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Family Research Council Labels Noted Civil Rights Group A Terrorist Organization

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var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, in an email to supporters late last night decided to label the highly-respected Southern Poverty Law Center a terrorist organization. The SPLC is best known as the group of Montgomery, Alabama attorneys who took the KKK to court, ultimately reducing them from a group of domestic terrorists numbering up to six million to a small handful of a few thousand.

Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center monitors the activities of well-over one thousand hate groups — including the Family Research Council.

In order to be placed on the SPLC’s list of active hate groups, an organization has to demonstrate repeated intention to spread lies and falsehoods about a group of people. That is the definition of the Family Research Council.

“The United States may not negotiate with terrorists, but it certainly hasn’t minded using curriculum tied to them in official Army briefings,” Perkins wrote last night.

He is referring to a series of articles by debunked Fox News religion reporter Todd Starnes, who has published several articles claiming the U.S. Military, in training classes on understanding and recognizing extremism, listed the Family Research Council and the American Family Association as hate groups.

Since the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are hate groups, the military had every legitimate right to name them as such, but since that designation came from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Perkins is now labeling them “terrorists” — even on Twitter:

 

 

Perkins is also blaming the SPLC for the shooting by Chick-fil-A-carrying Floyd Lee Corkins at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters:

Despite being linked in federal court to a case of domestic terrorism, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been a go-to “source” of the Obama Pentagon in a string of military training sessions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is the nation’s premier authority on extremism and hate groups of all types: anti-gay, neo-Nazi, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes, anti-government “Patriot” groups, militias, Anti-Muslim, Holocaust Deniers, Anti-Immigrant, and many more.

GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project (CAP) offers startling statements from Perkins. A sampling:

Facts

— Says about gay people: “They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful”…”pawns” of the “enemy.” (See 1:30 mark.)

— Lumps together Aurora shooting, kidnapping, and openly gay soldiers as three examples of a “nation gone under”

— Says many gays have an “emptiness within them” (:55) because they are “operating outside of nature” (1:09)

— Says that gay young people “have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict; homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal.”

— Despite what health experts have said, insists that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem.”

— The Family Research Council has distributed a pamphlet that claims gay men are more likely to molest children, and supports “reorientation therapy” for gay people

— The Family Research Council has distributed a pamphlet that begins by likening the logic behind same-sex marriage to the logic behind man-horse marriage (complete with horse graphic)

– Compares gay legal advocates to terrorists (at 0:31 mark): “[B]ack in the 80s and early 90s, I worked with the State Department in anti-terrorism and we trained about 50 different countries in defending against terrorism, and it’s, at its base, what terrorism is, it’s a strike against the general populace simply to spread fear and intimidation so that they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That’s what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system.”

Jeremy Hooper at Good As You last night noted that “the far-right anti-LGBT organizations hate nothing more than their own words. If the past two years have proven any axiom to be true, it’s this one. Time and time again, we see that all one has to do to really enrage a far-right anti-LGBT activist is to say, “Hey, look at this stuff you said” and ask him or her to take responsibility for it… And sometimes, when they get really Jesus-y? They equate those messengers with terrorists.”

Instead of pointing the finger at the SPLC and wrongly calling them “terrorists,” perhaps Perkins should mend his ways and stop allowing his organization to continue to act as a hate group.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Previously:

Tony Perkins Slams Pro-LGBT Priest As ‘False Prophet’ Who ‘Encourages Those Who Do Evil’

Tony Perkins Wages War On ENDA: Gay People ‘Want To Put Their Bedroom In The Workplace’

Tony Perkins: Christians Must Buy Guns Because Democrats Won’t Force Americans To Pray

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News

DOJ Blasted for Taking Epstein Investigation Orders From Trump

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November 14, 2025

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Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly — and publicly — agreed to fulfill President Donald Trump’s request that she use the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Democrats and corporations that may have had ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump on Friday declared that Epstein is the “Democrat’s problem” and not Republicans’, then called for the DOJ, FBI, and Bondi “to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”

The New York Times reported that the “inquiry appeared to be retribution for the renewed focus on his own ties to Mr. Epstein.”

Just hours later, Bondi agreed.

READ MORE: Trump Stumbles Over ‘God Bless America’ Lyrics at Veterans Day Ceremony

“Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people,” she wrote.

The New York Times called Bondi’s acquiescence “a stark demonstration of her willingness to surrender the traditional independence of the Justice Department to serve Trump’s personal political agenda.”

The Times also reported that Bondi assigning the investigation to the Southern District of New York “could create significant conflict within an office known for its investigative might and independence.”

NBC News senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake reported that “In July, the FBI and DOJ wrote in their memo that they were not releasing the Epstein files in part because ‘We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.’ – and now, after a push from the President, here we are.”

Legal experts and other critics denounced the moves.

READ MORE: Democrat Warns How Trump Could Engineer a Path to Stay in Power After 2028

“Count the ways they’re corrupting DOJ,” wrote former longtime U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now an MSNBC legal analyst and professor of law. “Presidents don’t direct AG’s to open criminal cases, especially ones designating only Dems for investigation when POTUS himself is involved. DOJ doesn’t publicize criminal investigations & the AG definitely doesn’t assign them on Twitter.”

MSNBC executive producer Kyle Griffin asked, “If this investigation was legitimate, why wasn’t this investigation opened months ago? If this investigation was legitimate, why isn’t everyone mentioned in Epstein’s emails being investigated?”

Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon added, “When the president gives orders to Pam Bondi and our law enforcement arms of the federal government, it undercuts the credibility of our law enforcement.”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for him to do it. I would ask him not to do that, because all it does is taint our legal system,” Bacon concluded.

Responding to Bondi’s remarks, civil liberties and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote: “Unabashed corruption.”

“This has absolutely nothing to do with crime,” she stated. “Pam Bondi is just debasing her entire department for her liege so that she can stave off Congress from releasing whatever damning information she has on Trump. It’s a cover-up pure and simple and merely an indication of Trump’s desperation.”

READ MORE: ‘Mask Comes Off’: Trump Branded an ‘Elitist’ as Base Scrutinizes ‘America First’ Focus

 

Image via Reuters

 

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Democrat Warns How Trump Could Engineer a Path to Stay in Power After 2028

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5 hours ago

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November 14, 2025

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One of Capitol Hill’s most prominent — and most vocal — Democrats is warning about what he says are the ways President Donald Trump could try to remain in power beyond his current term.

President Trump has long hinted that he is interested in a third term, and even has had red “Trump 2028” caps as part of his merchandise offering. And while he recently appeared to put to rest questions about a third term — prohibited under a plain reading of the U.S. Constitution — by saying he has been told he cannot run, doubts among some still linger.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) on Friday shared what he suggested were possible ways Trump could try to stay in power past 2028 — and warned he thinks it’s possible that he will.

“I think he is right now trying to scheme a way to be able to stay,” Senator Murphy told The Bulwark’s Sam Stein at the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival.

READ MORE: ‘Retribution’: Trump Calls for Epstein Inquiry Into Democrats

“I think you have a potential, two potential Supreme Court vacancies coming up,” Murphy noted, “and it may be very important for him to install folks on the Supreme Court who may be willing to entertain radical ideas about the restrictions on the Constitution, about a third term.”

Murphy continued with an alternative theory, suggesting the President Trump “may just be interested in installing Donald Trump Jr. or another family member in the White House.”

But then the Connecticut Democrat served up a warning.

“Whatever he’s planning on doing, he can’t get away with it unless he destroys the ability of the people to speak their mind in elections because he and his party are going to lose in 2026 and 2028 unless he’s successful in rigging the election,” Murphy declared.

He vowed, “we’re going to do everything in our power, and we need to order all of our advocacy in the United States Senate and the House to stop him from doing it.”

READ MORE: ‘Mask Comes Off’: Trump Branded an ‘Elitist’ as Base Scrutinizes ‘America First’ Focus

Murphy continued with his warnings.

“I don’t think anybody with ambition right now should be planning on running for president in 2028 because we may not have a free and fair election in 2028,” Murphy declared. “We all have to be in the business of saving our democracy right now.”

“I do think we have to, all of us,” he added, “be traveling the entire country, whether it be an early primary state or not, to build this political resistance movement.”

READ MORE: Trump Stumbles Over ‘God Bless America’ Lyrics at Veterans Day Ceremony

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‘Retribution’: Trump Calls for Epstein Inquiry Into Democrats

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7 hours ago

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November 14, 2025

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President Donald Trump is intensifying his efforts to thwart attempts to force the release of the Epstein files, even as the House moves toward a vote that could send disclosure legislation to his desk for his signature — or veto — further heightening scrutiny of his past ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On Friday, the president announced he will ask the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation “to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”

The New York Times reported that the “inquiry appeared to be retribution for the renewed focus on his own ties to Mr. Epstein.”

After White House officials reportedly held a Situation Room meeting with Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Wednesday to convince her — unsuccessfully — to remove her name from the discharge petition, the president on Friday took a different tack, appearing both to try to wash his hands of the entire ordeal while refocusing attention on his political opponents and others.

“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!” Trump railed on his Truth Social website, while attacking Democrats.

“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do,” Trump alleged.

“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” the president continued. “Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!”

“Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”

Deadline on Friday noted that “Since the email release, Trump has avoided answering reporters’ questions about Epstein.”

Pointing to Trump’s Friday remarks, Politico’s Kyle Cheney remarked, “Trump again pleads with Republicans to stop talking about Epstein. The pressure hasn’t worked as well as it usually does. Also, the emails show Epstein was politically amorphous, deriding Ds just as much as Rs. And these latest emails were from the Epstein estate, not DOJ.”

Attorney Aaron Parnas added, “I guarantee you if Donald Trump truly believed Epstein was the ‘Democrat’s problem,’ he would have released all of the files by now.”

 

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