A watchdog says at least $3.85 million in taxpayer-backed support is tied to the Southern Poverty Law Center, including a $2.5 million National Institutes of Health-backed University of Michigan project that says it integrates the SPLC’s racial justice curriculum into middle school classrooms. The money trail runs through public institutions, school systems, and federal grant machinery, with OpenTheBooks saying Friday that $1,352,655.07 in taxpayer dollars had been paid directly to the SPLC from school districts, states, cities, counties, universities and other public entities since fiscal year 2016.
Who Pays, Who Decides
The University of Michigan project materials describe the grant as integrating 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. That is the basic architecture here: public money, public schools, and a curriculum routed through a private advocacy organization.
OpenTheBooks said the current project page still says the active NIH-backed project integrates SPLC’s 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 SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance curriculum into the YES program. The paperwork, in other words, keeps the same institutional pipeline visible even as officials say the program has been changed.
What the Classroom Materials Push
Fox News Digital said 8th-grade lesson materials from the SPLC curriculum, which it reviewed, 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. Materials for grades 6-8 and 9-12 include tasks directing students to write letters to corporate or elected officials calling for action and organizing live social media chats to raise awareness for social justice issues.
Those are not neutral classroom exercises; they are organized political messaging delivered through school systems. The source material shows the curriculum reaching into children’s daily education while directing them toward activism, corporate targets, and elected officials, all under the banner of a federally backed project.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services told Fox News Digital the program “is no longer being funded” and has been “redesigned” to focus on reducing teen and family violence. OpenTheBooks, however, pointed to the University of Michigan’s current project page, which still says the active NIH-backed project integrates SPLC’s Learning for Justice curriculum and lists SPLC as a partner. The official language says “redesigned”; the project page still shows the same partner and the same curriculum.
The Watchdogs, the Hearings, the Money
The scrutiny comes the same week the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate,” examining what the committee described as SPLC’s 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 Tyler O’Neil, author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center” and a Daily Signal senior reporter, who told Fox News Digital that “the NIH needs to address parents’ concerns about this grant.”
O’Neil also said, “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice project pushes critical race theory and transgender ideology. Meanwhile, the SPLC uses its ‘hate map’ to condemn parental rights groups on the other side of the issue, silencing opposition to its agenda by comparing these groups to the Ku Klux Klan. Federal tax dollars should not promote this divisive program in schools.” Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said, “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.” He added, “I support the important work of the House Judiciary Committee to expose the nefarious agenda, funding, and tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Fox News Digital said it reached out to the University of Michigan, including the grant’s project leader, Professor Marc Zimmerman, and Kate Barnes, a communications manager for the university’s Office of the Vice President for Research, but did not immediately receive a response.
The article also said the Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted by the Department of Justice last month over allegations of wire fraud, false statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to what prosecutors described as a covert paid-informant program involving individuals associated with extremist groups. The Department of Justice alleges that the program secretly funneled donor money to informants inside extremist groups, but SPLC has denied wrongdoing.
OpenTheBooks president John Hart said, “Taxpayers have the right to know what groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has financed racial animosity, are doing with their money.” OpenTheBooks also said its figures may understate SPLC’s taxpayer-backed footprint because free classroom resources and teacher-training materials often do not show up in spending databases. The watchdog said, “Open the Books only came upon the details of 'Teaching Tolerance' and the SPLC curriculum by submitting a FOIA request and waiting ten weeks. That suggests there could be plenty more indirect support for the nonprofit that’s not readily visible to taxpayers,” and added that a second investigation into the Pentagon’s K-12 public schools also turned up SPLC learning materials.
A previous Fox News Digital report, citing an investigation by conservative nonprofit Defending Education, found SPLC’s Learning for Justice program had been integrated into K-12 lesson plans and materials in 169 school districts across 42 states and Washington, D.C., including in classrooms as early as kindergarten. Defending Education said the materials promoted themes including “anti-racism,” White privilege, White supremacy, “whiteness,” gender ideology, “queer theory,” and more.