Tax Dollars Funded The SPLC While The It Funded Racist Groups
The article claims the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-which it says is under federal indictment over alleged hate-hoax funding-has received millions of dollars from government bodies to support activities in U.S. public schools.It cites OpenTheBooks, which reports SPLC received at least $3.85 million as 2016 for “teaching materials,” including over $1.35 million in direct payments from schools adn public institutions, though the payments are often described as lacking clear explanations.
A key example highlighted is a $2.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant (within HHS) to the University of Michigan-ann Arbor to expand the SPLC’s “Learning for Justice” curriculum (originally “Teaching Tolerance”). The project, “Youth Empowerment Solutions” (YES-ERACE), is described as a middle-school pilot meant to study effects on students’ sense of empowerment and racist or violent behaviors. The article further alleges the program was later rebranded as “YES-IDEAS” with SPLC removed from the public name while using the same principal investigator, Marc Zimmerman.
The piece also lists additional examples of payments by various school districts and universities-such as purchases of professional services, seminars/workshops, and reimbursement of speaker travel-arguing thes expenditures indicate SPLC involvement in K-12 education. It notes that HHS funding for the program was reportedly stopped, but associated university webpages remained briefly accessible before being taken down.
The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), currently under federal indictment for allegedly funding hate hoaxes, has been able to push its propaganda in schools through millions of dollars in direct payments from government entities at all levels.
According to watchdog OpenTheBooks, SPLC has received at least $3.85 million specifically for teaching materials in American public schools since 2016, with $1,352,655.07 in direct payments from school districts, cities, counties, universities, and states. While the group says most payments lack an explanation, the amounts “suggest payment for materials, speakers or licensing fees.”
“While Frederick Douglass, and my late friend Bob Woodson, challenged us to remember the great principle in the Declaration of Independence that our rights and dignity come from God, not government, geography or ethnicity, some groups claiming to fight racism have decided to desecrate our founding principles with identity politics,” OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart told The Federalist. “Taxpayers deserve full transparency from government agencies and public universities.”
The governments are not just in Democrat-run states, and include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, OpenTheBooks found a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor to fund pushing the SPLC’s “Learning for Justice” curriculum program into middle schools. The project was called “Youth Empowerment Solutions: Engaging Youth for Anti-Racism and Cultural Equity (YES-ERACE).”
The “trial” program collected data from six middle schools to “examine the effects of the curriculum on individual youths’ sense of empowerment, racist behaviors, and violent behavior.”
It would also track the “effects of YES-ERACE on perpetration of racist attitudes and behavior” using a “model that predicts empowered outcomes will mediate perpetration of racism, and that YES-ERACE effects on aggressive and violent behavior will also be mediated by reducing perpetration of racism over time.”
“Learning for Justice” was rebranded from “Teaching Tolerance” in order to “reflect evolving work in the struggle for radical change in education and community” which went from “reducing prejudice to more pointedly supporting action to address injustice.”
“We must learn, grow and wield power together,” the SPLC stated of the name change, claiming that it intends to examine “the ways systems and institutions perpetuate racism and white supremacy” and “demand radical change, challenging white supremacy in school and teacher education curricula, school discipline policies, school facilities and classroom climates.”
“YES-ERACE” was also rebranded in a new project which, as of December 2025, was called “YES-IDEAS,” removed all mention of SPLC, and uses the same principal investigator for the original grant, Marc Zimmerman. OpenTheBooks says it is the exact same program, describing it as “different name, same racial game.”
Zimmerman is a faculty member at the University of Michigan who focuses on “adolescent health and resiliency, and empowerment theory.” He has used previous grants to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology, like co-authoring a paper called “Understanding the Intersectionality of COVID-19 Racism, Mental Distress, Alcohol Use, and Firearm Purchase Behavior Among Asian Americans.”
According to Fox News, HHS is no longer funding the program. However, the website remained live at the time of reporting on the University of Michigan’s website. Since OpenTheBooks’ report published, however, the page has been taken down.
Michigan is not the only place that has paid for the “Teaching Tolerance” / “Learning for Justice” program to be in public schools, OpenTheBooks noted, pointing to Cincinnati Public Schools and Penfield Central School District, outside Rochester, New York, as examples.
Some of the funding is nondescript, and it is unclear exactly what public school systems are purchasing from the SPLC. As the report noted, Fulton County, Georgia, was part of the reason that public revenue “peaked” for the SPLC in 2021 because it made three separate unexplained payments totaling nearly $40,000.
Some other school systems like Robbinsville Public School in New Jersey bought Title IV Purchased Professional Services, which is part of the federal Elementary and Secondary Schools Act of 1965 allowing K-12 grants for teacher trainings from third parties, hired instructors, and after school programs. Chicago Public School District 299 paid for “Credit Classes, Seminars, Workshops, Etc.,” which OpenTheBooks says “indicated SPLC was spreading its materials and message in K-12 classrooms.”
Kansas State University and the Judicial Conference of Ohio paid to reimburse SPLC speaker travel expenses.
The SPLC is under federal indictment for allegedly defrauding its donors by using their donations to fund hate hoaxes, like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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