A video obtained by The Daily Signal showed Southern Poverty Law Center president Margaret Huang bragging to supporters that the White House reached out to the SPLC to help construct its plan to halt "domestic terrorism."
That might not be so troubling if the SPLC targeted legitimate terrorists. Instead, it targets pro-life, pro-individual rights and Christian groups like the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, American Family Association and many more on its infamous hate map (pictured above).
The SPLC proclaims that it has tracked more than 1,200 "hate and anti-government extremist groups" across the U.S.
SPLC leadership has visited the White House – meeting with President Biden himself at times – at least 11 times since Biden took office, according to The Daily Signal. Last year the Richmond, Virginia, office of the FBI used the SPLC's hate map to target individuals in Catholic churches.
Daily Signal managing editor Tyler O'Neil, who appeared on Washington Watch Friday afternoon, said the SPLC has done "a lot of work" with the Biden administration.
"What we know is that … Margaret Huang went to a donor meeting and bragged that the Biden administration, apparently out of the blue, just went to the SPLC asking for advice on their strategy to combat what you call the domestic terror threat," O'Neil shared. "The Biden administration did release a Domestic Terror Agenda. It was very brief and did not describe specifically what the administration is doing and never made any mention publicly of the involvement of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
O'Neil told show host Jody Hice that the meeting in which Huang spoke of this interest from federal agencies took place in the fall of 2021, Biden's first year in office. Huang says in the video:
"I think there's no question that we are unparalleled in our abilities to track and monitor the hate and extremist groups in the country, and I can tell you that we've had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat."
The White House partnership with Southern Poverty Law Center means an organization that has had its own representatives arrested on terrorist charges is helping define "domestic terrorism" and set policy for how to target groups or individuals who fall under that definition.
Biden also nominated an SPLC attorney for a federal judgeship.
SPLC attorney arrested in protest
Another SPLC attorney was arrested on a domestic terrorism charge last March when violence broke out in Atlanta during protests of a planned training facility for city police, Fox News reported. The SPLC claimed the arrest of Thomas Webb Jurgens "was not evidence of any crime but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters."
The riot involved protesters throwing Molotov cocktails, O'Neil said.
The SPLC has also supported the violent far-left group Antifa, which was described by former Attorney General William Barr as a new form of "urban guerrilla warfare." Barr told Fox News that Antifa, which gained notoriety during the summer riots of 2020, "lusts for power."
O'Neil addressed that connection as well.
"The SPLC has for years carried water for the violent Antifa radical group that inspired all of those riots in 2020, the most destructive riots in U.S. history when it comes to specific damage," said The Daily Signal managing editor. "So, this organization is turning a blind eye to violence. It also has its attorneys charged with domestic terrorism – and yet the Biden administration is more than happy to work with them on these issues," he added.
While the White House plans strategy with SPLC, illegal aliens pour across the southern border, some looking for better lives but others intent on harming U.S. citizens.
September 2023 saw more than 160 encounters with people on the terror watchlist who were crossing the southern border, according to Department of Homeland Security data. In 2021, there were 16 terror watchlist names detained at the border. Before that, the numbers were as low as two or six for a year, The New York Post reported.
These numbers do not include terror watchlist crossings that Border Patrol agents did not stop and question.
Biden plots with those who oppose border security
O'Neil finds it ironic that many groups trying to highlight the danger of Biden's open-border policy – the Center for Immigration Studies, for example, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform – are themselves on the SPLC's hate map.
"[They] are rightly raising the alarm about the tragedies at our southern border [and] about the fact that people on the terrorist watchlist have been able to cross our southern border into the United States," noted O'Neil. "[But] these organizations are actually on the SPLC hate map [which actually] has inspired terrorism."
The paradox isn't lost on O'Neil. "The SPLC is going to charitable organizations trying to get them to blacklist these organizations and trying to silence critics of the Biden administration's open-border policy," he added.
