An organization that has made hundreds of millions of dollars by smearing conservative Christian organizations as “hate groups” laid off dozens of employees this month — but inside sources and experts alike tell The Washington Stand there is more to the firings than meets the eye.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announced it had consolidated “certain programs and activities” and eliminated others, “resulting in staff reductions.”
Although the extraordinarily well-heeled nonprofit did not confirm the number of people losing their jobs, its union announced at least 60 people had been terminated. The SPLC Union also stated SPLC management had “gutted its staff by a quarter,” possibly pointing to a larger layoff, since tax records show the SPLC employed 469 people last year.
The SPLC announced in a statement that it made this “difficult but necessary decision” exclusively to better “strengthen our ability to advance a multiracial, inclusive democracy.” But the union and one of the foremost conservative experts on the organization say SPLC’s HR department may have wanted to crack down on the union. The list of employees let go this week included five union activists and the union chair, according to the union.
SPLC brass “seems particularly to have targeted union members,” said Tyler O’Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal and author of the book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “Are they cracking down on the union?”
The union answers that question with a resounding yes. “Make no mistake — laying off dozens of employees, many of whom were [u]nion activists, less than a year before we will bargain our second contract was no coincidence,” charged the SPLC Union on Wednesday.
This week’s firings reportedly targeted SPLC’s Learning for Justice department, the Southern Immigrant Freedom Initiative, and the Immigrant Justice team. “With nearly a billion dollar endowment and [CEO Margaret] Huang earning $500,000 per year, how does abandoning SPLC’s commitments help advance the human rights of all people?” asked the SPLC Union.
Margaret Huang earned $504,624 in total compensation last year, SPLC tax records show. In all, the poverty organization records 18 SPLC employees and five independent contractors earn more than $100,000 a year.
American culture usually associates the image of a multi-million-dollar “union-buster” with conservatives, not far-Left advocacy and pressure groups. Despite the SPLC’s reputation as a progressive organization, the organization’s current leadership is “apparently not focused on unions enough to work with the current union leadership,” O’Neil explained.
“The SPLC has a union like people wear masks today: They don’t need them, but it’s virtue signaling to the Left,” quipped Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.
The financial circumstances of the infamous SPLC have led many to question its motives. Employee Hannah Gais, who apparently kept her position, posted a criticism of her employer online, declaring, “[A]n organization with this much money has no excuse.”
The group’s IRS 990 form for fiscal year ending last October 31 showed the SPLC possessed more than $711.3 million in net assets — specifically, $711,333,304, a one-year increase of $24,376,374. It also noted a $2.7 million increase in grants and a nearly $1 million rise in donations over the previous year.
Although donors give abundantly to the SPLC, independent watchdogs have noted unusual practices. Last February, CharityWatch significantly downgraded SPLC’s rating from a “B” to an “F.” The accountability organization pointed out that, at its current rate, the SPLC has enough funds in reserve to operate for 7.3 years without receiving a single donation. (So, too, could the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Negative Population Growth topped the list at 19 years.)
“What do they do with the cash that they’re hoarding?” asked Perkins.
More eye-opening is the fact that the SPLC has grown its ever-expanding reserve in part through offshore holdings. The SPLC’s most recent consolidated financial statement, released in 2022, reported $138,680,025 in “[n]on-U.S. equities funds.” Previous financial statements disclosed the SPLC held offshore accounts in such tax-havens as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. The SPLC records private investment funds totaling $681,627,807.
Critics like O’Neil say the SPLC, which once fought the Ku Klux Klan, has reaped enormous donations “by demonizing mainstream conservative and Christian organizations like the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.”
The trend continued in the SPLC’s most recent annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, said O’Neil. “They put Gays Against Groomers — which is an openly gay organization, as the name suggests — on the hate map as an ‘anti LGBTQ+ hate group,’” O’Neil pointed out. Although the most recent report notes a spike in anti-Semitism on the Left particularly provoked by Israel’s military response to the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, “they spent all their time suggesting that any criticism of George Soros is anti-Semitism.”
The controversy has not stood in the way of SPLC attaining clout in the Biden administration, successfully steering the course of multiple departments. “The FBI notoriously cited them in that Richmond memo on radical traditional Catholic hate groups. They’ve also been having meetings with leadership at the [Justice Department] and the Department of Education,” said O’Neil.
“Margaret Huang, the president of the SPLC, bragged that many different agencies in the Biden White House reached out to them specifically for advice on combating the domestic terror threat, which is really terrifying considering that not only was one of their lawyers arrested for domestic terrorism last year, but their hate map inspired a domestic terror attack — on us.”
On August 15, 2012, a radical LGBT activist named Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the headquarters of Family Research Council intent on murdering all its employees. He then planned to rub Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces inside FRC — an organization he targeted after seeing it on an SPLC map of “hate groups.” FRC’s building manager, Leo Johnson, thwarted Corkins’s onslaught despite being severely wounded. A court eventually convicted Corkins of domestic terrorism.
“The SPLC is using its history to try to demonize and silence anyone who opposes woke orthodoxy, which is taking over our institutions,” said O’Neil.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
