100% Cotton: Senator Asks IRS to Investigate SPLC
For Southern Poverty Law Center, who’s desperately trying to stay afloat now that the world knows about its culture of systematic racism and bigotry, a bad month just got worse.
For Southern Poverty Law Center, who’s desperately trying to stay afloat now that the world knows about its culture of systematic racism and bigotry, a bad month just got worse. While SPLC is busy pretending nothing’s wrong (or worse, trying to fundraise off of what is), the story of the disgraced organization just took an interesting twist. While the liberal media is being forced to address SPLC’s lack of credibility, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is hoping to hit the group where it hurts: their wallet.
In the weeks since Morris Dees’s firing (for rampant bigotry and sexual harassment, it turns out), the hot seat hasn’t been kind to the uncivil-civil rights group. The SPLC’s longtime allies in the press, who’ve spent decades carrying water for the organization, are now being forced to acknowledge the unsavory deeds that have taken place behind the doors of the Poverty Palace. As offensive as it was that the group was smearing innocent conservatives, the idea that taxpayers might be unwittingly supporting a culture of systematic bigotry is a bridge too far for some senators. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, he calls on the agency to investigate.
On Fox News to talk about the request, Senator Cotton pointed out just how shady the SPLC’s financial dealings have been. “I don’t know many [nonprofits] that send their endowment overseas. Charity Watch gives them an F rating. They have become a hate group themselves and use that to stigmatize opponents. There are plenty of groups on the Left I don’t agree with, but I don’t stigmatize them as a hate group and peddle that to CNN and the New York Times.” Not to mention, he went on, the horrible allegations of workplace misconduct. “Talk about misusing funds! The founder was paid $400,000 a year. They do nothing other than sexually harass young women working in the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
If IRS didn’t mind targeting conservative groups without cause under Barack Obama, surely it won’t object to an investigation over actual wrongdoing. “The letter I sent today is just the first step I’m taking to get the IRS focused on this serious problem: a so-called ‘charity’ that has racism and sexual discrimination problems. It’s using that money to target political opponents. That’s not what American taxpayers are subsidizing with tax-exempt status. Not to sexually harass every woman in your office and discriminate against migrants,” he went on.
The letter itself doesn’t pull any punches. Two full pages, lined with citations, paint a grim picture of the 48-year-old organization, which, Cotton explains, “regularly engages in defamation of its political opponents.” In fact, he argues, SPLC’s “defining characteristic is to fundraise off of defamation.”
“This business model has paid well. The SPLC has accrued more than $500 million in assets,” he wrote. “According to the group’s most recent financial statement, it holds $121 million offshore in non-U.S. equity funds… Engaging in systematic defamation is not a tax-exempt purpose… The SPLC operates as a tax-sheltered slush fund to enrich its leadership. In addition to failing to have a tax-exempt purpose, the SPLC’s peculiar financial situation warrants your attention.”
Perhaps, Cotton closes, the SPLC “was founded for noble purposes… but what is left of SPLC is no longer operating in a manner consistent with IRS guidelines and applicable law… I encourage you to take immediate action.”
When they do, it’ll be interesting to see how many media outlets line up to cover it. The press, who’s been bailing from the SPLC bandwagon by the dozens, is under intense pressure to cut all ties with the humiliated group. Yesterday, a coalition of 67 conservative leaders and nonprofit groups demanded that reporters end all partnerships with the SPLC.
“Today’s SPLC is aggressively anti-Christian and morally bankrupt,” we write, “both inside and out. It attacks anyone who disagrees with its far-left agenda, smearing them with lies and grossly mischaracterizing their work. All the while SPLC has also been imploding from within… SPLC has lost all credibility. We call on all media, corporations, social media companies, and financial institutions to immediately stop relying on their discredited and partisan ‘hate’ and ‘extremist’ lists.”
Originally published here.
USDA Decides to Paws Kitten Research
Democrats might not lift a finger to help a newborn, but when it comes to kittens? They pounce. Just two weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) party started crusading to end cat abuse, the USDA had good news. A policy of humane treatment is now in full effect — just not, unfortunately, for children.
While Democrats cheered the announcement, 197 Republicans were marching down the House floor to try to get Pelosi’s party to give the same protection to perfectly healthy infants. Even Tuesday, after 25 tries, only two Democrats — Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) and Ben McAdams (D-Utah) — had the moral clarity and courage to sign on to the discharge petition that would force the House to go on the record about the practice of killing innocent babies. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up!
Even the Democrats’ statements were shockingly tone-deaf. While the GOP scrambled to find liberals with the decency to fight infanticide, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) praised the government for ending the brutality against cats. “I commend the USDA for their decision to end this type of testing on kittens,” he said with absolutely no sense of irony. “They listened to the people and responded appropriately to our concerns. This is how our institutions, our government, and our democracy should work.”
Just replace the word “kittens” with “newborns,” and you’ll see how indefensible the Left’s position on infanticide sounds. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the Senate sponsor of the bill, argued, “The KITTEN Act will protect these innocent animals from being needlessly euthanized… and make sure that they can be adopted by loving families instead.” Now imagine him saying, “The [Born-alive Survivors Protection Act] will protect these innocent [infants] from being needlessly [killed]… and make sure they can be adopted by loving families instead.”
Unfortunately, that’s the duplicity of the Left. They worry about the humane treatment of pets only to turn around and lobby for newborns to be killed on a table. At least KITTEN cosponsor Brian Mast (R-Fla.) has the dignity to oppose all kinds of violence. He may have championed the cats, but he also signed the discharge petition.
Making the story even more incredible, the USDA points out in its statement that it’s in the process of adopting “these 14 cats.” Democrats complain that there aren’t enough abortion survivors to worry about, but they started a national campaign based on a handful of animals? There are literally hundreds of infants being thrown out like garbage every year — a fact we know thanks to eye witnesses like Jill Stanek. When the CDC says there were 143 cases of babies born alive between 2002-14, the agency is only basing that number on the reports from six states! Factor in the other 44 — and the hundreds of undocumented “snippings” by monsters like Kermit Gosnell and Douglas Karpen — and we’re talking about entire schools of born children disappearing because Democrats won’t act. Maybe if they started meowing, liberals would care.
Help send Nancy Pelosi’s party a message about their upside-down priorities. Join our End Birth Day Abortion campaign and add to the tens of thousands of newborn hats that will be flooding the Democrat’s office.
Originally published here.
A Yale of a Controversy over Faith
The Yale motto is Latin for “Light and Truth,” but obviously its law school isn’t interested in either. In a stunning announcement, even for Ivy League elitists like these, the school has announced that anyone who works for a Christian group that supports natural marriage is no longer eligible for financial support — including mainstream groups like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
According to the Federalist’s Aaron Haviland, the flap started when the Yale Federalist Society invited an ADF attorney to talk about baker Jack Phillips’s Supreme Court case. The school’s LGBTQ group, Outlaws, flipped out that the club would invite a Christian group, who defended a man with natural marriage views. (Views, incidentally, that were vindicated by the Supreme Court!) But just because Jack can exercise his freedom doesn’t mean Yale law students can. If they want to work for organizations that believe what the plurality of Americans do about marriage, they’ll be blacklisted.
“On March 25, one month after the controversy, Yale Law School announced via email that it was extending its nondiscrimination policy to summer public interest fellowships, postgraduate public interest fellowships, and loan forgiveness for public interest careers. The school will no longer provide financial support for students and graduates who work at organizations that discriminate on the basis of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.’”
As far as the school’s Public Interest Committee is concerned, “…Yale Law School does not and should not support discrimination against its own students, financially or otherwise. Obviously, the Law School cannot prohibit a student from working for an employer who discriminates, but that is not a reason why Yale Law School should bear any obligation to fund that work, particularly if that organization does not give equal employment opportunity to all of our students.”
To Yale law students like Haviland, the policy is a slap in the face to Christians, who are suddenly a perfectly acceptable group to target. “Without naming ADF, Yale has found a roundabout way to functionally [discriminate against them] and other organizations that do not adhere to Yale’s progressive understanding of gender identity. Law students and graduates will still receive funding to work at organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union that defend abortion, for example. But if students and graduates want to work for ADF or other similarly situated religious or conservative organizations, they will get no help.”
You can bet that President Trump, who just turned the government’s attention to free speech on college campuses, isn’t going to stand by and let Yale’s phony idea of “tolerance” punish students with mainstream beliefs. It’s completely within the Department of Education’s power to ensure that universities like this one “promote free inquiry” while complying with federal law. Will there be language in the regulations about campus free speech that ban discrimination on the basis of religion? Let’s hope so.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
