Former Chief of Staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says that, if elected to Congress next year, he vows to get to the heart of the connection between the Biden administration and the left-wing, anti-conservative Southern Poverty Law Center.
The impetus for that was the SPLC’s decision to brand the Florida-based parents’ group Moms for Liberty a “hate” group.
As The Free Press reported earlier this month, the SPLC released its annual “The Year in Hate and Extremism” report. The report claims to chronicle “threats to our diverse nation and our daily lives.” But those “threats” only seem to come from the right.
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This year, the leftist group included Moms for Liberty, a grassroots organization formed in 2021 that has gained prominence for battling left-wing gender ideology and Critical Race Theory in schools. In its report, the SPLC claimed Moms for Liberty was at the “forefront” of parents’ groups that mobilized against “an anti-student inclusion movement that targets any inclusive curriculum that contains discussions of race, discrimination and LGBTQ identities.”
Scott Parkinson, the former chief of staff to DeSantis’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign and a GOP candidate for the Senate in Virginia, told The Daily Signal that he would investigate the SPLC’s connections to federal law enforcement, if he is elected.
“What I think the oversight responsibilities of the federal government include but are not limited to is investigating groups like this that are effectively reaching out to use the powers that they have and the influence that they have within federal agencies to come after conservatives and retaliate either through the IRS or the Department of Justice,” Parkinson told the Signal.
“If they’re infringing upon the American people and their rights to free speech—the fact that the Justice Department is coming after parents’ groups—things should be on the table when it comes to ending that kind of behavior,” he said.
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Parkinson’s comments came after the SPLC added Moms for Liberty and another conservative group, Parents Defending Education, to a “hate map” that also identifies chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Signal noted that President Joe Biden’s Justice Department worked closely with the National School Boards Association on a 2021 letter that proclaimed parents objecting to school boards’ policies were domestic terrorists.
Several states, including Florida, disaffiliated with the NSBA after the letter became public.
The Signal also reported that Parkinson’s GOP opponent, Jonathan Emord, is also interested in prying open the link between the Justice Department and SPLC.
“The collusion between the administration and private parties” such as the SPLC helps create “a two-tiered system of justice where conservatives are harassed, prosecuted, and censored, while those who are of the opposite political persuasion are protected even when they commit crimes,” Emord told the Signal.
“We have to ferret it out, and find every tentacle that reaches out, and we have to sever every tentacle. We have to remove, and where appropriate prosecute, every person who has acted with a political agenda to wrongly go after any citizen, including Donald Trump.”
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