The Southern Poverty Law Center is “doxxing” the staff of the site Not the Bee, the website affiliated with The Babylon Bee that writes lighthearted news stories highlighting the absurdities of the Left. SPLC published its piece on The Babylon Bee on Tuesday afternoon. It revealed the identities of six authors from Not The Bee from around the country who contribute to the site. SPLC published their names, where they lived, and their professions, which ranged from fitness instructor to high school teacher. The Babylon Bee’s leadership team got ahead of SPLC’s story on Tuesday morning. Dan Dillon, CEO of Not The Bee, which publishes true stories so absurd that they seem like parodies, said SPLC managed to extract the identities of contributors who write under pseudonyms, and contacted the website saying it plans to publish their identities. “They’ve taken personal information about our authors and pieced together a story that is meant to ‘expose’ our anonymous staff to their employers and the general public,” he said on X. “While we take the actual issue of doxxing very seriously and will defend those on staff that wish to stay anonymous, what we don’t take seriously is this organization that’s behind the attack. They are angry, bitter, resentful hacks that feel like their ability to pummel people into worldview submission is slipping away.” Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, said that his companies are still working to figure out how exactly the identities were extracted by SPLC, but he already knows exactly why it was done. “They did it because they’re left-wing activists masquerading as journalists,” Dillon said. “They did it because they lack principles. They did it because they’re vindictive bullies who’ve admitted their aim is to ‘completely destroy’ individuals and organizations they disagree with by making them pay a steep price for speaking freely.” The discredited, scandal-ridden smear factory known as the SPLC is about to publish a hit piece doxxing several of our “Not the Bee” writers who wished to remain anonymous so they could speak freely, without fear. The SPLC extracted sensitive information from our site, then used… pic.twitter.com/toQLfga5SU — Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) November 19, 2024 SPLC was founded in 1971 by mail-order salesman Morris Dees. Dees had worked for notorious segregationist George Wallace, but with the advent of widespread revulsion at white supremacy, he saw an opportunity to apply his trade to raising money to oppose groups like the KKK. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees would say of SPLC’s business model. Since such groups were, even then, essentially eradicated, it began declaring increasingly moderate groups — often Christian ones — to be “extremists,” keeping the fundraising going. According to its 2022 tax form, it took in $170 million that year, and had about $700 million stashed away as “private investment funds.” $26 million was stored in “Central America and the Caribbean.” The Free Beacon reported in 2019 that tax documents from 2014 showed it transferring millions of dollars to the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. The group now has little to do with poverty in the South, and according to a former employee’s 2019 essay, almost all of its employees were white and straight. Dees was fired in 2019 after minority and female staffers said he engaged in racism and sexual harassment. SPLC now functions as a smear factory, allowing reputable groups like legacy media outlets to call center-right groups extremists without engaging in defamation because they attribute it to SPLC, a nominal expert, instead of saying it themselves. In 2012, a left-wing gunman stormed the conservative think tank Family Research Council because he saw it listed as “anti-gay” by SPLC. He was later convicted of terrorism for the attack. In 2018, SPLC’s insurance company paid British activist Maajid Nawaz $3.4 million because the group falsely named him an “anti-Muslim extremist.” Last year, a judge ruled that a defamation suit from the Dustin Inman Society could proceed after SPLC called it an “anti-immigrant hate group… vilifying all immigrants,” when the Society says it simply opposes illegal immigration. Among the blog authors doxxed by SPLC were names such as “Planet Moron.” The request for comment posted by Not The Bee said, “This is Creede Newton, a journalist with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.” It said that it had identified the real name of the pseudonymous “Planet Moron”’ and planned to publish the employment and residency information of the author because he is a “prolific writer on culture-war issues.” Prominent conservatives defended The Babylon Bee ahead of the SPLC piece. Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro praised Dillon for going after SPLC rather than waiting for the smear to come out. “This is the right strategy,” Shapiro wrote on X. This is the right strategy https://t.co/D93GP4xl0P — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 19, 2024 Chris Rufo, a journalist and activist, said on X that the fact that SPLC was going after a comedy site “proves that ‘systemic racism’ is such a marginal problem in American life that organizations supposedly dedicated to fighting it do things like this instead.”

The Republican-led Texas State Board of Education is on the verge of approving optional biblical teachings in the Lone Star State’s public school curriculum. On Tuesday, a majority of the board’s 15 members signaled support for Bluebonnet Learning, an elementary school curriculum that includes Christian teachings and biblical references, The Texas Tribune reported. The board will officially vote on the curriculum on Friday. If approved, Texas school districts would be offered a financial incentive to adopt it, and the curriculum would become optional for 2.3 million public school students in kindergarten through fifth grade, beginning in August 2025. The curriculum includes lessons on the biblical accounts of Jesus’ parables of “The Good Samaritan” and the “Golden Rule.” Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott backed the curriculum in a statement, saying that it will “allow our students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution,” The New York Times reported. Board members in support of the curriculum also said that it would help students improve their reading and “cultural literacy.” “In my view, these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy,” Republican State Board of Education member Will Hickman said. “And there’s religious concepts like the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule and Moses that all students should be exposed to.” Opponents of the curriculum argued that it could be viewed as political or as setting up a “state religion.” “I am a Christian, and I do believe that religion is a part of our culture, but our nation does not have a religion. We’re unique in that,” said Mary Lowe, co-founder of Families Engaged for an Effective Education, according to the Texas Tribune. “So I do not think that our school districts should imply or try to overtly impress to young impressionable children that the state does have a state religion.” MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ Many parents spoke at the State Board of Education with some defending the curriculum, arguing that Christianity and the Bible are inseparable from American history. The New York Times reported that one mother, who is also a substitute teacher, told the board that Jesus’ incarnation “is and always will be the hinge of all of history.” “How would the canceling of such fundamental facts serve the education of our children or contribute to shape them morally?” she asked.

Bitcoin has soared to a series of new all-time highs in the weeks following the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, with the cryptocurrency asset surging to a new high of $94,000 today. The largest cryptocurrency asset has climbed to a series of new highs ever since election night, first jumping from roughly $68,000 to about $74,000 as Trump secured victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, then surging again to $90,000 in the eight days that followed. Bitcoin sat at just over $44,000 on January 1st, 2024, marking an increase of over 100 percent in less than a year. JUST IN: $94,000 #Bitcoin ?? NEW ALL TIME HIGH! pic.twitter.com/bqMlM4Hprf — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 19, 2024 Today’s jump in price to $94,000 followed Trump’s decision to name Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick as his Secretary for the Department of Commerce. Lutnick has been a vocal proponent of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular, telling the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this year that “Bitcoin is like gold and should be free trade everywhere in the world.” MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ The billionaire CEO also has a personal stake in Bitcoin, explaining in an interview that he has “hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure to bitcoin and it will be billions.” The announcement that Lutnick will be nominated as Commerce Secretary comes just after Trump reportedly met with Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the major cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, to discuss personnel appointments. The move comes after cryptocurrency companies entered the political arena during the election, assembling $160 million as they backed candidates who support the industry. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts and Bitcoin bulls are now hoping for the rally to continue and propel the asset to $100k, with some pointing to increased corporate interest and adoption of the cryptocurrency as a potential catalyst for increased upside. Some smaller cryptocurrencies have benefited from Bitcoin’s upward move, with Solana inching towards its previous all time high of $258, which was set in November 2021. The asset similarly saw positive price action on the heels of Trump’s victory, jumping from $160 on election day to a recent high of $247 in a 64 percent move to the upside in less than two weeks.

Colorado has agreed to pay over $1.5 million after violating the First Amendment rights of a graphic designer who took her case to the United States Supreme Court. The Court ruled in June that the state could not compel Lorie Smith and her design studio, 303 Creative, to create art that violates her religious beliefs. As a Christian, Smith believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Though she wanted to design wedding websites, Colorado’s discrimination laws would have required her to create same-sex wedding websites. Smith, who was represented by lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, asked the Supreme Court to say Colorado’s discrimination law violated her First Amendment rights. Her case followed that of Jack Phillips, a cake designer persecuted by LGBTQ activists in Colorado for over a decade for attempting to only design cakes consistent with his religious beliefs. “After enduring Colorado’s censorship for nearly seven years, I’m incredibly grateful for the work of my attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom to bring my case to victory,” Smith said in a statement on Tuesday.  “As the Supreme Court said, I’m free to create art consistent with my beliefs without fear of Colorado punishing me anymore. This is a win not just for me but for all Americans—for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views.” (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Kristen Waggoner said that the “government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom.” “For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government’s preferred ideology,” she said. “First Amendment protections are non-negotiable. Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct.” “No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views,” Waggoner added. “Political and cultural winds shift, but the freedom to speak without fear of censorship is a God-given constitutionally guaranteed right, essential for a flourishing society and self-governing people.” In October, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the same trans-identifying attorney who has brought cases against Phillips for over 12 years — Autumn Scardina, a man who identifies as a woman. Scardina first contacted Phillips in 2012, calling the cake-maker a hypocrite and a bigot, according to Alliance Defending Freedom. Scardina has requested that Phillips create cakes celebrating gender transitions and “Satan smoking Marijuana.”

Many of us rely on traffic cameras to help us plan our commute. It’s nice to look at a live view of our path and anticipate any congestion. Sometimes, weather conditions aren’t great and block the view, but they’re a pretty reliable source for the most part. In New Zealand, they use traffic cams to help residents plan their commute, but it seems not everyone loves them. A New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi camera caught an unhappy myna bird causing trouble. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ABC News (@abcnews) The Myna Bird Seemed To Be Giving The New Zealand Traffic Cam The Business The transport agency shared a video of the angry bird on Facebook with a funny caption. It reads, “Wishing a great week ahead to everyone except this bird brain that needs to myna its own business. The myna bird is a pest in New Zealand – it’s aggressive towards our native birds, destroying their nests, eating native fruit, and taking over other birds’ territory, so this definitely wasn’t a welcome cameo on our cameras.” Thankfully, the bird only stuck around for a few seconds and was on his way. “We monitor motorways 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though a myna annoyance like this can make the roads a bit tricky to see. Thankfully the myna didn’t stick around long and our bird’s eye view of the road was soon restored.” New Zealanders filled the comment section with jokes about the traffic cam bird. “I’m sure it was just a myna inconvenience,” someone wrote. Another person joked, “Well, what else could it do? They can’t buy alcohol. They don’t serve myna’s.” This person thinks the bird might be looking for his family, “Might be that Myna bird that got lost, his advertised on the lost and found pets Auckland, he might have been asking for help.” You can find the story’s featured image here. The post Curious Creature Caught On New Zealand Traffic Cam Becomes International Star appeared first on InspireMore.

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House Republicans pressed Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about bias at FEMA after a supervisor directed staff to avoid helping Florida residents with signs supporting Donald Trump. A FEMA supervisor, Marn’i Washington, told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida, to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid after Hurricane Milton, The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported. The directive reportedly prevented FEMA from offering post-hurricane aid to at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags in late October and November. Criswell announced that FEMA had fired Washington and claimed Washington acted on her own initiative in giving these orders. Yet Washington claimed that her directions were not an isolated incident. Sources inside FEMA have spoken to The Daily Signal and other outlets, also saying that the direction for FEMA staff to avoid Trump supporters was not an isolated incident. “Why should we believe this is an isolated incident?” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked the FEMA administrator during a committee hearing. “We are conducting an investigation and we have asked the IG [inspector general] to look into this further, to ensure that this is not beyond the one employee who sent this message,” Criswell said. “It is not indicative of the rest of our workforce and it is completely unacceptable.” ?WEAPONIZED"Why should we believe this is an isolated incident?" Chairman @JamesComer asks."We are conducting an investigation and we have asked the IG to look into this further, to ensure that this is not beyond the one employee who sent this message," Criswell says. "It is… pic.twitter.com/YY5DB03Trv— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 Comer noted the way Democrats have repeatedly demonized Trump supporters. ?DEMONIZATION"For nearly a decade, Democrats… have demonized the millions of Americans who support President Trump," @RepJamesComer said. Trump supporters "are tired of being called trash, cult followers, fascists, Nazis, and many other horrific names for simply loving their… pic.twitter.com/Zt4Gzz2cKG— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The Democratic Line House Democrats thanked Criswell for firing Washington and defended her claims that Washington did not represent a broader trend at the agency. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., insisted that Washington’s actions represented a “quite isolated situation.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., accused Trump of having “deliberately directed disaster aid based on the party politics of local leadership and past electoral performance, not the needs of the community and disaster survivors.” “In 2018, after California suffered the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in its history, President Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid because of the state’s liberal democratic leanings,” Raskin said. “He reportedly later changed his mind after his staff provided him data showing that there were more Trump voters in Orange County, California, than there were in the entire state of Iowa.” These claims trace back to a Politico story citing Mark Harvey, who served as Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff. Common Practice? Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., noted Washington’s statements that “avoiding politically hostile homes is common throughout FEMA.” “Is this a practice at FEMA?” he asked. “Congressman, there is nothing in any of our policies, our training, or our information sent out to our field workers, to avoid any home for whatever reason, especially not because of a political affiliation,” she replied. “The actions of this one individual are not representative of the work we do at FEMA.” Donalds cited a New York Post article quoting an anonymous FEMA employee calling the avoidance of Trump-supporting houses an “open secret at FEMA.” ?WATCH: @ByronDonalds presses Deanne Criswell on whether Marn'I Washington's direction for FEMA staff to avoid houses with Trump signs was an isolated incident.Criswell insists that it was an isolated incident, despite Washington's statements that it wasn't, and despite FEMA… pic.twitter.com/aqbCo6svJG— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 Citing The Daily Signal Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., cited FEMA whistleblowers who spoke to The Daily Signal and The Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity. “An anonymous FEMA employee, we’ve been told, I guess it would be from The Daily Signal, that employees were also advised to avoid certain homes and specifically used the terms, ‘Hick,’ ‘cowboy,’ redneck,’ ‘Trump supporters,’ and ‘MAGA,’ to describe them,” he said. “Have you come across any of these terms in your investigation so far?” “This is the first I’m hearing any of those terms,” Criswell replied. ?'HICK, COWBOY, REDNECK':@RepGosar cites my reporting in @DailySignal, where I quote a former FEMA employee who said she heard those words when she was told, "Don't go into any house that looks suspicious." Here's the quote:“We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that… pic.twitter.com/TE61h7SaYn— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The former employee did not say FEMA supervisors told her to avoid “Trump supporters” or “MAGA,” but she did mention that it would not be a stretch for FEMA supervisors to use those terms, given guidance she had been given. “We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that looks suspicious,’” the former employee recalled. “They would use words like, ‘hick,’ ‘cowboys,’ ‘rednecks.’ You can change that over to ‘Trump supporters,’ ‘MAGA.’” Referring to Washington, the fired supervisor, the former employee said: “She’s saying, ‘I didn’t make this up on my own.’ I believe her because I’ve totally seen it.” A Matter of Culture Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, noted the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan, which prioritizes “equity” and “climate resilience.” He said a culture focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion may lead FEMA to discriminate against Trump supporters and others, regardless of whether the agency has a specific policy to that effect. “From our standpoint, it’s not the policy that we’re concerned with,” Cloud said. He mentioned many scandals in which the federal government has targeted conservatives for adverse treatment or ended up otherwise harming Americans in recent years. “It’s not in the policy for the IRS to target conservatives, it’s not in the policy for [the National Institutes of Health] to fund gain-of-function research, it’s not in [the Department of Homeland Security] policy for them to release foreign terrorists into our land, but they are,” he said. “It’s not policy in the FBI to target school teachers or people of faith, but all this is happening.” (The FBI targeted parents who expressed concern about COVID-19 and woke policies, and it targeted conservative Catholics, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. It seems Cloud meant to say “concerned parents,” not “school teachers.”) “The common response is, ‘It’s not in the policy manual.’ Well, we’re concerned about the culture,” Cloud explained. He said he did not believe that there is a stated policy or a deliberately-cultivated culture to “skip over Trump signs,” but he said FEMA needs a “proactive response” to prevent such things. “We know that these DEI initiatives have had a discriminatory aspect in them,” Cloud added, turning to the strategic plan, which encourages a focus on racial and religious minorities. ?CULTURE, NOT POLICY@RepCloudTX explains why FEMA's Strategic Plan and the DEI culture it instills helps explain why a FEMA supervisor directed employees to avoid homes with Trump signs.FEMA veterans also emphasized this issue when speaking to me about bias at the agency.… pic.twitter.com/cdSfPj8caP— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The post 4 Key Takeaways From FEMA Head’s Testimony After Supervisor Told Staff to Avoid Houses With Trump Signs appeared first on The Daily Signal.