MAGA Can’t Stop Celebrating Layoffs at Major Civil Rights Organization
On June 12, an estimated 60 people were abruptly laid off by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Conservatives and extremists who’ve been profiled by the SPLC quickly cheered on the news.
In a hell of a self-report, Sean Davis, founder and CEO of conservative website The Federalist praised the layoffs on X (formerly Twitter). “Your entire organization is trash, and America will be better off when it’s forced to lay off every single employee,” wrote Davis. Moms for Liberty, an SPLC-designated anti-government extremist group, boosted the SPLC Union’s criticism of the organization for hoarding donations, with MfL co-founder Tina Descovich declaring, “Everything WOKE ends up rotting.”
Far-right troll Andy Ngo, whose own follower committed a deadly mass shooting inspired by his rhetoric, praised the layoffs in stereotypically unimaginative fashion, writing, “I hope the whole lot of you goes down, & one day in the future people can read about the shameful period of American history you were involved in.” Ngo has been covered previously by SPLC’s Hatewatch and described as a far-right provocateur.
The conservative rage against SPLC is to be expected, given the group’s detailed work monitoring far-right extremist movements. Moms for Liberty, for example, was categorized by the SPLC in 2023 as an anti-government extremist group for its ongoing efforts to roll back federal protections for LGBTQ youth, praising Hitler, threatening violence, and banning books.
The layoffs instead hit projects that work to serve communities in need, shuttering the Southeast Freedom Initiative, which provides pro bono legal services to detained immigrants, and the Economic Justice Project, which works to break the cycle of poverty among the country’s most impoverished communities, among other projects, according to HuffPost.
Adding to the dark celebration by far-right groups over SPLC’s sudden shrinkage, the layoffs hit 60 unionized workers, including a union chair and five union stewards, according to a statement from the union. The layoffs came two years after the SPLC reached a collective bargaining agreement with the then-nascent union, and ate a quarter of the organization’s workforce, as part of a “restructuring effort.”
“SPLC’s decision has a catastrophic impact on the organization’s work in support of immigrants seeking justice and its mission to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance human rights through support of educators,” the SPLC Union wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “How will today’s layoffs help us achieve our goals of fighting hate, decarcerating Black and Brown people, defending democracy, and eradicating poverty? The answer is: they won’t,” the union added.
* This piece has been corrected to clarify who was impacted by SPLC layoffs.
