Comer Targets Department of Education Over Ties to SPLC

Congressional Republicans have begun an investigation into the Biden administration Department of Education’s (DOE) alleged cozy relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the widely discredited left-wing organization that claims to be an arbiter of all that is hateful in America. On December 11, Representative James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona demanding documentation between his agency and the SPLC.

In 2019, the SPLC, which is quick to label mainstream conservative organizations, including The John Birch Society, as “hateful” or “racist,” was accused of those very sins by former staffers, one of whom referred to the SPLC as “a highly profitable scam.” Morris Dees, one of the group’s founders, was forced out of the organization over the accusations.

The SPLC’s “Hate Map” purportedly monitors what it calls “hate groups” in America.

“The SPLC has a track record of labeling anything or anyone they disagree with as ‘hate’ or ‘hate groups,’ which ironically cheapens real hate they claim to want to root out,” Comer told The Daily Signal.

Comer and the Oversight Committee have demanded that Cardona produce all communications between the DOE and the SPLC and internal communications regarding the far-left group from the time Joe Biden took office until now.

“The SPLC has weaponized its designation of ‘hate group’ to target conservative persons, organizations, and non-profits who hold opposing viewpoints or policy positions,” Comer wrote. “In 2019, a federal judge concluded that the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ label does not ‘depend upon objective data or evidence’ and described the designation as ‘an entirely subjective inquiry. Despite this subjective slant, SPLC’s labels have been used in the private sector as a basis for decisions to exclude partnerships with certain groups.”

According to Comer’s letter, the White House has hosted SPLC personnel at least 11 times over the past three years. The Oversight Committee was particularly interested in a January meeting between Susan Corke, the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, and National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli. After this meeting, the SPLC placed several parental rights’ groups on their “hate map” and branded them “anti-government.”

The letter suggests that there may have been some coordination between the Biden administration, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), and the SPLC in adding those parents’ rights groups to the “hate map.”

“The decision came only a few years after the Biden Administration and the Department of Justice (DOJ) acquiesced to demands of the National School Board [sic] Association (NSBA) to investigate parents and parents’ rights activists who had chosen to speak up at school board meetings throughout the country,” Comer wrote.

In a letter to Biden, the NSBA claimed that public educators were “under an immediate threat” of violence from parents who objected to the teaching of critical race theory and other far-left ideology in classrooms. NSBA wanted parents’ groups investigated as domestic terrorists.

The NSBA would later publicly back away from its demands, saying, “There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”

Comer’s letter also called out the SPLC for its role in an attack on the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012, when Floyd Lee Corkins targeted the group “with plans to carry out a mass shooting” in part because of the SPLC’s denotation of the FRC as a “hate group.” In addition, Comer noted an incident that occurred earlier this year when one of its attorneys was charged with domestic terrorism over violence in Atlanta over the city’s proposed training facility for new police officers.

Comer also noted that several SPLC employees signed a statement from the Democratic Socialists of America condemning Israel for provoking the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, claiming that Israel was an “apartheid state.”

According to Comer, any federal partnership with the SPLC is a First Amendment issue, since the organization routinely works to silence voices which it disagrees with.

“The 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,” Comer wrote. “The 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,” Comer declared.