FIRST ON FOX: A watchdog is sounding the alarm over at least $3.85 million in taxpayer-backed support tied to the , including a multimillion-dollar federal grant for a university-led project that says it integrates SPLC’s racial justice curriculum into middle school classrooms.
Using the power of public records requests, taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks released a report Friday highlighting $1,352,655.07 in taxpayer dollars it said had been paid “directly” to the SPLC from school districts, states, cities, counties, universities and other public entities since fiscal year 2016. OpenTheBooks also found an active National Institutes of Health-backed University of Michigan project grant worth $2.5 million, which materials from the university say integrates the SPLC’s “Learning for Justice” curriculum, previously called “Teaching Tolerance,” into programming for middle-school classrooms.
The grant’s original Freedom of Information Act-obtained application said researchers would integrate “the Teaching Tolerance curriculum from the Southern Poverty Law Center” into an existing middle school program and test it across six Genesee County, Michigan, middle schools.Â
8th-grade lesson materials from the SPLC’s curriculum, reviewed by Fox News Digital, directed students to a “map of active hate groups” suggesting “anti-gay” and “radical traditionalist Catholic” organizations are equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis and Black-Separatists. Other Learning for Justice youth materials encourage students to see themselves as part of a “movement for justice” and included toolkits for sustained activism.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Fox News Digital the program “is no longer being funded” and has been “redesigned” to focus on reducing teen and family violence. However, OpenTheBooks points to University of Michigans current project page, which still says the active NIH-backed project integrates SPLCs Learning for Justice curriculum and lists SPLC as a partner. FOIA-obtained NIH records also show the original grant documents repeatedly described the project as integrating SPLCs Teaching Tolerance curriculum into the YES program.
“Utilizing taxpayer resources to promote harmful, leftwing rhetoric in our education systems is inappropriate, and I support efforts to root out and expose organizations like SPLC,” Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said in response to the grant funding. “I support the important work of the to expose the nefarious agenda, funding, and tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The grant scrutiny comes the same week the titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate,” examining what the committee described as SPLCs role in “distorting civil rights policy” and newly released information that the group allegedly funneled money to extremists it was claiming to combat.
The hearing featured testimony from author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center” and Daily Signal senior reporter Tyler ONeil, who told Fox News Digital that “the NIH needs to address parents concerns about this grant.”
“The Southern Poverty Law Centers Learning for Justice project pushes and transgender ideology. Meanwhile, the SPLC uses its hate map to condemn on the other side of the issue, silencing opposition to its agenda by comparing these groups to the Ku Klux Klan,” O’Neil added. “Federal tax dollars should not promote this divisive program in schools.”
University of Michigans current project page says the active NIH-backed program integrates SPLCs Learning for Justice curriculum into a middle-school program aimed at addressing and measuring students “racist beliefs and behaviors.” Meanwhile, the SPLCs current Learning for Justice materials frame the progra
