The “Trump Effect”

Summary: The serial fabulists and exaggerators of the Southern Poverty Law Center are determined to portray Donald Trump and his supporters as cancers on the body politic. The Capital Research Center’s last report on the SPLC (Organization Trends, October 2012) observed that although the group “began with an admirable purpose,” it long ago “transformed into a machine for raising money and launching left-wing political attacks.”

Unlike the rest of the Left, which is currently obsessed with finding Russian influences everywhere, the disciplined, prolific fabulists of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have stayed admirably on-message. Founder Morris Dees and his minions laboring behind the thick walls of their “poverty palace” in Montgomery, Alabama, continue to push the line that the greatest threat to America is white men.

And the most dangerous of all the Caucasian males, according to the SPLC, is the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump. In two recent reports titled “The Trump Effect,” the SPLC claims that Trump’s presence on the American scene has sparked thousands of cases of “prejudice,” “bullying,” and hate crimes in the nation’s schools.

According to the SPLC, an alarming array of social ills afflicting schoolchildren, from bullying to poor grades to tummy aches to suicidal thoughts, may now be attributed to the election of Trump. Trump is allegedly such an all-powerful, yet intimate, influence that he is inducing nausea and crying fits, not only in elementary school students, but also among their teachers.

Obviously, the real explanation for mass election-related hysteria among six-year olds lies entirely in the behavior of the teacher in the front of the classroom. And the solution ought to be simple: such educators should be instructed to leave their politics at home and stop frightening the children they are supposed to be instructing.

But we live in a world where many teachers view their classrooms as petri dishes for social engineering. They believe it is their job to shape their students into social justice activists like themselves. The SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance education project provides such teachers with lesson plans, professional development materials, and a nationwide peer group of like-minded activist educators.

The SPLC created the phony data in the two “Trump Effect” reports by inviting such teachers to fill out open-ended, subjective questionnaires about the effect of the election on their students. Even among this self-selected group of radical educators, only a tiny fraction filled out the survey. One survey was conducted during the primaries in March and the other in November, post-election.

Despite a miniscule sampling and an unscientific method of collecting data, the SPLC claims its survey results prove the election of Donald Trump is tearing schools and communities apart. In addition to the self-reporting by leftist educators, included in the report are election-related “hate-incidents” as further proof of the thesis that Trump is single-handedly causing a rise in prejudice-related violence. Such incidents, the group says, were reported directly to the organization or found in news sites online, though the information provided about confirmation methods and the details of the alleged incidents themselves are far too vague to fact-check.

According to the SPLC, an alarming array of social ills afflicting schoolchildren, from bullying to poor grades to tummy aches to suicidal thoughts, may now be attributed to the election of Trump.

Despite the unverifiable data and the fact that virtually all high-profile bias crimes reported in the media to date have been exposed as hoaxes (except those committed by opponents of Trump), some have seized upon the reports as proof that Trump’s election is causing a scientifically quantifiable rise in prejudice and bias incidents against minorities, especially in schools.

This is what the SPLC does best: fabricate claims of “rising tides” of prejudice that divide Americans, for profit.

LYING FOR DOLLARS

The conclusions drawn from this supposed “Trump effect” are as unverifiable as the other reports of “rising tides of hate” that are the SPLC’s long-time modus operandi and meal ticket. In the mid-1990s, for example, it exploited a seeming increase in church fires to claim black churches throughout the South were being intentionally burned in a “tidal wave” of racist hatemongering. In 1996, President Clinton convened a task force and Congress passed the bipartisan Church Arson Prevention Act to investigate the church burnings.

Intensive federal investigations eventually proved that almost none of the fires were related to race. Many turned out to be accidents. Of the churches incinerated by arsonists, most had white congregations, and of arsonists caught, almost all were thieves, vandals, or self-proclaimed Satanists who did not choose their targets by race. Some of the most widely publicized racial arson cases turned out to be frauds committed by the churches’ own members or by others seeking to cash in on insurance payouts or on the donations pouring in from goodhearted Americans responding to the invented crisis.

Nonetheless, for years the SPLC has persisted in fundraising o the claim that racist white nightriders were again threatening churchgoing blacks throughout the South, as

if nothing in race relations had changed in society since the 1930s. Similar campaigns alleging “rising tides” of organized hate groups, hate crimes, and white supremacy among conservative political activists have repeatedly filled the SPLC’s coffers.

The SPLC doesn’t need more money. At last check, the fabulously wealthy 501(c)(3) nonprofit had one third of a billion dollars ($338 million) in assets, as well as investments in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

SPLC founder and chief trial lawyer Morris Dees’ financial improprieties have been documented again and again, by critics from the left and right sides of the spectrum. But it would be a mistake to view his racial fear campaigns as merely a way to grow rich. The political stakes are higher and more complex. The SPLC’s ultimate goal is smearing Republicans as bigots, in order to coalesce political power on the Left. Along with its fellow “opposition research” organizations (even those in conflict with Dees) and the Democratic Party, the SPLC labors to sustain the illusion America is perpetually threatened by “haters” who also happen to be Republicans, conservatives, rural Southerners, Christians, or some combination thereof.

The real rewards for sustaining this narrative are twofold: election victories, and control over the priorities and budgets of the many public bureaucracies dealing with bias and hate.

FROM KLANSMEN TO KINDERGARTENERS

Throughout the 1990s, the most profitable and influential “anti-hate” activism was in the legal arena. The Chicken Littles of the SPLC habitually warned of violent “hate crimes” infecting communities nationwide. Grandstanding politicians responded with presidential task forces, congressional hearings, and a vast expansion of hate crime investigation and prosecution units at every level of government, from the Department of Justice to small-town police forces.

The SPLC doesn’t need any more money. At last check, the fabulously wealthy 501(c)(3) nonprofit had one third of a billion dollars in assets, as well as investments in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Despite the relatively few crimes that could be wedged into even the most sweeping definitions of “hate crime,” and the petty nature of the vast majority of these crimes, hate crime units were generously funded and became permanent fixtures.

Yet the “tidal wave” of hate crimes predicted never materialized. Nor have the criminal justice organs of government been entirely comfortable with nonpro t organizations that style themselves as bias warriors. Focusing on the enforcement of hate crime laws has not always advanced the SPLC agenda. For example:

• No evidence has been found of any type of racial conspiracy to commit crimes against minorities.
• As is amply demonstrated by researchers such as Colin Flaherty, individual black offenders and gangs of offenders are responsible for scores of horrendous crimes that clearly include racial animus. As those crimes receive coverage in the media, the public grows increasingly impatient with the obvious anti-white biases in the enforcement of bias-crime laws.
• Multiple hate-crime hoaxes are also taxing public sentiment.
• In a nation where police investigated more than a million violent crimes—including 15,000 murders and 90,000 rapes in 2016—the investment of resources to investigate a few hundred “hate crimes” that consist mostly of vandalism and simple assault (including name-calling) also raises questions.

Mission dissonance between the justice system and SPLC’s activists also runs deep. Law enforcement itself is anathema to leftists. Obviously, it is difficult simultaneously to demonize police and also to advocate working with them to solve “bias crimes,” just as it is difficult to advocate for prison abolitionism while working to put people behind bars.

Even after 20 years of law enforcement vigorously pursuing hate-crime investigations, no evidence has emerged to support the SPLC’s contention that “a rising tide” of organized hate groups pose a criminal threat in America, unless one counts Islamic terrorists, which the SPLC, ever sensitive to its coalition partners’ politics, would never do.

But the absence of actual hate crimes against minorities has never stopped the SPLC from claiming white-supremacist hate infects every nook and cranny of the American landscape. These people have always had another part of government from which to hang their white-supremacist hunting hats: the education bureaucracy. And unlike the justice system, where evidence is required no matter how much the system is slanted in one’s favor, the education bureaucracy has no such prerequisite. Schools are thus more amenable arenas than courts for SPLC activism.

Light on evidence, deceptive in focus, and alarmist in language, they attempt to pathologize a new president and his supporters, equating their politics with fascism.

The “Trump Effect” reports are just the latest version of what the SPLC has done throughout its existence: manufacture smear jobs presented as scientific research on yet another “rising tide of prejudice.” Light on any evidence, deceptive in focus, and alarmist in language, the SPLC attempts to pathologize a new president and his supporters, equating their politics with fascism and violence.

But the reports also reveal something new: the degree to which the SPLC and its model of smear jobs have gained footholds in K–12 schools. This time the “rising tide of (white) prejudice” the SPLC claims to have identified is located in the minds and hearts of schoolchildren as young as kindergarteners, and this focus helps the SPLC gain more access to schools in order to “cure” the “hate” problem. That these children’s own teachers are reporting them to an organization as unsavory and divisive as the SPLC is truly alarming.

A TALE OF TWO SURVEYS

On Nov. 29, 2016, SPLC officials staged a press conference that was more like a show trial to unveil the group’s “Trump Effect” reports. Joining SPLC president Richard Cohen were Wade Henderson (Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights); Brenda Abdelall (Muslim Advocates); Janet Murguia (National Council of La Raza); and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a union that vigorously supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.

The National Press Club event was the usual drama in three parts: first, a parade of professional civil rights activists took to the stage to denounce Trump as a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic, immigrant-phobic hater. Then they unveiled the “Trump Effect” reports, luridly illustrated with pixelated, close-up photographs of Trump’s mouth.

In the reports, anonymous teachers blame Trump for real and purported events ranging from swastikas spray-painted on buildings by unknown vandals, to nightmares and the crying spells of young children, to students being so upset by the election they were unable to study for exams. Then SPLC officials demanded that Trump publicly confess his crimes.

“Mr. Trump claims he’s surprised his election has unleashed a barrage of hate across the country,” Cohen said. “But he shouldn’t be. It’s a predictable result of the campaign he waged. Rather than feign surprise, Mr. Trump should take responsibility for what’s occurring, forcefully reject hate and bigotry, reach out to the communities he’s injured, and follow his words with actions to heal the wounds his words have opened.”

After convicting Trump of ideological crimes great, small, and micro-aggressive, SPLC officials delivered the guilty verdict and moved to sentencing. They commanded Trump to “immediately, and forcefully, publicly denounce racism and bigotry, and to call on Americans to stop all acts of hate.”

But what were these hateful acts Cohen was talking about? He wasn’t referring to the serious crime that occurred Nov. 10, when a white Chicago motorist was pulled from his car by a gang of black criminals who held him down, punched and kicked him while shouting “You voted Trump,” “Beat his ass,” and “Don’t vote Trump” before dragging him from the side of his car over several blocks in traffic.

No, Cohen was citing the highly processed product of the two surveys of leftist schoolteachers conducted by the SPLC through its Teaching Tolerance project. As we’ve seen, the survey responses were elicited only from educators who subscribe to the Teaching Tolerance newsletter or follow the social media of a few other hard-left education nonprofits that partner with the SPLC, including Facing History and Ourselves, Teaching for Change, Not in Our Schools, Rethinking Schools, and AFT.

The questions posed to teachers did not reference Trump. What would eventually be the “Trump Effect” reports began as a survey asking teachers generally about the impact of the primary contest on their classrooms and school “climate” and asking how teachers were teaching the election.

Of course, it is possible that the plan all along was to focus on Trump.

The SPLC provides teachers with lesson plans, anti-bullying and anti-bias exercises, petitions, pledges, and other emotionally coercive busywork designed to address students’ purported intolerance.

Founded in 1991, Teaching Tolerance is the SPLC’s educational project. The Teaching Tolerance newsletter goes to more than 400,000 educators in nearly every school in America, the SPLC boasts.

The SPLC provides teachers with lesson plans, anti-bullying and anti-bias exercises, petitions, pledges, and other emotionally coercive busywork designed to address students’ purported intolerance. Students are also encouraged to become Teaching Tolerance activists and educate fellow classmates. Materials urge teachers to seek bias and prejudice in their white students’ every word and deed. Meanwhile, minority students and their teachers are encouraged to view all minorities as victims of an ever-present, all-encompassing, dangerous culture of white supremacy.

Abetted by legions of easily flattered, social-justice-warrior schoolteachers, the SPLC turns classrooms into indoctrination hubs while profiting from them, as the group heavily promotes Teaching Tolerance in fundraising appeals. This is the pool of teachers with whom the “Trump Effect” surveys were conducted.

Out of the 400,000 individuals and institutions that receive Teaching Tolerance materials, 2,000 participated in the first “Trump Effect” survey, while 10,000 participated in the second survey (with an unknown number participating in both). And again, the first survey of schoolteachers, from which the “Trump Effect” meme was developed, did not mention any presidential candidate by name. The title, “ The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on our Nation’s Schools,” was created only after the survey had been conducted. SPLC staffers said they dramatically changed focus because “out of 5,000 total comments, more than 1,000 mentioned Donald Trump,” while under 200 mentioned Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton.

This is how the SPLC interpreted the written responses it received:

• More than two-thirds of the teachers reported that students—mainly immigrants, children of immigrants, and Muslims—have expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election.
• More than half have seen an increase in uncivil political discourse.
• More than one-third have observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.
• More than 40 percent are hesitant to teach about the election.

In 2014 there were about 3.5 million full-time equivalent teachers employed in K–12 classrooms. In other words, at the height of presidential primary season, merely 2,000 teachers out of 3.5 million participated in the first survey. (And of the 2,000 teachers, some may be other classroom professionals such as librarians, administrators, English as a Second Language or other teacher aides and paraprofessionals.) The respondents all self-selected by subscribing to or reading the SPLC’s leftist agitprop:

• Approximately 1,333 K–12 educators (or 0.00038% of respondents) reported that students were concerned about what will happen to their families (presumably though not explicitly if a Republican were elected).
• Approximately 1,000 K–12 educators (or 0.00028% of respondents) perceived “an increase in uncivil political discourse” in their schools.
• Approximately 664 K–12 educators (or 0.00019% of respondents) perceived “an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.”
• Approximately 800 K–12 educators (or 0.00023% of respondents) reported being “hesitant to teach about the election,” though the rationale for their hesitancy is not detailed.

There are no actual data that show any increase in school bullying in 2016. Nonetheless, the SPLC claims that “Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.”

Despite its flimsy data, the SPLC scored a home run with the “Trump Effect.” The first report was soon cited as evidence Trump was fomenting a “tidal wave of hate” among schoolchildren. On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton warned: “Parents and teachers are already worrying about what they call the ‘Trump Effect.’ They report that bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.”

Built on a foundation of nothing more than the subjective impressions of 0.0057 percent of K–12 educators, the “Trump Effect” was soon being cited as scientific fact throughout the educational establishment.

A day later, the influential “political accountability” blog, PolitiFact, defended Clinton’s use of the report. While acknowledging the survey was both unscientific and anecdotal, the fact-checkers accepted it as truth because “experts in bullying” concurred with the findings. “Their sense of current trends in schools supports Clinton’s point. We rate her claim Mostly True,” PolitiFact asserted. (For more on this organization of so-called fact-checkers that explicitly treats guesses as facts, see the “Deception & Misdirection” article in the January 2017 issue of Capital Research.)

Built on a foundation of nothing more than the subjective impressions of 0.0057% of K–12 educators, the “Trump Effect” was soon being cited as scientific fact in news reports and by experts throughout the educational establishment.

After the election, the SPLC immediately followed up with a second “Trump Effect” survey and report. Perhaps because of the publicity attending the first report, this time 10,000 educators and others submitted responses totaling 25,000 comments.

The SPLC dubiously claims the overwhelmingly negative effect of Trump’s election on schoolchildren is everywhere. But the evidence presented is entirely beside the point. With their invention of the Trump Effect, these propagandists have achieved their actual goal: creating a potent organizing tool. Whether it reflects reality is irrelevant.

SAMPLE TEACHER COMMENTS

According to many of the responding teachers, Trump’s candidacy had an immediate, unambiguous effect on students, all of it profoundly negative. Here is a sampling of teachers’ responses, given here anonymously as in the reports:

• “White males have been overheard saying, ‘screw women’s rights, fag lover liberal, build the wall, lock her up.’ The rebel flag is draped on the truck of a popular student, and the p-word has been used very casually, citing Trump as the excuse.” — HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, MICHIGAN
• “In a 24-hour period, I completed two suicide assessments and two threat of violence assessments for middle school students. This was last week, one week after the election … students were threatening violence against African Americans. Students were suicidal and without hope. Fights, disrespect have increased as well.” — MIDDLE SCHOOL COUNSELOR, FLORIDA
• “A kindergartener asked me ‘Why did the bully win?’ Other kids who have been awarded student of the month and considered great examples for our school hid in a classroom after school and drew pokemon fireballs attacking the man. This is a serious issue that we have not clearly addressed. We need help and we must claim our districts and other districts ‘sanctuary districts.’” — ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER, ARIZONA
• “I teach at a charter school in [an inner city]. The student makeup is 99 percent black and Latino children, with the majority qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. The climate in the school itself has been fine, because almost all of the students are people of color. However students have been emotionally distraught, especially the day after the election. Many came to school sobbing, fearing for their future and their families, worried about their relatives being deported. Many expressed sadness that they didn’t realize how messed up the country was until that day, and that they either hated America or now understood why their friends said they hated America.” — MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER, NEW JERSEY
• “We have had many students fighting, especially between the Latino and African-American population, as well as many more boys feeling superior to girls. I have had one male student grab a female student’s crotch and tell her that it’s legal for him to do that to her now. We have not had as many hate crimes in our school as others, but that is likely because we have a VERY small white population. One of my students from last year who is Muslim has not worn her hijab since the election. She is one of three Muslim students in our school.” — ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER, MINNESOTA
• “When I attended a Veteran’s Day service on Thursday, some of those same students were in the ROTC group here. I saw a distinct parallel to Hitler Youth. I am no longer able to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I am compelled to turn away when it comes on over the loud speaker and am repulsed by ‘liberty and justice for all.’” — HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, VIRGINIA

It is difficult to read these comments—they number in the thousands—without concluding that many schools are essentially laboratories where leftist educators are guided less by the mission to impart knowledge than by a desire to engage students in endless efforts to divide society along lines of sex, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

NO DISSENT FROM TOLERANCE

There were only a few educators who reported that the election had little impact on their schools. The SPLC was even able to find so-called evidence of election-related conflict when teachers themselves could not find such conflict. When the schools concerned were overwhelmingly white, the SPLC construed the absence of conflict as proof of white students’ ignorance of the wider world.

“These students are isolated, with little exposure to students who are frightened by the election results, and few opportunities to see the world from their perspective,” according to the report. “Teachers at these schools report that their students have accepted (or welcomed) the results and have moved on.”

The Center provides the following examples:

• “Truly, it hasn’t had a huge impact. Because I talk about these things in class, I have been able to see what little impact there is. Colleagues haven’t seen anything.” — MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER, UTAH
• “If we stop trying to find problems and focus on the future, our country would be a better, more tolerant place to live. I explained to my students how lucky we are to live in the greatest country in the world, a place where we can have a peaceful transition of power; and if you do not agree with the results, we get to do it again in four years.” — HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, FLORIDA
• “I don’t think the election has had a big impact on our school climate. It is a 6–8 middle school in a wealthy suburb. We have mostly white students with a decent size Asian population. It seems that there was support for both sides in our community, but the students seem to be taking the results fairly.” — MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER, OHIO
• “Absolutely nothing; if anything, this survey is creating more hatred than the election results.” — HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER, RHODE ISLAND

Other schools, the SPLC claims, avoided conflict by “establishing inclusive welcoming communities,” having “response programs in place,” and by sponsoring “talking circles, student-led groups, leadership clubs, character programs and proactive staff,” all programs the Center promotes in schools.

HEROES OF TOLERANCE

The SPLC reports praise teachers who profess extreme anti-parent, anti-conservative views and who bring those attitudes to the classroom. They praise teachers who view themselves as embattled freedom-fighters who must struggle against uncaring, unfeeling administrators, ignorant fellow teachers, and hateful parents.

• “I have thrown caution into the wind and have spoken out against certain candidates which I have NEVER done,” wrote a Michigan high school teacher, “but I feel it’s my duty to speak out against ignorance!”
• “I am teaching off the hook before anyone ‘catches’ me and puts me in a Common Core box; we are reading Howard Zinn, Anne Frank, Haig Bosmajian, Jane Yolen, Ayn Rand, George Orwell and survivors’ testimonies from the Holocaust and the genocides around the world. … I am making it as real and as connected to my students as I can. I feel like I am teaching for our lives.”

THE THERAPEUTIC TOLERANCE POST-APOCALYPSE ACTION PLAN

On the morning after election night, Tommy Chang, Boston Public Schools superintendent, sent out an impassioned letter addressed to the “Boston Public Schools Family.” Unable, as a public official, to explicitly denounce Donald Trump, he nonetheless managed to treat the election results like a deadly public disaster. “It is important today to be strong for our students and each other,” he wrote, adding that the schools’ “Behavioral Health Department is available to support students who may be having a difficult time processing any fears or concerns … the Employee Assistance Program is available to support City of Boston employees’ well-being.”

In addition to referring all students and city employees to mental health professionals, he urged the entire school district to begin collective healing with the help of the SPLC, which had pre-emptively created an array of post-election exercises with titles like “The First Hundred Days,” and “The Day After.” Both Chang’s letter and the “First Hundred Days” exercises feature self-evaluations with ominous-yet-inane questions. Chang recommended Bostonians contemplate, “How will I interact with others based on what I know about their feelings?” The “First Hundred Days” exercise is written in the voice of an adolescent whose reaction to the outcome of a class president race includes wishing to spit on the winner, but in the end, through self-evaluation “in the text” and “in my head,” the narrator commits to getting along with her “stupid” classmates.

In “The Day After,” the SPLC gets more to the point: “Prepare yourself,” the worksheet warns, “to engage in difficult conversations surrounding the various topics—racism, civil rights, immigration and so forth—that the election has raised.”

Superintendents in places like New York City and Los Angeles issued similar letters. The SPLC offered more exercises: “Our Classroom Values”; “Our Classroom Priorities”; a “Speak up for Civility Pledge” that could be printed out and signed. In the second “Trump Effect” report, the group praised Chang for having the vision to link to its therapeutic resources.

But this lip service paid to empathy and healing was overshadowed by the report’s primary message: Adults and students who voted for Trump or supported him had committed unforgivable actions of hatred. The veneer of “tolerance” was mere click-bait, or cover for public officials like Chang as he abused his authority by referring to his pro-Trump employees as Nazis, Klansmen, and advocates for slavery and genocide. The section of the report appearing directly below praise for Chang starts: “Take care of the wounded.”

“Many students,” it continues, “especially immigrant, LGBT, Muslim and African-American students—are profoundly upset and worried by the election results. Their anxiety is warranted; many have been targeted in and out of school by individuals who think Trump’s election has licensed hatred and bigotry.”

Have they? What is a public official doing recommending such defamatory material through official channels, in the name of tolerance, no less?

Claiming to provide lesson plans for tolerance is the way the SPLC gets into schools. Once in, the mask quickly comes off; the civility pledges and classroom empathy exercises are merely a ploy.

A few weeks before the election the U.S. Department of Education announced grants of $6.5 million to fund four Regional Equity Assistance Centers. The money would, in part, “provide resources and training to combat issues such as hate crimes, implicit bias, racial prejudice, and bullying.” Region 1 would be served by the SPLC under the umbrella of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium Inc. So, taxpayers are now effectively funding agitprop data-gathering that accuses anyone who supported Trump of committing crimes against humanity, and the SPLC will continue this work until your tax dollars run out.

CONCLUSION

With the invention of the “Trump Effect,” the SPLC has finally bypassed the criminal justice system and its insistence on actually investigating the validity of reports of hate. They are liberated from the burden of proving that a “hate incident,” or even any fleeting hint of micro- aggression (let alone a crime), actually occurred. SPLC researchers and their education partners now use the excuse of researching the Trump E ect to bring their politics into classrooms in the name of conducting research on students “traumatized” by Trump’s victory.

The “Trump Effect” reports do not merely represent a new low in leftist political bias masquerading as opposition research on hate groups: They mark a frightening step in the psychological manipulation of even very young children in classroom settings to achieve the political ambitions of radical leftists. The act of researching the Trump Effect itself is an instance of political activism imposed on captive schoolchildren by the SPLC.

Tina Trent received a doctorate from the Institute for Women’s Studies of Emory University, where she wrote about the devastating impact of social justice movements on criminal law under the tutelage of the conservative, pro-life scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Dr. Trent lives with her husband on a farm in North Georgia. She blogs about crime and politics at tinatrent.com.