GOP Probes Whether White House Colluded With SPLC
Florida Republicans are demanding that the Biden administration answer as to whether it colluded with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to label parents’ organizations such as Moms for Liberty as “extremist groups” on its latest so-called “hate map.”
Conservatives have long been concerned about the Biden administration’s connections to the SPLC, which is an organization dedicated to smearing conservatives — often including mainstream conservative groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council on their so-called “hate map” alongside racist and neo-Nazi groups.
In a Wednesday letter to President Joe Biden led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), several Florida Republicans demanded information about a meeting between Susan Corke, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, and National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli at the White House on January 6.
“This meeting raises serious questions as to whether the White House encouraged SPLC to work on behalf of the administration to label parental rights groups and organizations as ‘extremist groups,’” read the letter signed by Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and eight House Republicans from Florida.
The letter went on to point out that the Florida-based Moms for Liberty and other parental rights groups had been added to the SPLC’s so-called “hate map” and the far-left organization’s “2022: The Year in Hate” report that was released on June 6.
“SPLC’s bad-faith designation of Moms for Liberty, as well as other parental rights groups, should come as no surprise, as SPLC is a corrupt and vicious tool of progressive radicals seeking to label individuals and groups with whom they disagree as hateful and/or extremist,” the letter stated.
The Florida lawmakers also requested details about the January 6 meeting at the White House — including whether the Biden administration had encouraged or pressured the SPLC to target parental rights groups — and questioned whether the White House had used taxpayer funds to “target parents.”
“Does the administration agree with SPLC that parental rights groups should be labeled “extremist groups”?” the lawmakers asked.
Heritage Foundation senior counsel Mike Gonzalez has previously discussed the strange coincidence that two days after the SPLC released its “Year in Hate” report, the Biden administration issued a strategy to “protect LGBTQI+ communities.”
In a Wednesday op-ed, Gonzalez wrote that the White House report “said it had ‘monitoring’ evidence that members of the LGBT groups face threats ‘increasingly tied to hate groups and domestic violent extremists.’ Just excellent timing? Anything is possible, but Congress ought to investigate if there indeed was a collaboration between the corrupt SPLC and the White House. Such coordination would not be new.”
The decision by the SPLC to add parental rights groups to the “hate map” increased the number of so-called “hate groups” from 733 in 2021 to 1,225 in 2022 — which included labeling hundreds of state and local chapters of organizations like Moms for Liberty and Parents Rights in Education as “antigovernment groups.”
“Schools are a primary target for locally driven extremist mobilization, according to the report, with 12 anti-student inclusion groups leading a movement to gain power through school boards to attack public education, ban books, and remove any curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination, and LGBTQ+ identities,” the SPLC claimed in a June 6 press release.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center has put a target on the back of every mom that wants to stand up and speak out on behalf of her child,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich told the Daily Signal.
