FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning nonprofit, pressured a well-known figure in the Biden-Harris administration not to attend a bipartisan summit to promote religious freedom around the world, documents uncovered by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project show.
According to the documents, first published by The Daily Signal, multiple SPLC staff and leaders reached out to the U.S. Agency for International Development to suggest that USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, should not attend the bipartisan International Religious Freedom Summit in 2023.
“We have several concerns about this summit, in particular that some of the featured speakers belong to SPLC-designated hate groups and are well known for their anti-LGBTQ beliefs,” Susan Corke, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, wrote in a Jan. 25, 2023, email to leaders at USAID ahead of the summit, held Jan. 31-Feb. 2.
“We realize at this point the event is close and speakers are likely locked in, but we hope that there will be strong counter messages against such hateful beliefs,” Corke wrote.
In that email, Corke noted her previous experience with Power when she was Obama’s U.N. ambassador.
“I know she is a strong advocate against hate and extremism and for inclusive, civil society coalitions,” Corke wrote.
The annual International Religious Freedom Summit involves members of atheist, Baha’i, Eastern Orthodox, Falun Gong, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Sikh, and Yazidi organizations, along with Christian minorities such as Assyrians and Copts.
Speakers often address religious persecution around the world, from the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, to the Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in China, to the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center suggested Power should distance herself from the summit because it includes organizations that the SPLC brands “hate groups.”
USAID, an independent federal agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, represents America to the world. It therefore should advocate key American values such as religious freedom.
The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the emails.
SPLC’s Carrot-and-Stick Approach
Two days after Corke’s email (sent on the Friday before the summit began on a Monday), two SPLC staffers reached out to USAID, perhaps representing a “carrot” and “stick” approach.
Michael Lieberman, the SPLC’s senior policy counsel for hate and extremism, sent a morning email warning that Power’s appearance at the summit might “mainstream” the “anti-LGBTQ movement.” Taking the “carrot” approach, Lieberman offered research to help, suggesting that Power and Rashad Hussain, the Biden-Harris administration’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, should “affirmatively distance themselves” from summit leaders.
“In short, we are concerned that high government officials, diplomats, and celebrities who attend the IRF Summit risk further mainstreaming the LGBTQ movement and legitimizing their exportation of an exclusionary right-wing ‘religious freedom’ to the world,” Lieberman wrote to USAID. “Some prominent speakers and organizations involved with the summit have used religious rhetoric to advocate criminalization and even the death penalty for LGBTQ people.”
“We’d like to provide background for you that would enable Ambassador Power and Ambassador Hussain to affirmatively distance themselves, in their conversation, from the dangerous, virulently anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that is promoted by some of the summit speakers, sponsors, and coordinating organizations,” the SPLC official added. “We would also encourage them to find opportunities to speak out strongly against using religious freedom as a mask for bigotry and religious discrimination against minority religions and LGBTQ community members.”
Creede Newton, an investigative reporter with the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, reached out that afternoon, likely representing the organization’s “stick” approach.
“We plan to publish a short article on Monday detailing some of the positions of individuals and organizations set to participate in this year’s International Religious Freedom Summit,” Newton wrote to USAID. “We will highlight the positions of the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.”
Newton went on to claim that FRC, a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., and ADF, a conservative Christian law firm that has won multiple Supreme Court cases, “both take positions in opposition to the stated goals of USAID.”
“The agency,” he said of USAID, “says ‘it advances the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and works to protect LGBTQI+ people from violence, discrimination, stigma, and criminalization around the world.”
“Does the agency wish to respond as to why Administrator Samantha Power has agreed to speak alongside Perkins at an event that partnered with the [ADF]?” he asked in the email.
USAID’s Response
Melissa Hooper, USAID’s senior adviser for the rule of law, anticorruption, and human rights, initially connected Corke with other USAID staff, including Chief of Staff Rebecca Chalif.
Chalif enlisted Adam Phillips, then acting deputy assistant administrator at USAID, to respond to the SPLC’s concerns.
“Adam, [I] imagine this is all well known info and was considered in taking the meeting?” Chalif asked in the email.
Hooper responded by apologizing, saying in an email that she felt “catfished” by the SPLC.
“Thanks Rebecca, I also want to apologize,” Hooper wrote. “I feel a bit catfished since my contact approached me with a specific point that sounded like it would be helpful, but I see now that the conversation has morphed into a broader and less helpful discussion.”
“Catfishing” refers to someone creating a fake online identity to trick others into believing that version of themselves is real. Catfishing often involves a profile of an attractive young woman reaching out to male users or someone claiming to be a “Nigerian prince” asking for a quick infusion of cash so that he can later send a larger sum back to the targeted user. The nefarious actors behind these accounts try to trick users into giving them sensitive information or funds.
Hooper’s email suggests that she thought the SPLC’s concerns were legitimate, but then later realized they were not.
USAID did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the exchange of emails or on the specific reason Hooper said she felt “catfished.”
“I will be careful in initiating conversations like this in the future,” she concluded in her email to the USAID chief of staff.
Newton’s article, published on the SPLC website that same day, quoted an unnamed USAID representative in stating that “US government officials regularly participate in this forum, and this participation is not an endorsement of the views of other participants or organizations taking part in the IRF Summit.”
The representative said USAID “is deeply committed to our work and partnerships that advance the rights and opportunities of LGBTQI+ people.”
Why This Should Set Off Alarm Bells
Why should Americans care? The U.S. Agency for International Development didn’t cave to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s pressure, and Power and Hussain both spoke at the 2023 summit.
Yet the incident reveals the SPLC’s cancel culture nature and its ability to influence government agencies.
As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC raises money by exaggerating the number of “hate groups” in America, placing mainstream conservative and Christian organizations on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The SPLC presents itself as the foremost group monitoring and combating “hate” and “extremism,” and it essentially redefines those terms to apply to anyone who dissents from the SPLC’s own narrative on immigration, radical Islam, parental rights, LGBTQ issues, and more.
This enables SPLC to kill two birds with one stone: raising money by screaming about a surge of “hate,” and delegitimizing its political and ideological opponents in the public square.
This “hate map” inspired a terrorist to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting in 2012. Although the terrorist’s plan was largely foiled and the SPLC condemned the attack, the terrorist later told the FBI he targeted the conservative organization using the SPLC’s map.
A former employee—speaking out amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal at the SPLC in 2019—described the SPLC’s “hate” accusations as a “highly profitable scam.” The SPLC paid millions to Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer it had branded an “anti-Islamic extremist,” in 2018. Last year, a Georgia immigration nonprofit’s defamation lawsuit against the SPLC (which had branded the nonprofit a “hate group”) cleared a major legal hurdle.
Even liberals who disagree with some of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s targets have publicly condemned the SPLC’s smears. Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, have vouched for Alliance Defending Freedom, stating that the Christian law firm is nothing like a “hate group.”
When the SPLC repeatedly attacked the International Religious Freedom Summit in 2023, the summit’s Democratic co-chair defended the effort publicly in a statement to The Daily Signal.
“My co-chair, Ambassador Sam Brownback, and I are incredibly proud of the diverse coalition that the IRF Summit has brought together, which includes 90 partner organizations from virtually every faith community and belief system, cultural background, and political perspective,” Katrina Lantos Swett, founder of the Lantos Foundation, said at the time.
“The SPLC, regrettably, seems to have missed the forest for the trees and has forgotten a simple truth: namely, that disagreeing profoundly about some matters does not mean we can’t find common ground on others,” Lantos Swett added. “Such civic goodwill goes to the essence of a pluralistic and tolerant society, and that is precisely the kind of community we are proud to have built at the IRF Summit.”
Influence in Government
Unfortunately, not all federal agencies have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the way USAID did. In fact, many agencies reached out to the SPLC for advice in combating “domestic terrorism.”
In the fall of 2021, SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged that the fledgling administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had reached out to the SPLC earlier in the year for help in fighting “domestic terrorism.”
The FBI’s Richmond office notoriously cited the SPLC in a since-retracted memo calling for surveillance at Catholic churches last year.
The SPLC briefed the Justice Department and a high-ranking official of the Department of Education.
SPLC leaders and staff have attended White House meetings at least 18 times since January 2021, and Biden appointed an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
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