According to White House visitor logs recently obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, a Southern Poverty Law Center director who just put several major parents’ rights groups on the SPLC’s “hate map,” met with Biden administration counterterrorism officials this year.
The visit happened in the wake of rising calls for the Department of Justice to look into parents’ rights groups and school board meetings to see if there is “domestic terror” activity among those frustrated with what’s being taught in US public schools.
The Free Beacon stated that White House visitor logs have shown that Susan Corke, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project met with National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli on January 6 of this year.
Corke, a former US State Department official, also made headlines this week for producing an SPLC report that labeled parents’ rights groups “Moms for Liberty,” and “Parents Defending Education,” among others as extremist hate groups.
The SPLC’s annual “Year In Hate and Extremism” report officially designated the organizations as “anti-government extremist groups.”
It also described members of Mom’s For Liberty, saying they can be “spotted at school board meetings across the country wearing shirts and carrying signs that declare, ‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.’”
The SPLC has been considered one of the top research organizations tracking hate and extremism across the country, working to alert Americans about self-described militias, anti-immigrant groups and hate groups.
It has also successfully sued these groups in court.
The SPLC is a garbage organization now dedicated to harassing groups that advocate for parents. In the future, their pronouncements must be met with scorn. https://t.co/L4DUAfD0UZ
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 6, 2023
However, the SPLC has earned a reputation in recent years for branding the left’s political opponents as being extremist or hate groups.
In response to the recent addition to SPLC’s hate index, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, tweeted, “The SPLC is a garbage organization now dedicated to harassing groups that advocate for parents. In the future, their pronouncements must be met with scorn.”
Conservative groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Family Research Council (FRC), and now Moms Defending Liberty have been labeled hate groups by the SPLC.
They’ve joined an ever-growing SPLC hate list that also includes the Ku Klux Klan.
The Washington Free Beacon acknowledged it was “unclear” what Corke discussed with the counterterrorism official, though the meeting raises concerns that the Biden administration could be coordinating with liberal organizations.
In 2021, the Biden DOJ signaled it would investigate parents and parents’ rights activists at school board meetings throughout the country at the request of the National School Board Association (NSBA).
In its request, the NSBA claimed that these parents rights groups had been engaged in threats and violence akin to domestic terrorism.
DOJ head Merrick Garland charged the FBI with investigating the claims of domestic terror. In a memo to the public, he claimed he directed the bureau to convene meetings facilitating “the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported that “Federal agencies and the White House have relied on the SPLC as a resource against extremism, even amid concerns about the group’s methods for determining hate groups,” and cited the bureau consulting SPLC research in its investigation of traditionalist Catholic groups in Virginia.
