The far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center reportedly terminated a quarter of its staff Wednesday, weakening and perhaps eliminating two of its departments amid a restructure that heavily hit its union members. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” the organization’s union posted on X. (Yes, this nonprofit organization has its own labor union. If staff get tired of protesting Alliance Defending Freedom, they can protest management, instead.) The SPLC told more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair, that they would be losing their jobs. “We are devastated for our union and our colleagues,” the union posted. The SPLC confirmed the news to The Alabama Reflector, though it did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. “We announced internally the consolidation of certain programs and activities as well as the elimination of others, resulting in staff reductions,” the center said. The SPLC aims “streamline our activities and operations to strengthen our ability to advance a multiracial, inclusive democracy and ground our work in the perspectives and priorities of communities most affected by human rights violations.” Today, @splcenter – an organization with nearly a billion dollars in reserves, given an F rating by CharityWatch for “hoarding” donations – gutted its staff by a quarter.— SPLC Union (@SPLCUnion) June 12, 2024 The union, however, claimed that the move will effectively end various departments at the organization. A Restructuring? The SPLC is “functionally eliminating the Learning for Justice department,” the union noted. SPLC co-founder Morris Dees established an education program, then called “Teaching Tolerance,” in 1991. The program rebranded as “Learning for Justice” in 2021, apparently because “tolerance” wasn’t woke enough. The program has advocated for teaching kids as young as 2 years old about transgender identity, and it has heartily embraced Critical Race Theory, a lens by which teachers tell kids that whites are oppressors and blacks oppressed in a “systemically racist” America. The SPLC will also lay off all 16 staff in the Southern Immigrant Freedom Initiative, closing the office and ceasing to provide free legal representation to “detained immigrants across Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi,” the union claimed. The layoffs also involve dismantling “the full Immigrant Justice team,” according to the union. The union noted that the SPLC has “nearly a billion dollars in reserves” and received an “F” rating from nonprofit watchdog CharityWatch, in part for hoarding donations. CharityWatch warned that the SPLC may not use donors’ money for 7.3 years, because its reserves can keep the center running for that long. It remains unclear exactly why the SPLC decided to terminate so many staff. As of 2022, the center had an endowment of $731.9 million and accounts in the Cayman Islands. It seems it should be able to hold on to its employees. “An organization with this much money has no excuse,” Hannah Gais, an SPLC Union member who apparently did not lose her job, wrote on X. today, SPLC — my employer —laid off over 60 of our union members, essentially shuttering multiple departments. speaking in a personal capacity, i endorse each and every single word of this statement from our union. an organization with this much money has no excuse. https://t.co/pC8zQxSZYe— hannah gais (@hannahgais) June 12, 2024 What Is the SPLC? As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC began by providing free legal services to poor people in the South. In the 1980s, it shifted its focus to suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy. By the 1980s, the Klan—evil though it still was—had become a paper tiger, and lawyers complained that suing Klan groups was like “shooting fish in a barrel.” Yet the lawyers said the SPLC kept doing it because it raked in donations. Eventually, the SPLC ran out of grand dragons to conquer, so it repurposed the journal it used to monitor the Klan—appropriately named Klanwatch—and started reporting on ever more mainstream organizations. By the 2010s, it started putting mainstream conservative and Christian organizations on a list of “hate groups” that eventually morphed into including a “hate map.” The list and the map have always included Klan chapters. In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder, Dees, in a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. Amid that scandal, a former employee came forward, calling the SPLC’s “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Almost every year, the SPLC reports a higher number of “hate groups” than the year before. For the 2022 version of the “hate map”—released in 2023—it added “antigovernment extremist groups” to the map. Conservatives have long suspected that the “hate map” is a tool to silence the SPLC’s opponents. The SPLC advocates against enforcing immigration laws, and it brands immigration enforcement groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Dustin Inman Society “anti-immigrant hate groups.” It also advocates for LGBTQ issues and it puts Christian nonprofits like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council on the map as “anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.” Last year, it added parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty to the “hate map.” When the SPLC released its latest “hate map” report last week, it predictably claimed that hate and extremism were increasing. This version of the “hate map” included Gays Against Groomers, a group of gay people who oppose the sexualization of children, as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.” Scandals The SPLC has faced numerous scandals in recent years, though that seems not to bother President Joe Biden and his administration. In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC’s “hate map” to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting. The building manager suffered a gunshot wound but prevented the terrorist from carrying out his plan. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the council on the “hate map” ever since. In 2015, the SPLC removed neurosurgeon and presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson from its “extremist list” after putting him there largely because he opposed same-sex marriage. In 2018, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to settle a defamation lawsuit after it branded a Muslim reformer an “anti-Muslim extremist.” The charity rating platform GuideStar added SPLC “hate group” labels to its rating pages for nonprofits in 2017, only to remove them amid a backlash. Last year, a judge allowed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC to proceed to discovery. Meanwhile, authorities arrested an SPLC attorney at an Atlanta Antifa riot involving Molotov cocktails. That lawyer faces domestic terrorism charges. After the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office drafted a memo citing the SPLC on “radical-traditional Catholic hate groups,” the FBI’s national office rushed to rescind the memo, saying it did not meet the FBI’s standards, an implicit attack on the SPLC’s credibility. In the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, the SPLC remained silent. The SPLC Union released a statement before the SPLC did, and the union expressed “solidarity with the Palestinian people,” condemning Israel for “the violent imperialist desecration of a people—the beginnings of a genocide.” On the same day, photos from a social media platform suggested that an SPLC lawyer helped organize an anti-Israel protest that took over a congressional office building. When the SPLC finally did release a statement about the Oct. 7 attacks, it falsely accused Israel of targeting Palestinian children in Gaza for airstrikes, only to stealth-edit the statement and delete the claim after The Daily Signal exposed it. Despite all this, the Biden administration has repeatedly worked with the SPLC, with a Justice Department division listening to an SPLC briefing on its “hate map.” SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged that the administration reached out to the SPLC for advice on combating the “domestic terrorism threat.” The post MELTDOWN: SPLC Terminates a Quarter of Staff, ‘Decimates’ 3 Departments, Union Claims appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A satanic looking portrait of Britain’s King Charles III has been ‘vandalised’ by animal rights activists A group called Animal Rising pasted a picture of the Wallace character from the British cartoon comedy series “Wallace [...] The post Portriat Of King Charles ‘Defaced’ appeared first on The People's Voice.

Jon Anderson will release new album TRUE, recorded with touring band The Band Geeks, in August

Ghost’s half-concert-movie, half-narrative-film will be in cinemas worldwide from June 20 to 23

The European Union’s top court has slapped Hungary with a 200-million-euro ($216m) fine. They also imposed a daily one-million-euro ($1.08m) penalty for failing to follow the bloc’s asylum laws and illegally deporting migrants. The money will be automatically subtracted [stolen] from Hungary’s allocated share of the EU budget. Parts of their budget already remain frozen […] The post EU Empire Fines Hungary $216m, $1m Daily for Protecting Borders appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Just weeks after “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor was shot and killed while interrupting a theft in Los Angeles, his friends and family gathered to protest and demand justice by marching to City Hall. The 37-year-old was leaving his job as a bartender with a friend over Memorial Day weekend when the incident occurred. A witness, Anita Joy, said when they came upon the individuals near Wactor’s car, they first thought the vehicle was being towed. But soon, they realized the suspects were trying to steal the catalytic converter. When Wactor tried to intervene, he was shot and later died from his injuries. Now, Wactor’s family and friends are demanding change. They organized a rally and march for Wactor on Wednesday in downtown L.A. Their walk began near the intersection of Hope and Pico, where Wactor was killed. “Johnny deserves justice. We deserve a safe city,” an informational post shared on X says. Dozens of the actor’s family and friends held a press conference prior to marching the streets. A group of actors who were friends with Johnny Wactor, the actor who was fatally shot in Los Angeles are fed up with crime and holding a press conference calling on justice and a safe city. I realized I knew one of them and sent this pic.twitter.com/XMb3tHOHTz — Sarah Sansoni (@sarahsansoni) June 8, 2024 “The message is pretty obvious…they want safe streets and justice,” the late actor’s brother Grant said, per KTLA. “I don’t live here, so I didn’t realize how bad the situation already was for any of this to even happen…apparently this has been a problem that has needed to be fixed for a while, so someone has to fix it.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “You guys probably don’t notice because the sun’s out but it’s the only street down there that doesn’t have lights on,” Bryan Barkley, a security guard for Level 8 Restaurant and Lounge where Wactor worked, said. “It probably could have been any one of us.” “It’s important for us this story remains top of mind for his family, for his friends because we loved him and because Johnny deserves justice,” Wactor’s friend and fellow marcher Micah Parker said, per Deadline. The L.A. County district attorney’s chief deputy, Joseph Iniguez, attended a press conference at the event. He said the case is open and active, and while no arrests have been made, the major crimes division has “a number of leads.”  

Columbia University administrators reportedly mocked complaints from Jews about anti-Semitism on campus, even using vomit emojis to dismiss the claims. On May 31, a panel discussion about Jewish Life on campus featured David Schizer, former dean of Columbia Law School; Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Life; Ian Rottenberg, dean of religious life; and Rebecca Massel, a reporter for the student newspaper who wrote about the campus protests. Some Columbia administrators were in the audience: Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College; Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. Chang-Kim and the other administrators texted each other during the panel. An audience member sitting behind Chang-Kim photographed the texts and provided them to the Beacon. Massel was asked to expound on “the experience of Jewish and Israeli students on campus.” Chang-Kim texted Kromm and Patashnick: “Did we really have students being kicked out of clubs for being Jewish?” In October 2023, Columbia’s campus rabbi, Yonah Hain, wrote a column in The Columbia Spectator in which he spoke of anti-Semitism on the university’s campus: Our community’s normalization of Hamas is a point-of-no-return moment at Columbia. Debates about Zionism, one state or two states, occupation, and Israeli military and government policy are all welcome conversations on campus. We won’t all see eye to eye about this current Israel-Hamas war and about our notions of proportionality, restraint, and ceasefire. Indeed, these issues occupy a prominent role in discourse within the Jewish community itself. What’s not up for debate is that massacring Jews is unequivocally wrong. While the panel discussed the anti-Semitism on campus and emotional testimony was offered, Kromm texted Chang-Kim and Patashnick, “And we thought Yonah sounded the alarm…” accompanied by two vomit emojis. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP Patashnick apparently mocked one of the panelists, writing, “He knows exactly what he’s doing and how to take full advantage of this moment. Huge fundraising potential.” Chang-Kim texted back, “Double Urgh.” Chang-Kim texted Kromm and Patashnick: “This panel is really making the administration look like jokers.” Patashnick answered, “Yep.”