President Joe Biden\u2019s White House has hosted staff and leadership of the Southern Poverty Law Center at least 11 times, and congressional Republicans want answers about whether the Department of Education has used the SPLC to demonize concerned parents. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter Monday to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona demanding all communications between his department and the SPLC, as well as all internal documents regarding the SPLC. The Southern Poverty Law Center is notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as \u201chate groups\u201d and placing them on a \u201chate map\u201d with Ku Klux Klan chapters. \u201cThe SPLC has a track record of labeling anything or anyone they disagree with as \u2018hate\u2019 or \u2018hate groups,\u2019 which ironically cheapens real hate they claim to want to root out,\u201d Comer told The Daily Signal this week in a written statement. Comer and two other committee chairmen are leading the House impeachment inquiry into Biden\u2019s alleged wrongdoing regarding his son Hunter Biden\u2019s foreign business deals in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere. \u201cThese false labels and claims have been used in the private sector as a basis to discriminate against certain groups and we need to know if the Biden administration is relying on them as well,\u201d Comer added. \u201cI wrote to Secretary of Education Cardona to understand how extensively federal employees are using biased information that discriminates against Americans for their First Amendment protected political opinions.\u201d \u201cThe First Amendment is not a suggestion, and the Oversight Committee will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for ignoring the Constitution to further a political agenda,\u201d Comer concluded. In his letter to Cardona, Comer announces that his committee \u201cis investigating the extent to which the Southern Poverty Law Center influences federal employees performing their duties on behalf of taxpayers as well as input from federal officials that could affect SPLC decisions to designate groups.\u201d Comer requests information to further the investigation. As I wrote in my book \u201cMaking Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,\u201d the SPLC has leveraged its track record of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to develop the \u201chate map\u201d it uses to smear enemies and raise money. Earlier this year, the SPLC placed parental rights organizations on the map, branding them \u201canti-student inclusion antigovernment extremist groups.\u201d In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC\u2019s map to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting in Washington, D.C. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the conservative organization on its map. Despite a sexual harassment and racial discrimination scandal that prompted the SPLC to fire its co-founder in 2019, and a former employee revealing the SPLC\u2019s \u201chate\u201d accusations to be a \u201chighly profitable scam,\u201d many on the Left continue to use the SPLC as a political and ideological weapon to silence their opponents. Comer\u2019s letter notes that \u201cthe SPLC has weaponized its designation of \u2018hate group\u2019 to target conservative persons, organizations, and non-profits who hold opposing viewpoints or policy positions. In 2019, a federal judge concluded that the SPLC\u2019s \u2018hate group\u2019 label does not \u2018depend upon objective data or evidence\u2019 and described the designation as \u2018an entirely subjective inquiry.\u2019 Despite this subjective slant, SPLC\u2019s labels have been used in the private sector as a basis for decisions to exclude partnerships with certain groups.\u201d Comer\u2019s letter also notes that the SPLC added parental rights groups to the \u201chate map\u201d \u201conly a few years after the Biden administration and the Department of Justice acquiesced to demands of the National School Boards Association to investigate parents and parents\u2019 rights activists who had chosen to speak up at school board meetings throughout the country.\u201d \u201cThe committee is concerned and seeks to understand the extent of engagement, influence, and the impact of SPLC within your department as well as any steps you may be taking to mitigate against it,\u201d Comer writes to the education secretary. \u201cThe American people have a right to know how extensively federal employees are utilizing or disseminating flawed and subjective information that effectively discriminates against them for their First Amendment protected political views.\u201d His letter requests that the agency hand over \u201call communications between the Department of Education and the Southern Poverty Law Center, its representatives, or other outside entities pertaining to SPLC,\u201d along with all of the department\u2019s internal communications pertaining to the SPLC, its \u201chate map,\u201d and its \u201cantigovernment group\u201d designation. Finally, the letter requests all communications \u201cpertaining to the SPLC\u2019s designation of any parental rights groups as \u2018antigovernment groups\u2019 or its placement of any parental rights groups on its \u2018hate map.\u2019\u201d The letter from the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee doesn\u2019t mention Learning for Justice, the SPLC\u2019s education arm, which promotes critical race theory (an approach to learning that analyzes America as institutionally or systemically racist) and LGBTQ orthodoxy. The Southern Poverty Law Center dropped the previous name for its education program, \u201cTeaching Tolerance,\u201d in 2021 after the George Floyd riots of 2020. The SPLC previously trumpeted the spread of its Teaching Tolerance magazine in schools across the country, but its website no longer notes the magazine\u2019s distribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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