death-threats-being-treated-as-subhuman-after-splc-attack/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
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“It gave people permission to treat us as subhuman,” Tiffany Justice, another Moms for Liberty co-founder, told The Daily Signal, saying critics are trying to “whip people up into such a frenzy that they end up sending death threats to me and to the members and our children.”
“Designating us as a hate group gives people permission to dehumanize us, and the SPLC knows it,” Justice said.
Moms for Liberty was started in 2021 by two former school board members responding to COVID restrictions in schools. Since then, the group has expanded its fight to include issues like sexual content in curricula and school libraries, gender pronoun <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/media/files/pages-page/6d92a117/10questionsparentsshouldask.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policies</a> in schools, declining <a href="https://twitter.com/Moms4Liberty/status/1652730841682923520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grades</a> and test scores, and <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/news/-parents-revolted-against-critical-race-theory-heres-how-they-won/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">racial</a> curriculum content with leftist overtones.
Members of Moms for Liberty often show up to school board meetings around the country, sometimes wearing matching t-shirts reading, “We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.”

US-POLITICS-VOTE-EDUCATION-LITERATURE

Death Threats To Moms For Liberty Ramp Up After SPLC Lumped Them With KKK: ‘Taliban In Minivan’

Death Threats To Moms For Liberty Ramp Up After SPLC Lumped Them With KKK

Education

Hate Crime

Hate Speech

Parental Rights in Education

Politics

Public Schools

Serious <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jun/28/republicans-probe-whether-white-house-collaborated/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">questions</a> have arisen about whether the White House encouraged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to label parental rights groups as “extremist” in its most recent “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/introduction" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Year in Hate Extremism</a>” report. Just last week, two U.S. Senators and 10 members of Congress sent President Joe Biden a <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c2415dee-c0fa-4678-8fba-bf9399a04246/34F446F7928BEAFF40BCB7F2DC494746.06.28.23---letter-to-president-biden-re-splc-designation-for-parental-rights-groups.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> questioning the purpose of a curious meeting between the SPLC and the National Security Council. And it has come to light that <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/05/white-house-records-biden-personally-met-splc-staff-6-times-foreshadowing-renewed-attacks-parent-groups/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">White House visitor logs</a> reflect multiple meetings between the SPLC and the president himself over the last few years.
Parents have become a target because they are a powerful force in American society. From <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/michigan-parent-reads-graphic-passages-revolt-pornographic-books-school-libraries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">local school board meetings</a> to the <a href="https://parentalrights.org/parental-rights-amendment-introduced-in-congress/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">halls of Congress</a>, concerned parents are speaking out — influencing <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/11/03/glenn-youngkin-win-seen-as-victory-for-virginia-school-parents/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">elections</a>, seeking redress in <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/barr-v-tucker?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">courts of law</a>, and impacting <a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/california_voters_support_parental_rights_by_overwhelming_margins" target="_blank" rel="noopener">public</a> <a href="https://parentalrightsfoundation.org/poll2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opinion</a>.
According to the SPLC’s “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hate Map</a>,” however, average American moms and dads are not loving by any means. Instead, the SPLC wants us to believe that ordinary parents are the new perpetuators of hate in American society.
Once a respected civil rights organization, the SPLC is now targeting parent groups by disingenuously categorizing them with organizations like the American Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan — equating “hate” with political disagreement on hot-button cultural issues.
A <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/13/exposed-far-left-smear-factory-attacked-moms-liberty-exaggerates-hate-groups-267/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent analysis</a> demonstrated how the SPLC actually inflates “hate” by at least 267%, padding numbers by counting every regional chapter of <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moms for Liberty</a>, or by slapping the “hate” label on groups that disagree with the SPLC’s radical political positions.
As the parental rights movement has gained momentum across mainstream America, the SPLC’s strategy to shame and silence dissent has shifted from conservative organizations to parents. Nearly 25% of the “hate and anti-government groups” listed on the SPLC’s 2022 “Hate Map” are parental rights advocacy groups united around common concern for their children, their communities, and the foundational liberties and institutions which sustain the American way of life.
These parent organizations are not promoting anti-American sentiments or seeking to overthrow the U.S. government. Quite the opposite. Made up of religiously, racially, and ethnically diverse parents, these groups are working only to preserve the American family and the innocence of children.
Such parent-led groups have proliferated in recent years as parental rights have come under increasing threat. They were born of necessity in response to the rapid promulgation of harmful school policies, ideologically driven curriculum, and anti-parent legislation — all of which unlawfully encroach on the enduring tradition of the family structure and erode the historically protected rights of parents to raise their children without illegitimate governmental interference.
School districts like the <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/bf-v-kettle-moraine-school-district?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kettle Moraine School District</a>, the <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/bf-v-kettle-moraine-school-district?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Madison Metropolitan School District,</a> and the <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Harrisonburg City Public Schools</a> are encouraging children to adopt different names and opposite-sex pronouns at school, hiding important information about children’s gender confusion from parents, and even compelling teachers to lie to parents about the different identities children use at school.
And other districts like the <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Albemarle County School Board</a> are introducing divisive theories through curriculum and teacher training that push students to see themselves and everyone through the lens of race, compelling students to affirm ideas contrary to their families’ deeply held moral, philosophical, and religious beliefs.
States like <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> and <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Minnesota</a> are passing laws that <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unlawfully</a> cut caring parents out of life-changing decisions about how best to help gender-confused children. These laws entice children to run away in search of puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones if their parents will not blindly follow the state’s ideologically driven standard of care mandating that such harmful physical interventions are the only way to treat a child’s internal feelings of discomfort with their sex.
These parent groups are not motivated by hate. They are compelled — by a matchless love and sober duty unique to the parent-child relationship — to preserve their unalienable right to raise and nurture their children within the sanctity of their family.
Parents deserve laws and policies that provide government accountability, offer choices regarding their child’s education and health care, and demand transparency when their child expresses confusion about their sex and a desire to be called by a different name and pronouns at school.
A coalition of groups on the SPLC’s “Hate Map,” including <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No Left Turn in Education</a> and <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eagle Forum</a>, support the <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Promise to America’s Parents</a>, which provides a roadmap for parents, faith leaders, and lawmakers to work together and act to safeguard children and their families. These groups — and all parents — should be able to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms without being labeled “anti-government extremists.”
Based on <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">100 years</a> of <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Supreme Court </a><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/530/57/">jurisprudence</a>, parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, care, and education of their children in accordance with their moral values and religious beliefs. It is deeply rooted in American history and tradition (and has been “<a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">beyond debate</a>” for many decades) that our Constitution values and protects the primary role of parents in raising their children. Indeed, as the Pierce Court famously declared, “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
The SPLC is right about one thing — hate has no place in our society. But concerned parents exercising their constitutional rights, affirming biological reality, opposing destructive ideologies, and protecting their children from harm is not hate. It’s love — love for family and love for country. As Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “I believe unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
Sharon Supp is senior research analyst for <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> (<a href="https://adflegal.org/case/df-v-harrisonburg-city-public-school-board?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@ADFLegal</a>).
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Facade of a government building, White House, Washington DC, USA

SPLC Labels Parents As Perpetrators Of Hate, Gets White House Welcome

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Biden Admin

Parents rights

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) put several parental rights groups on its <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;hate map&#8221;</a> alongside the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.
The SPLC, an uber-leftist civil rights watchdog, frequently brands conservative and Christian organizations &#8220;hate groups,&#8221; and this year that <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moms-liberty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">includes</a> parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.
“Schools, especially, have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks, frequently through the guise of ‘parents’ rights’ groups,” the SPLC said in its &#8220;The Year in Hate and Extremism&#8221; <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/introduction#hateextremism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> for 2022, released on Tuesday.
Moms for Liberty is &#8220;at the forefront of this mobilization,&#8221; the SPLC said.
The list of &#8220;hate groups&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/06/breaking-southern-poverty-law-center-adds-parental-rights-groups-hate-map/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">includes</a> 230 chapters of Moms for Liberty, 12 chapters of Parental Rights in Education, a group called No Left Turn in Education, and several chapters of another group called Parents Involved in Education.
The SPLC said extremist groups include &#8220;antigovernment&#8221; groups as well as &#8220;hate groups.&#8221;
The report <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/introduction#hateextremism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lists</a> 523 “hate groups” and 702 “antigovernment extremist groups,” a total of 1,225 active groups.
Moms for Liberty is listed on the hate map as an &#8220;antigovernment movement.&#8221;
&#8220;Hate groups hold beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics, while antigovernment groups see the federal government as an enemy of the people and promote baseless conspiracy theories,&#8221; the SPLC said.
Moms for Liberty &#8220;hijacks&#8221; school board meetings and prevents school officials from their normal proceedings, the report says.
Moms for Liberty was started in 2021 by two former school board members responding to COVID restrictions in schools. Since then, the group has expanded its fight to include issues like sexual content in curricula and school libraries, gender pronoun <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/media/files/pages-page/6d92a117/10questionsparentsshouldask.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policies</a> in schools, declining <a href="https://twitter.com/Moms4Liberty/status/1652730841682923520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grades</a> and test scores, and <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/news/-parents-revolted-against-critical-race-theory-heres-how-they-won/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">racial</a> curriculum content with leftist overtones.
Members of Moms for Liberty often show up to school board meetings around the country, sometimes wearing matching t-shirts reading, “We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.”
School and teachers union officials have complained about Moms for Liberty chapters disrupting their ordinary course of business.
“I can be sitting in a meeting minding my own business, and they turn around and scream at me that I am a commie and teachers want to see all kids fail,” a teacher’s union president in Brevard County, Florida, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/moms-for-liberty-parents-rights/2021/10/14/bf3d9ccc-286a-11ec-8831-a31e7b3de188_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The Washington Post.
The SPLC compared Moms for Liberty with those who fought against school desegregation in the 1960s.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://onelink.to/dwapp" data-sk="tooltip_parent" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-10962">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
&#8220;Galvanizing supporters around supposed &#8216;parental rights&#8217; and &#8216;family values&#8217; is nothing new – similar rallying cries were adopted by those who opposed school desegregation during the civil rights movement and by the <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/05/moral-majority-story-nro-symposium/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moral Majority</a> of the 1980s,&#8221; the SPLC said. &#8220;These political slogans have been used repeatedly because they are effective, framing the organizing of far-right activists as something done solely out of real concern for children.&#8221;
Moms for Liberty&#8217;s primary goal is to &#8220;fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students,&#8221; especially black and LGBT students, the SPLC alleged.
The parental rights group opposes Critical Race Theory, but they are really targeting black history and culture, the SPLC alleged.
The SPLC also said that Moms for Liberty chapters have attacked the book &#8220;Gender Queer,&#8221; which includes pornographic cartoon illustrations of sex between two males with a sex toy,  as well as oral sex, masturbation, and other sexually explicit content.
The SPLC did not describe the issues that galvanized parental rights groups around the time the pandemic and school lockdowns began, such as pronoun policies and sexual curriculum content.

Parental Rights Groups Now On ‘Hate Map’ With KKK, Southern Poverty Law Center Decides

Parental Rights Groups Now On 'Hate Map' With KKK, Southern Poverty Law Center Decides

Activists

COVID

Social Issues

An attorney with the far-left nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested Sunday for allegedly committing domestic terrorism to stop a police facility from being built.
The Atlanta police department said Sunday night that Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/atlanta-rioters-face-domestic-terrorism-charges-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">23 people charged</a> after a &#8220;group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.&#8221;
According to the <a href="https://gabar.reliaguide.com/lawyer/32801-GA-Thomas-Jurgens-395724" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State Bar</a> of Georgia, Thomas Webb Jurgens is an attorney for the SPLC who was admitted to the bar in 2021. He is one of only two of the 23 alleged agitators who were actually from Georgia, according to the police.
On LinkedIn, Jurgens says he is a staff attorney for the SPLC&#8217;s Economic Justice Project, a former assistant public defender in Orlando, and a graduate of the University of Georgia. Public records reviewed by The Daily Wire matching the name and birthdate provided by Atlanta police match up with the job history on LinkedIn, showing the study of law at the University of Georgia and past residency in Orlando.
SPLC&#8217;s website says its Economic Justice initiative seeks to reform the criminal justice system, &#8220;stopping the use of &#8216;offender-funded&#8217; services such as private &#8216;probation&#8217; companies&#8221; and &#8220;working to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/our-issues/economic-justice" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reform bail systems</a> that discriminate against the poor and to stamp out abusive practices by bail bond companies.&#8221;
The SPLC did not return a request for comment. Jurgens&#8217; cell phone was turned off.
Jurgen&#8217;s arrest was first noted by Republican operative <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1632813829674377216" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Greg Price</a>, who pointed out that the FBI has relied on SPLC&#8217;s judgments about who is a &#8220;hate group.&#8221; Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) asked in response: &#8220;Will the SPLC be listing itself as a hate group?&#8221;
Last month, an FBI whistleblower leaked a document showing that the FBI was investigating those practicing &#8220;radical-traditionalist <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/02/09/breaking-fbi-rescinds-radical-traditionalist-catholic-ideology-document-citing-southern-poverty-law-center/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Catholic</a> ideology&#8221; as potential domestic extremists, in part by citing that the SPLC listed the faction among its &#8220;hate groups.&#8221; The FBI rescinded the document after it leaked, saying it &#8220;does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.&#8221;
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The FBI previously called the SPLC &#8220;a well-known, established and credible&#8221; organization, and it has briefed the FBI on purported domestic terror, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-lawmaker-wants-answers-on-fbis-alleged-southern-poverty-law-center-ties" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News</a> reported.
In 2013, a man <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/06/justice/dc-family-research-council-shooting/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shot</a> an employee of the Family Research Council (FRC), targeting it, he said, because SPLC said it was a hate group. He said he planned to kill as many people as possible there and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches on them as they died.
SLPC raises millions of dollars through fundraising solicitations suggesting that they&#8217;re stamping out groups like the KKK. In reality, it has branded a wide variety of conservative groups as &#8220;hate groups,&#8221; and conducts generic liberal advocacy such as opposing school choice.
SPLC has enormous influence in the public school system through Learning for Justice, its initiative which produces highly activist curriculum and gives it to teachers for free, encouraging them to use the outside lesson plan, which teachers find enticing because it saves them time of creating their own.

Tom Jurgens

Southern Poverty Law Center Attorney Charged With Terrorism In Atlanta Riot

SPLC Attorney Charged With Domestic Terrorism In Atlanta

Atlanta

Terrorism

After the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/supreme-court">Supreme Court</a> refused to hear a case from a Christian non-profit that sued the hard-left <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/southern-poverty-law-center-splc">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> (SPLC) for defamation, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22069543/thomascoralopn062722.pdf">blistering dissent</a>, stating that he wanted to reconsider the “actual malice” standard for libel protecting the “New York Times and its progeny.” Thomas was referencing the case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
The Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari to Coral Ridge Ministries Media, which had applied to receive donations through AmazonSmile in 2017, but was then told it was ineligible because the SPLC had designated Coral Ridge a “hate group,” prompting Coral Ridge to sue for defamation.
The SPLC said Coral Ridge was a “hate group” because of its Biblical views concerning human sexuality and marriage.
“Coral Ridge maintained that although it ‘opposes homosexual conduct’ based on its religious beliefs, it is in no sense a ‘hate group,” Thomas noted, then quoted from Coral Ridge’s claims: “To the contrary, it ‘has nothing but love for people who engage in homosexual conduct’ and ‘has never attacked or maligned anyone on the basis of engaging in homosexual conduct.’”
“Coral Ridge alleged that SPLC was aware that it was not a ‘hate group,’ but falsely labeled it one anyway to ‘destroy the Ministry’ by ‘dissuading people and organizations from donating to [it].’” Thomas continued. “SPLC responded that its ‘hate group’ designation was protected by the First Amendment.”
The District Court dismissed Coral Ridge&#8217;s complaint for failure to state a claim, asserting that as a “public figure,” Coral Ridge had to prove three elements to rebut SPLC’s First Amendment defense: the “hate group” claim had to be (1) provably false, (2) actually false, and (3) made with “actual malice.”
Thomas continued:
<blockquote>The court concluded that SPLC&#8217;s “hate group” designation was not provably false because “hate group’ has a highly debatable and ambiguous meaning. Additionally, the court held that Coral Ridge had not plausibly alleged that SPLC acted with “actual malice,” as defined by this Court&#8217;s decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.</blockquote>
Then the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision but based its own decision exclusively on the “actual malice” standard.
“A ‘public figure’ laboring under the ‘actual malice’ standard must prove that a defamatory statement was made ‘with knowledge that it was false or with reckless dis regard of whether it was false or not,’” Thomas explained. “Coral Ridge now asks us to reconsider the ‘actual malice’ standard.”
He added bluntly, “As I have said previously, ‘we should.’”
“I would grant certiorari in this case to revisit the ‘actual malice’ standard,” Thomas declared. “This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”
He concluded:
<blockquote>SPLC&#8217;s “hate group” designation lumped Coral Ridge&#8217;s Christian ministry with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis. It placed Coral Ridge on an interactive, online “Hate Map” and caused Coral Ridge concrete financial injury by excluding it from the AmazonSmile donation program. Nonetheless, unable to satisfy the “almost impossible” actual-malice standard this Court has imposed, Coral Ridge could not hold SPLC to account for what it maintains is a blatant falsehood.
Because the Court should not “insulate those who perpetrate lies from traditional remedies like libel suits” unless “the First Amendment requires” us to do so, I respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.</blockquote>
&nbsp;

Justice Thomas Attends Forum On His 30 Year Supreme Court Legacy

Supreme Court Rejects Case Challenging ‘Actual Malice’ Defamation Standard; Thomas Dissents

Clarence Thomas

Defamation

New York Times

A new poll by the far-left <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/southern-poverty-law-center-splc">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> found that nearly half of young Democrat men support assassinating political figures they consider dangerous to the country or democracy.
The finding was <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/06/01/poll-finds-support-great-replacement-hard-right-ideas">buried</a> in the cross tabs of a poll that claimed the &#8220;hard right&#8221; favors so-called replacement theory. The poll of 1,500 adult Americans was conducted by the center and Tulchin Research to &#8220;examine the extent to which the extremist beliefs and narratives that mobilize the hard right have been absorbed by the wider American public.&#8221;
&#8220;We found that the ideas underpinning the white nationalist &#8216;great replacement&#8217; narrative recently cited by an alleged white supremacist terrorist in Buffalo, New York, have become thoroughly mainstream on the political right,&#8221; the SPLC said of its findings.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Southern Poverty Law Center says 44% of “young Democratic men” are open to the idea of assassinating political leaders. <a href="https://t.co/nayDmXzfxI">pic.twitter.com/nayDmXzfxI</a>
&mdash; J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) <a href="https://twitter.com/JMichaelWaller/status/1534954997678542850?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
But as Democrats and several media outlets did in the wake of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shooter-kills-10-wounds-three-in-buffalo-grocery-store-authorities-investigating-as-racially-motivated-attack">May 14 shooting</a> that left 10 dead and three injured, the SPLC conflated &#8220;replacement theory,&#8221; an anti-Semitic trope that claims Jews are out to change America&#8217;s demographics for malevolent purposes, with the belief many conservative share that Democrats&#8217; immigration agenda involves bringing in people they believe are predisposed to voting Democrat.
Perhaps more damning is the finding that 44% of &#8220;younger Democratic Men&#8221; approve of &#8220;assassinating a politician who is harming the country or our democracy.&#8221; The number was 34% for their Republican counterparts.
<div id="attachment_394305" style="width: 936px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-394305" class="wp-image-394305 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-10-at-12.14.00-PM-926x576.png" alt="One finding in a Southern Poverty Law Center poll showed 44% of young Democrat men supported assassination of political leaders if they believed they were hurting the country or democracy" width="926" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-10-at-12.14.00-PM-926x576.png 926w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-10-at-12.14.00-PM-300x187.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-10-at-12.14.00-PM-768x478.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-10-at-12.14.00-PM.png 1392w" sizes="(max-width: 926px) 100vw, 926px" />One finding in a Southern Poverty Law Center poll showed 44% of young Democrat men support assassinating political leaders if they believed the leaders were hurting the country or democracy.</div>
The poll was taken in late April and released earlier this month.
The findings are particularly disturbing given that a man fitting the poll&#8217;s description was arrested Wednesday morning outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s home with a gun, a knife, zip ties, and tactical gear. He allegedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-id-armed-man-who-said-he-wanted-to-kill-supreme-court-justice-kavanaugh-report">told</a> authorities he intended to kill the jurist.
The suspect, Nicholas John Roske, age 26, of Simi Valley, California, allegedly wanted to assassinate Kavanaugh because of the justice&#8217;s perceived pro-gun and anti-abortion positions. Roske was charged with attempted murder of a Supreme Court Justice.
The SPLC, founded in 1971 as a legal advocacy organization, is famous for condemning conservative organizations as &#8220;hate groups,&#8221; including the <a href="https://adflegal.org/setting-the-record-straight">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> and the <a href="https://acpeds.org/about/faq/acpeds-responds-to-splc-criticisms">American College of Pediatricians</a>. It reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/endowment-of-southern-poverty-law-center-nears-500-million">has</a> nearly $500 million in assets.
&#8220;It is now clear that the SPLC has proven to be a hate-filled, anti-Christian, anti-conservative organization and nothing more than a weapon of the radical Left, whose goal is to bully people into compliance with their ideology,&#8221; a group of 25 faith-based groups and leaders <a href="https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2019/april/hate-filled-anti-christian-anti-conservative-organization-why-the-splc-has-been-given-an-f-by-charity-watch">stated</a> in a 2019 letter to corporate donors. &#8220;Fail to comply with their demands, and you will be labeled as a hate group or an extremist.&#8221;

Leftist SPLC Poll Includes Shocking Finding About Democrats’ Support For Assassinations

Leftist SPLC Poll Includes Shocking Finding About Democrats' Support For Assassinations

Crime

Great Replacement Theory

A left-wing activist with ties to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) nominated by President Joe Biden to be a federal judge has argued photo ID and proof of citizenship constitute “voter suppression.”
Nancy Gbana Abudu, the deputy legal director at SPLC, was picked by Biden in December to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The 11th Circuit covers parts of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. The vacancy came about upon the retirement of Judge Beverly B. Martin — a President Barack Obama appointee. 
Abudu worked for the ACLU from 2005 to 2019 and was an 11th Circuit staff attorney from 2002 to 2004. Along with U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs, she was part of Biden’s twelfth round of judicial nominees, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/23/president-biden-names-twelfth-round-of-judicial-nominees/">according</a> to a White House memo. 
Biden put forth 75 judges in 2021. The memo states that his nominees “reflect the diversity” Biden “promise[d]” in courts and that Abudu “would be the first African-American woman judge ever to sit on the Eleventh Circuit.”
‘Voter Suppression’ Remarks
In a 2011 <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/q-a-aclu-attorney-nancy-abudu-focused-on-voting-rights/article_58b5d843-d8f3-5101-8db3-ef5613d44f1f.html">interview</a> dug up by The Daily Wire, Abudu asserted that “95 percent” of her work with the ACLU at the time involved “voting rights.” She notably said “photo ID” and “proof of citizenship,” two long-established requirements to vote, are indicative of “voter suppression:”
<blockquote>Obviously, we do a lot when it comes to voter suppression, which includes five priority areas: photo ID, proof of citizenship, restrictions we see when it comes to registration &#8230; early voting as well as absentee voting and the restrictions we see when it comes to criminal convictions. We also do a lot with student voting.</blockquote>
Abudu said her “biggest concern” as an ACLU attorney “regarding voter suppression” was states “passing laws requiring voters to have photo IDs.” She slammed South Carolina for not permitting students to show campus IDs to vote, calling it “restrictive.” 
The Biden nominee has continued to argue that various voting requirements are discriminatory. In <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/08/27/defending-democracy-splc-calls-senate-swiftly-pass-john-r-lewis-voting-rights-advancement">August</a>, Abudu called on the Senate to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — H.R. 4 — in order “to protect the future of American democracy.” 
“As HR 4 moves to the Senate, some senators have already committed to doing everything in their power to oppose the bill – up to and including leveraging a legislative tool popular with pro-Jim Crow senators of the past – to prevent its passage and to further erode the fundamental right to vote,” Abudu wrote, likening Republicans today to Democrats who upheld laws that discriminated against minorities in the past.
In a thematically-<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/03/05/spirit-john-lewis-passion-and-commitment-voting-rights-icon-call-us-action">similar</a> March 2021 writing, Abudu likened efforts by lawmakers to protect election security to efforts to suppress black voters in the 1960s. She slammed Georgia for its “Election Integrity Act of 2021,” which mandates voter ID for mail-in ballots, halts absentee ballot acceptance within 11 days of an election, and restricts third parties from handing out gifts to voters at polling places, <a href="https://thefga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Georgia_election_integrity_act.pdf">among</a> other provisions. 
‘Separate and Unequal Society’
Biden’s judicial pick for the 11th Circuit aligns with the administration’s opposition to election security measures. Upon the signing of the Georgia bill by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, for instance, the president <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/03/26/biden-georgia-election-law-is-jim-crow-in-the-21st-century/">called</a> it “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” 
In a statement to The Daily Wire, the Republican National Committee (RNC) said voter turnout actually went up in Georgia following the bill, revealing it is not restrictive.
“Turnout in Atlanta’s 2021 municipal elections rose by 17 percent compared to 2017 following the passage of Georgia’s recent election integrity legislation — clear proof that Democrats are lying about election integrity for political gain,” spokesman Gates McGavick said. 
Abudu <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/06/12/57th-anniversary-medgar-evers-assassination-march-voting-rights-continues">echoed</a> the administration’s “Jim Crow” sentiment in a June 2020 article. She claimed America is a “separate and unequal society” and that the criminal justice system “ruin[s] people’s lives forever.” She also said laws barring convicted felons from voting are similar to slavery. See below:
<blockquote>When you add laws that prohibit people with a criminal conviction from voting, it’s practically the same system as during slavery – Black people who have lost their freedom and cannot vote. And without access to the ballot, a victim of the system cannot elect the very officials pulling the levers to hire the police, determine which cases are prosecuted and what sentences are imposed. </blockquote>
The contentious background of a federal nominee comes as no surprise. Biden has put forth activists many have argued operate in the progressive fringes of their fields, such as Vanita Gupta, Xavier Becerra, David Chipman, Rachel Levine, and others. 
The ACLU and SPLC are not the only left-wing groups Abudu seems to have interaction with. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-abudu-81852b6/recent-activity/">According</a> to her LinkedIn page, she recently liked a post <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahar-aziz-0b3b764/">from</a> Rutgers Law School “social justice scholar” Sahar Aziz, who was announcing her selection by progressive billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to be an “equality fellow.” The group has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html">donated</a> millions of dollars to groups like the Black Voters Matter Fund, a <a href="https://blackvotersmatterfund.org/">spin-off</a> of the Black Lives Matter movement. 
Abudu could not be reached for comment in time for publication. 
Ilya Shapiro, vice president of the Cato Institute and director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, told The Daily Wire he thinks Biden has been focused on harnessing the power of the executive branch for “non-traditional” progressive ends, including for judgeships.
“Biden has focused not only on checking demographic boxes, however, but on nominating public defenders, activists, and others with backgrounds considered ‘non-traditional’ for federal judges,” said Shapiro. “It&#8217;s good to add different perspectives to the bench, but it also means that many of these nominees are more progressive and ideological than previous Democratic picks.”
The White House did not respond to a Daily Wire request for comment.
Send story tips to Gabe Kaminsky at <a href="mailto:gekaminsky@protonmail.com">gekaminsky@protonmail.com</a>. Follow him <a href="https://twitter.com/Gabe__Kaminsky">on Twitter.</a> 
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President Biden Delivers Remarks In Philadelphia On Protecting Voting Rights

Biden Judicial Nominee Said ‘Proof of Citizenship’ is ‘Voter Suppression’

ACLU

Biden Administration

On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) pressed billionaire Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, about AmazonSmile&#8217;s reliance on left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center and their &#8220;hate group&#8221; lists.
Amazon uses the SPLC&#8217;s designations, and relies on other originations, to choose their acceptable charities for AmazonSmile, a program that allows customers to pick a charity for Amazon to donate to.
The SPLC, ostensibly a civil rights organization, has smeared mainstream conservatives, such as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and religious liberty organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
Bezos shocked Gaetz, admitting that the left-wing group is flawed and saying that he would like to find a better source for the company to rely on.
&#8220;You don&#8217;t believe Dr. Ben Carson is an extremist, do you?&#8221; Gaetz asked Bezos, referring to the SPLC&#8217;s sliming of Carson.
&#8220;No, sir,&#8221; Bezos answered, &#8220;I don&#8217;t.&#8221;
&#8220;So, help me understand why you would partner with a group that labels him as someone worthy of an extremist watchlist,&#8221; Gaetz pressed.
&#8220;We&#8217;re trying to make it possible for people to donate to any number of, from millions of different charities, and we need to have some sort of data to use,&#8221; Bezos responded. &#8220;And, while I accept what you&#8217;re saying, that the Southern Poverty Law Center &#8230; [is] not perfect — and I would like a better source if we could get it — that is what we use today.&#8221;
&#8220;That&#8217;s breaking news,&#8221; Gaetz said, noting that he was pleased with Bezos&#8217; admission that the SPLC has major &#8220;infirmities.&#8221;
“I’m going to acknowledge this is an imperfect system,” Bezos added of the company&#8217;s reliance on the SPLC. “I would love suggestions on better or additional sources for how to &#8230; &#8221;
“My suggestion is that you divorce from the SPLC,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz similarly asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about his company&#8217;s supposed reliance on the left-wing group, but he said he did not believe his company uses the group.
&#8220;No, congressman,&#8221; Zuckerberg told Gaetz regarding whether he thought Carson was an &#8220;extremist.&#8221; The Facebook CEO added, &#8220;I&#8217;m not aware of where we work with the organization that you&#8217;re saying.&#8221;
In April, the SPLC <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/04/07/facebooks-strategy-taking-down-hate-groups-spotty-and-ineffective">complained</a> of Facebook&#8217;s supposed &#8220;spotty and ineffective&#8221; &#8220;strategy&#8221; for &#8220;taking down&#8221; so-called &#8220;hate groups.&#8221;
ADF, which has long been smeared as a &#8220;hate group&#8221; by the SPLC over its religious liberty work, was pleased with the admission from Bezos and is hoping the massive company will actually make the changes the CEO claims to want.
“Our hope would be that it finally impresses upon Amazon the importance to fix this problem which they’ve now heard about for a very long period of time,” ADF vice president of advocacy Jeremy Tedesco <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/30/conservative-groups-leveraging-big-tech-hearing-po/">told</a> The Washington Times. “At some point, they’re going to get the message and make a change.”
In June, <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/amazons-foolish-collaboration-with-the-southern-poverty-law-center/">National Review</a> slammed Amazon for relying on the SPLC:
<blockquote>For those who do not know, the SPLC is a legal-advocacy organization that tries to police the Overton Window of acceptable discourse in the United States,&#8221; National Review outlined. &#8220;They are notorious for their <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/groups" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">famous list </a>of &#8216;hate groups,&#8217; which names nonprofits like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American College of Pediatricians alongside groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam.
The SPLC’s promiscuous proclivity for damning any group or individual to the right of Samantha Bee on social issues now restricts the ability of Amazon’s customers to donate to nonprofit organizations of their choice. It’s somewhat baffling that Amazon would choose to place their flagship charitable enterprise under the yoke of the SPLC given that its reputation has been in free-fall for some time, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/28/morris-dees-splc-trump-southern-poverty-law-center-215312" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">not only in the eyes of those on the right</a>. The nonprofit watchdog CharityWatch gives the SPLC an F, its lowest grade, on account of the fact that it has over six and a half years worth of available assets in reserve. Philanthropy Roundtable, another nonprofit-monitoring group, has this to say about the group’s financial structure.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/RepMattGaetz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepMattGaetz</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JeffBezos</a>: &quot;You don&#39;t believe <a href="https://twitter.com/SecretaryCarson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecretaryCarson</a> is an extremist, do you? So help me understand why you would partner with a group that labels him as [one]?&quot; <a href="https://t.co/VBksKFH3SF">pic.twitter.com/VBksKFH3SF</a>
&mdash; Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) <a href="https://twitter.com/ADFLegal/status/1288619246797361154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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