'Unusually frequent donations'

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This episode is “FUNbelievable!”. Join us as we examine XUXA, the bizarre children’s variety show from 1993 starring a millionaire Brazilian media icon, who barely spoke English. Freakish human/animal sidekicks, gaggles of children running amok CONTINUE READING... The post Remember That Show? Ep. 21: XUXA appeared first on The Retro Network.

Kamala Harris consented to a puffball panel discussion with the National Association of Black Journalists on Sept. 17, and it was announced that PolitiFact would engage in live “fact-checking.” Their Twitter feed then displayed 14 checks on Kamala’s answers. The first one was labeled “False,” and all the rest of them were “True,” “Accurate,” or basically okey-dokey. On Sept. 11, PolitiFact hit a new milestone in leftist aggression. Former President Donald Trump was thumped with a “Pants on Fire” tag for the 200th time with “they’re eating the pets” in Springfield, Ohio. He’s been tagged with flaming pants 12 times since June 1. Harris, by contrast, has zero. She was first elected statewide in California in 2010. Your two candidates this year, not exactly “neck-and-neck” at 200 to nothing. Now compare this to national politicians since PolitiFact came on the scene in 2007. Joe Biden has seven “Pants On Fire” ratings, and only one as president. Barack Obama has nine, Hillary Clinton has nine, Bill Clinton has three, and Bernie Sanders has a perfect zero like Kamala. Even Republicans don’t have anything like Trump’s 200. George W. Bush has zero, John McCain had eight, Ted Cruz has 11, Newt Gingrich has 12, and surprisingly, Mitt Romney has 19 — and 18 of those came in 2011 and 2012, when he challenged Obama for the White House. Their weirdest Romney “Pants on Fire” came when he said, “We’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy.” You can argue we didn’t have a free market back under Obama in 2012. Bryan White at PolitiFactBias.com says this harsh flaming rating “counts as substantially if not wholly subjective.” That’s not to say that some lies aren’t whoppers. It’s when they emotionally hate something that’s not as bad as they claim it is. In April, White singled out a “Pants on Fire” for Trump claiming he “did much better” in the Wisconsin election in 2020 than 2016, and “after the wrongdoing was found, people said, ‘Well, he actually did win.'” The second half is false: He narrowly lost Wisconsin. But the first half is mathematically true: Trump’s vote count in 2020 was 1,610,184 in Wisconsin, and it was 1,405,284 votes in the state in 2016. So he had more votes. He “did better.” Except that he won the state in 2016, and lost it in 2020. This sounds like a “Half True,” not a “Pants on Fire.” On Sept. 4, Trump was rated as “Pants on Fire” for calling Harris a “communist.”  It’s like CNN host Kasie Hunt noting during the Democrat convention, “she doesn’t identify as a communist.” Now flip that to the other party. Many Democrats and leftists have called Trump a “fascist.” Search PolitiFact for a harsh rating on that, and you won’t find it. What you will find is a “Half True” rating on Madeline Albright comparing Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric to fascist Benito Mussolini. When Biden compared Republicans to Jim Crow segregationists over their voting-integrity legislation, PolitiFact argued the subject was too complicated for a rating. They claimed: “Some historians say Biden’s rhetorical point was justified as a way of highlighting the dangers of backsliding from hard-won voting rights.” These dramatic double standards on “facts” underlines why so many voters don’t trust “fact-checkers.” Trump has 1,051 fact checks, and 805 of them are “Mostly False” or worse — 76.6% wrong. Bernie Sanders has 176 fact checks, and 44 were on the false side — 25%. Bernie can call Trump a “fascist” and he’s all good. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post PolitiFact Throws Its 200th ‘Pants on Fire’ Tag at Donald Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates marks a new chapter in the D.C. Cartel’s long march toward the bankruptcy of our nation. Although the Fed’s move to cut rates and expand the money supply may provide some relief from higher interest rates for consumers and businesses, it does so at the expense of fueling the fires of inflation. With prices for essentials rising over 20%, this move doesn’t prioritize the interests of the American people. Here are the five key things you need to know about the Fed’s rate cut and what it’ll mean for you and your family. 1. Federal Spending Real Cause of the Problem The federal government has recklessly expanded in recent years, redirecting more of your hard-earned money into the hands of bureaucrats and their allies. Federal spending either can be paid for through taxes or borrowing. Tax increases, of course, harm Americans in a direct manner by taking from your paycheck and bank account. Borrowing, on the other hand, creates a more insidious and obscure harm. The federal government can crowd out private investment and eat everyone’s lunch off the money market buffet table. As federal debt grows, it imposes a burden on every American. The Federal Reserve then faces a choice: Print more money, leading to skyrocketing inflation and price increases, or refrain from printing and impose prohibitively high interest rates on credit cards, prospective homeowners, and small business owners. Without cutting government spending, any Fed action is merely a form of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic of debt. 2. The Fed Chooses High Inflation Over High Interest Rates This dynamic means that the Fed is left with only a Sophie’s choice between high inflation and high consumer and business interest rates. For roughly the past three years, the Fed has tried to restrain the money supply to reduce inflation at the risk of increasing interest rates—and it has. In that time frame, mortgage rates have gone from around 2.8% to well over 6%—peaking close to 8%. This has meant that a typical mortgage on a median-priced home now will cost a homeowner well over $300,000 in extra interest costs over the lifetime of the mortgage. With inflation rates now down to around 3%, the Fed has chosen to waffle back to putting pressure on inflation to bring down interest rates. The Fed seems committed to this seesaw between the two as the way to manage the pain from federal deficits. 3. Decision Comes Right After Federal Interest Costs Top $1 Trillion a Year Of course, the Federal Reserve’s decision comes right after federal spending on annual interest payments broke $1—close to $8,000 per American family per year. When interest rates are high, it isn’t only consumers and businesses that face high rates, it’s also the government. Reversing the course back to lowering rates at the expense of higher inflation seems rather self-serving for the government when viewed through this lens. 4. This Rate Cut Comes Suspiciously Right Before Election The Fed’s actions always take time to permeate through the economy. And although tightening conditions can have faster impacts on sending interest rates higher, in monetary loosening it takes more time for inflation to be seen. This is because markets tend to react quickly to the specter of scarcer money by sending rates higher, but prices rise only as the newly created money fully flows through the economy. As such, the Fed’s decision to cut rates—and increase the money supply—likely will lead to a flurry of activity now, with inflation coming in well afterward. This is analogous to the hangover coming the morning after a night of drinking. The suspicious thing here is that the hangover almost certainly will happen conveniently after the election. Inflation is still above the Fed’s traditional 2% target. In fact, it is much closer to 3%, while the median rate of inflation is well above 4%. So, it seems even more arbitrary that the Fed would choose now—a close but strategic distance from Election Day on Nov. 5– to begin a drinking binge. 5. The Problem Only Expected to Get Worse Disturbingly, the problem is likely to get worse. Modest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that we can expect to add at least $20 trillion to the national debt—ballooning it to well over $400,000 per American household. Whiplashing between high inflation and high interest rates will only continue to grow in intensity if the debt continues on this path. Unless there are serious cuts to planned federal spending and debt accumulation, this burden will continue to grow without end. Whenever the government spends a dollar, it commits to steal that dollar from a hardworking American—either through taxes, or through borrowing and money-printing. There is only one solution: We must restrain government spending before it further cripples the American Dream. The post 5 Things You Need to Know About the Fed’s Rate Cut appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Attorney General Merrick Garland broke precedent just weeks before the November election, delivering politically charged remarks at the U.S. Attorneys’ National Conference in Washington—pointedly speaking publicly rather than privately in a departure from his usual practice. “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” he said before a packed house, gathered in the Great Hall of Justice Department headquarters on Sept. 12. “Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution for the purpose of affecting any election or the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” Garland’s words came in response to former President Donald Trump’s assertion during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that the FBI and Justice Department had been weaponized against him. But in issuing a fiery rebuttal, the attorney general put himself squarely where he said he didn’t want to be: namely, in the crossfire of a partisan political campaign.  Moreover, in the view of many, his assertions clearly belie the Justice Department’s deeds. These critics say it’s obvious that the FBI and DOJ have repeatedly put a thumb on the scale of justice to defeat Trump. In 2016, it was the Russia-gate collusion hoax. In 2020, it was the FBI’s refusal to say not only that it was in possession of Hunter Biden’s incendiary laptop, but that it had verified its contents, even as Joe Biden claimed erroneously that it was a Russian plant. Most recently, after being rebuffed by the Supreme Court, special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against Trump regarding the 2020 election, just 74 days before Election Day. DOJ guidelines advise against filing politically relevant charges 60 days before an election.  In recent weeks, the DOJ, led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, has accelerated the arrest of those who protested at and breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Several new defendants live in swing states, which reintroduces Jan. 6 in local and national headlines while bolstering key talking points of Democrat standard-bearer Harris and others in this year’s campaign. Such Trump antagonists regularly describe the former president as a “threat to democracy”—rhetoric echoed by the second and latest alleged would-be Trump assassin to emerge in the campaign, before his arrest Sunday. On the same day Garland addressed the conference, the FBI arrested Justina Guardino, a 34-year-old member of a North Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nationwide group of moms defending their children from “woke” ideology and government overreach; Trump spoke to the group in Washington last month. According to the DOJ charging documents, Guardino nonviolently entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stayed inside for approximately 10 minutes. Despite being interviewed by law enforcement in the summer of 2022, the FBI waited more than two years to make and announce her arrest, raising questions as to whether the DOJ is delaying arrests to coincide with the election. Early voting begins in North Carolina in mid-October. Since Aug. 1, Graves’ office has announced the arrest of several more J6ers, including individuals from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan, considered must-win states for Harris. Appointed by Biden in 2021, Graves appears to be fulfilling his pledge to bring the overall Jan. 6 caseload to 2,000 defendants before the statute of limitations runs out; the total number of defendants just exceeded 1,500 last week. Meanwhile, his office has brought one federal charge against a single pro-Hamas demonstrator despite hundreds being involved in unlawful activities such as attacking federal police officers, vandalizing property, and illegally occupying government buildings on numerous occasions in 2023 and 2024. Graves also handled the prosecution of Trump allies Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon on contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas issued by the Democrat-controlled House January 6 Select Committee. Although both prosecutions resulted in prison time for Navarro and Bannon, critics note that the cases were brought at the discretion of the department. Bannon is currently serving a four-month sentence in a Connecticut federal prison, successfully shutting down his popular “War Room” program during the height of the campaign season. In what might also be considered election interference by the DOJ, Graves, who rarely conducts interviews, appeared in a Jan. 6 segment on “60 Minutes” on the evening of Sept. 15—just hours after the alleged assassination attempt against Trump on his West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course. Graves defended his ongoing Jan. 6 investigation and prosecution as fair and free of White House influence. (Graves said he has never met Biden, but as RealClearInvestigations reported last year, Graves’ wife, Fatima Goss Graves, is a regular visitor at the White House.) “No one is being prosecuted for their views,” Graves told reporter Scott Pelley. “They’re being prosecuted for their acts.” The “crime was severe,” Graves continued. “It was an attack on our democracy.” But the DOJ recently hit a major roadblock in the Jan. 6 prosecution, calling into question Garland’s claims of a careful adherence to the rule of law devoid of bias. The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States reversed how the DOJ applied a statute, 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in the Capitol Breach probe. Since early 2021, at least 340 Jan. 6 protesters and Trump have been charged with the post-Enron statute, once understood to apply to document-altering. In many instances, the felony was added to otherwise misdemeanor cases to turn nonviolent protesters into felons. Prosecutors also used the threat of adding the felony enhancement to secure plea deals on lower-level charges. At least 130 individuals have been convicted at trial or accepted plea deals on the obstruction count with many sentenced to prison time. Since the Fischer decision was published, prosecutors have been dismissing the count in pending cases. Last week, the D.C. appellate court vacated 15 1512(c)(2) convictions. Dozens more will see their convictions vacated over the next several weeks. But the relief did not come soon enough for defendants who already served prison time on the charge. Further, the DOJ is asking judges to keep defendants currently in jail on the 1512(c)(2) behind bars by seeking longer prison time on their remaining charges. For example, Thomas Robertson, a former police officer from Virginia, was sentenced to 87 months following his conviction by a D.C. jury in 2022. The 1512(c)(2) conviction represented the bulk of the prison sentence since it is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. This month the DOJ dismissed the obstruction count against Robertson, but prosecutors asked Judge Christopher Cooper to keep Robertson incarcerated for the full term by applying several sentencing add-ons to his conviction. “I think what happened that day was an attack on democracy, and, as this Court found, the defendant advocated for an armed rebellion and counterinsurgency, and he came with the intent to do violence,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi told Cooper on Sept. 4. “Robertson was an avid and willing participant in an unprecedented crime. His offenses specifically targeted the peaceful transfer of power, an essential government function and one of the fundamental and foundational principles of our democracy.” Cooper, whose 1999 wedding was officiated by then-Judge Merrick Garland, consented to most of the DOJ’s sentencing enhancements. He sentenced Robertson to 72 months in federal prison. “The historical significance of the certification and the effect that your conduct had on our democratic principles and the country more generally, this is not just hyperbole,” Cooper told Robertson. “These are very real harms that not just you, but including you, caused on January 6th.” The DOJ is expected to make the same argument in several other cases. “The continued harsh treatment of Jan. 6 prisoners is a glaring example of the egregious weaponization of our justice system under the Biden-Harris administration,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., who recently was denied access to a section of the D.C. jail that houses Jan. 6 defendants, told RealClearInvestigations. “This politicized use of the Department of Justice, spearheaded by Kamala Harris and her allies, has turned the legal system into a tool for silencing dissent and punishing political opposition.” Critics say Garland’s ongoing prosecution of Trump also contradicts his insistence that the DOJ steers clear of national elections. Smith, the special counsel, appointed by Garland in November 2022, just renewed the stalled case against Trump related to the events of Jan. 6 in Washington. Smith could have waited until after the election to file his new indictment, and critics say his timing can be interpreted to bolster Jan. 6 as a campaign issue. The Justice Department continues to allocate resources to the special counsel’s office; recent financial disclosures show Smith and the DOJ spent more than $35 million in the first 14 months of the special counsel’s investigation. That figure likely could double by the time his appointment ends, which is at the discretion of the attorney general, or include the amount spent on the dual investigations before Smith was appointed. Smith’s continued pursuit of Trump has drawn renewed scrutiny and skepticism since the Supreme Court challenged his original indictment as a broad attack on presidential immunity.  On July 1, the court published its decision in Trump v. United States. Authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the 6-3 opinion for the first time in history established three categories of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution: official acts, outer perimeter acts, and private acts. Official acts, the court held, are covered by immunity while outer perimeter acts—such as Trump’s communications with Vice President Mike Pence related to the Jan. 6 indictment—are what Roberts described as “presumptively immune.” On that score, Roberts continued, “It is ultimately the Government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity.” The court further concluded that former presidents are not immune from prosecution for “unofficial” or private acts. In order to hew to the decision, Smith filed a superseding indictment on Aug. 28 that partially gutted his original indictment, which had been handed up a year earlier. Since the Supreme Court determined Trump’s interactions with DOJ officials fell safely within the core constitutional authority of a sitting president, Smith had to cut nine pages of evidence and drop a co-conspirator, former Assistant Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. Although the watered-down indictment contains the same four counts as the first version, the case remains on uncertain legal ground given the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and opinion in the Fischer case. But the special counsel, presumably with the consent of Garland, is reinvigorating the case to coincide with the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign. Long-standing DOJ rules preventing the department from interfering in national elections are once again being ignored as Smith reappears in the headlines as early voting begins this month in several states, including Virginia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In early October, early voting commences in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada. Smith found a like-minded ally in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the Obama appointee presiding over the unprecedented case. It was Chutkan’s 2023 order denying Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution that the Supreme Court overturned and sent back to her for further proceedings.  Chutkan, who has a record of making anti-Trump statements in court and who imposed a gag order on the former president last year, told Trump’s lawyers at a Sept. 5 hearing that the election is not a factor in her calculation as to the next steps. “I understand there is an election impending, and I’ve said before and I say again that the electoral process and the timing of the election and what needs to happen before or shouldn’t happen before the election is not relevant here,” Chutkan informed John Lauro, Trump’s lead attorney in the Jan. 6 case. “This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule,” she added. In a follow-up scheduling order, Chutkan issued a series of deadlines leading right up to and a few days beyond Election Day. The special counsel will file a brief later this month articulating why he believes the existing elements of the Jan. 6 indictment are not protected under the Supreme Court ruling. By permitting the filing of what even Chutkan herself described as a “procedurally irregular” document, Smith’s brief is likely to contain cherry-picked passages from grand jury testimony and other allegations to create damaging headlines that again claim Trump tried to stay in power by breaking the law. The brief is expected to be filed before Sept. 26; Trump’s attorneys will have a chance to respond, further dragging the matter into the headlines. This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire. The post To Many, the Justice Department Is Honoring Political Neutrality in the Breach Again appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Jim Banks is demanding that the individual responsible for the military training that portrayed pro-life Americans as terrorists must be held accountable. Banks, R-Ind., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel, hosted a hearing Thursday, “Oversight of Extremism Policies in the Army.” The Indiana lawmaker, who is running for Senate, addressed training sessions given to service members on the North Carolina military base Fort Liberty from 2017 to a few months ago that characterized pro-life organizations as “terrorist groups.” “The training labeled several prominent and well-respected pro-life groups, that count millions of everyday Americans as members, as violent extremists,” Banks said disapprovingly in his opening statement. The Directorate of Emergency Services training labeled pro-life organizations, including National Right to Life and Operation Rescue, as terrorists. A slide from the PowerPoint presentation featured a common pro-life license plate and warned about common pro-life activities, such as sidewalk counseling, counseling at pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and “demonstrations and protests” opposing the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide. Some 10,000 soldiers underwent the training, Banks said. “The training accused the members of these organizations of being threats to the safety of military installations and designated symbols of pro-life groups, including state-issued pro-life license plates, as indicators of terrorism,” said the four-term Indiana congressman who serves in the Navy Reserve as a Supply Corps officer and who served in Afghanistan. Banks questioned U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock about how the training went on for so many years. “I want to emphasize again, these training materials were improperly developed and should have never been presented,” Matlock responded “The failure was in anyone providing feedback or any supervisor not observing the training and taking immediate correction. There is no excuse for how long it lasted.” After the investigation into the training, Matlock said “the commander” directed corrective actions, which have now all been completed. The individual who created the training has “received corrective training” and continues to work for the Army, Matlock said in response to Banks’ questions about accountability for the training. “The training materials were very poorly developed, and we fully acknowledged that failure,” Matlock said. The general did not answer Banks’ repeated questions about who was held accountable for the training and how they were punished. “This is embarrassing,” Banks said. “And it makes me wonder what other mistakes is the United States Army making, maybe even in a larger way. I’m even more baffled after hearing from you than I was before.” Banks raised concerns about the recent Army Directive 2024-07 on “Handling Protest, Extremist, and Criminal Gang Activities,” which broadly defines extremism, he said, to “police the speech of conservative service members, quiet dissent, and require service members who believe in conservative ideals to hide their identities for fear of retaliation from their commands.” The training is a First Amendment violation that could be used against any soldier whose views differ from the ruling authority, Banks said. “The First Amendment is broad for a reason. Once speech is limited speech, no matter how offensive or vulgar, individual freedoms are dangerously infringed upon, and that is the real threat to democracy,” he said. Banks questioned Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Agnes Schaefer about whether the National Right to Life or the environmentalist Earth Liberation Front are terrorists groups. Schaefer said neither were. But the Earth Liberation Front was responsible for more than 130 bombings and arsons between 1995 and 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security. “You admit that something went wrong, but yet today, even at this hearing, no one has ever been held accountable for it,” Banks said. The post Rep. Banks Demands Accountability for Military Training Branding Pro-Lifers as Terrorists appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This summer, the Southern Poverty Law Center laid off about a quarter of its staff, and former SPLC employees revealed more information about those layoffs this week, accusing the organization of “classic union-busting behavior.” Former employees of the SPLC’s education arm, Learning for Justice, published an open letter Tuesday outlining their experiences in the lead-up to the layoffs. They claimed the SPLC shifted the direction of their department, gave them more duties without more pay and without hiring more staff, and then abruptly fired most of them in June. “We know it is no coincidence that the layoffs, which targeted mostly union members and union leadership, follow employee surveys that show declining confidence in SPLC management over the past couple of years,” the former employees wrote. “It’s also no coincidence that these layoffs happened less than a year before our union negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement.” “From a social justice organization that refused to voluntarily recognize our union at its inception, it is classic union-busting behavior,” they added. The open letter also gave a concrete number of those SPLC laid off: 81. The SPLC Union released a statement last week calling for SPLC CEO Margaret Huang to resign. Lisa Wright, the SPLC Union chair who was laid off after more than 23 years at the organization, wrote in that statement, “We believe [SPLC Board Chairwoman Karen] Baynes-Dunning hired Huang in 2020 to bust our union. Huang has a proven track record of hostility toward unionization.” Learning for Justice Learning for Justice, which launched as “Teaching Tolerance” in 1991, focused on providing teachers with materials promoting diversity. In the past few decades, however, the education program has embraced gender ideology for children in pre-kindergarten and promoted critical race theory (the lens through which teachers tell students that American society is systemically racist). The SPLC claims it is “teaching hard history” by framing American history, emphasizing what it claims to be the continuing oppression of black people (despite the progress of civil rights laws). As the former staff recalled, the program was rebranded to “Learning for Justice” in 2021, and with that announcement came a change that shocked staff. Newly hired Director Jayala Liles Dunn noted at the time that Learning for Justice would “start working with caregivers and communities,” shifting the focus away from working with educators, the former staff noted. Former staff also lamented the SPLC’s more recent announcement that “if states won’t let us teach Black history in schools, we’ll teach it in communities, as was done during Jim Crow.” “This approach cedes ground to those seeking to erase or distort history in schools,” the ousted employees argued. “Stepping away from direct engagement with educators risks leaving students in hostile learning environments without the support they need.” Yet, besides this ideological consideration, the laid-off workers added more practical concerns. They wrote that “there was no plan” for what a shift toward engaging communities “really looked like.” “Staff members repeatedly advocated internally—even directly to SPLC President Margaret Huang—that SPLC’s commitment to working with communities should mean an investment in hiring more people who have experience and expertise working with community partners,” they wrote. “But the expansion of our work did not come with an expansion of staff. In fact, some positions that were vacated were never filled.” Instead, the SPLC restructured Learning for Justice twice in less than four years, with only one position dedicated to community partnerships. “Supporting community-facing work became ‘everyone’s job,’ rather than hiring more staff with expertise in community education, organizing and other skills,” the former staff wrote. “Additionally, we were told everyone could participate in 501(c)(4) work for SPLC Action Fund, despite the job descriptions and pay of the majority of [Learning for Justice] staff not reflecting that additional policy work.” SPLC Isn’t Hurting for Money The laid-off workers noted that the SPLC isn’t exactly hurting for funding. The organization’s endowment stood at $731.9 million as of 2022. According to the union, Huang gave conflicting reasons for the layoffs: she told some SPLC leaders that the organization had a budget shortfall and others that leadership wished to restructure the group. “SPLC has the resources for community education and advocacy and direct educator support. We don’t need to choose one or the other,” the former staff wrote. “Additionally, will community education work not require operations support or website development? The SPLC’s decision to eliminate those roles, for example, suggests a disingenuous commitment to their proposed new strategic direction.” The staff also claimed that Learning for Justice managers with years of experience “did not receive willing collaboration from new leadership, nor a seat at the table to discuss [the project’s] future.” From this report, it does seem the SPLC mismanaged that department and may even have structured things in such a way as to justify mass layoffs. The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the former employees’ claims. The Fallout The letter begins and ends with an expression of thanks to the teachers who worked with or read materials from the SPLC. The former staff appear to be driving a wedge between the SPLC and the educators who agree with its leftist positions. The very existence of the open letter speaks volumes. Not only is the SPLC Union willing to reveal the internal dissension at the organization, but it seems these former staff are willing to burn bridges between their former employer and the teachers who support its causes. Teaching Tolerance once boasted that “more than 500,000 educators … read our magazine.” Now, the educators who are most favorably disposed to the SPLC may turn on it. What Is the SPLC? As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC routinely smears mainstream conservative and Christian organizations by placing them on a “hate map” alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC uses the “hate map” as a reputational weapon to silence those who dissent from its woke agenda. While Learning for Justice pushes critical race theory and gender ideology, the “hate map” smears parental rights groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education as “extremists.” In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder and saw its president resign amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. At that time, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Employees decided to unionize after that scandal. The SPLC currently faces a defamation lawsuit that crossed a major legal hurdle last year. The SPLC also has influence in the federal government. In the fall of 2021, Huang bragged that the then still new administration of President Joe Biden had reached out to the SPLC earlier in the year for help in fighting “domestic terrorism.” The FBI’s Richmond office notoriously cited the SPLC in a since-retracted memo calling for surveillance at Catholic churches last year. The SPLC briefed the Justice Department and a high-ranking official of the Department of Education. SPLC leaders and staff have attended White House meetings at least 18 times since January 2021, and Biden appointed an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The post ‘Classic Union-Busting Behavior’: Laid-Off SPLC Employees Reveal Internal Dissension at Far-Left Smear Factory appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Emails Suggest Andrew Cuomo Lied About Editing Nursing Home Report

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