RaeMcMI

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

If today's @Lions game is an example of your excellent coverage, I'm looking forward to another broadcast company covering the season. The background noise was way too loud! The announcers were drowned out. If I paid for the commercials, I would want my money back.
@FOXSports

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

Is anyone working today? Did your budget get cut? Please use noise canceling microphones! We need to hear what is being said or why have announcers! Idiots!!
@NFLonFOX

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

Abdul El-Sayed has said that he wants to do everything in his life “the Shariah-compliant way.”

Here's what else he supports:
https://t.co/RZysktKQhS

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Jocelyn Benson Took a Field Trip to the Southern Poverty Law Center
She served on the board of the controversial nonprofit while it funded racist demonstrations, but won't answer questions about it

By James Dickson @downi75

Jocelyn Benson tries to minimize her involvement with the Southern Poverty Law Center—the place where she started her career, the place where she served on the board for a half-decade.

But recently released files show that Benson once led a field trip of Secretaries of State from around America to the Montgomery, Alabama, offices of the SPLC.

The Michigan House Oversight Committee, led by Republicans, just released a tranche of emails showing Benson’s involvement with the SPLC, even after she’d left the organization.

The May 2019 field trip is the star of the show. Benson and her Alabama counterpart, John Merrill, led a group of 20 Secretaries of State to Alabama on a “voting rights tour.” The tour even had a hashtag on Twitter, #sosdemocracy2019.

Then Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs joined the tour. Like Hobbs did in 2022, Benson is overseeing the 2026 Michigan governor’s race while running in it.

The group visited churches, and Benson sat in the front row. They stood arm-in-arm on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, where a cop cracked the late John Lewis’s head during “Bloody Sunday” in 1965.

“For the first time in history, 20 Secretaries of State from across the country crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge this morning in Selma, Alabama,” Benson tweeted. “We are here to find common ground & learn from the voting rights history that informs our work today. Onward we march. #sosdemocracy2019.”

The National Association of Secretaries of State, which helped organize the field trip, called the visit to Southern Poverty Law Center “meaningful.” It tagged the Michigan Secretary of State office in the tweet. News stories describe the SPLC as aiding in the field trip.

In one Michigan Secretary of State tweet, it shows Benson hand-in-hand with several other activists, making a human chain. Benson closes her eyes, presumably in deep thought.

The man standing two people to Benson’s left is David Becker, founder of the Electronic Registration Information Center. Benson enrolled Michigan in ERIC her first week in office. In 2020, Becker returned the favor, sending Benson’s nonprofit $12 million dollars from another group he controls, the Center for Election Innovation and Research, or CEIR.

For years, every time Benson aspired to a new job, she touted her Southern Poverty Law Center ties, and the Southern Poverty Law Center promoted that one-time intern who rose to statewide elected official.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the governor’s office. In April, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged a host of shady practices at the NGO, including its funding of the same “hate groups” like the Ku Klux Klan that it claimed to oppose.

Since then, Benson has walked sideways away from the SPLC.

Board trustees for nonprofits have a duty to oversee the operations and finances of those organizations. Calling her board position “ceremonial” is Benson’s way of shirking those duties, basically saying she wanted the resume line, but not the work associated with it.

Ahead of the May visit, Benson sent an April 17, 2019 email to an SPLC staffer, referencing a “bumpy winter” at the SPLC.

A week before Benson left the board, SPLC founder and Benson mentor Morris Dees was fired after a misconduct investigation. Which is to say, Benson didn’t leave the SPLC until Dees did.

Dees also donated $950 to Benson during her 2018 run for Michigan Secretary of State.

Benson won Michigan Secretary of State in November 2018, and took office in January 2019.

In her telling of events, Benson cut ties with the NGO as soon as she was sworn in.

But the official record tells a different story. Her departure lines up with Dees’s firing, not with her taking office.

In March 2019, a reporter named Tyler O’Neil noted that Benson was no longer listed on the SPLC’s board of directors. On Twitter, he asked why.

The official Michigan Secretary of State page responded, rather than Benson from her own page.

“Upon taking office as Michigan Secretary of State, Secretary Benson informed SPLC leadership that she would be stepping down from the board,” @michSOS tweeted. “Her responsibilities in Michigan are her priority and focus.”

But O’Neil had receipts. And the receipts showed Benson listed as a board member just a day prior. Not only that, but her biography had her new job title as Michigan Secretary of State. So it’s not like it was an old page that hadn’t been removed yet.

In the 30 pages of emails released by the House Oversight Committee, Secretary of State staff re-routed requests on SPLC matters to Benson’s campaign staff.

But in March 2019, the Secretary of State page did the talking.

The 30-page email cache ends with a Freedom of Information Act request from Mike Cox, a former Michigan Attorney General and then-candidate for governor.

“Secretary Benson is not merely a private citizen with a past professional association,” Cox writes in the April 26 request, sent just week after the SPLC indictments were announced. “She is Michigan’s current chief election officer, a statewide elected official, and a candidate for governor. Her office oversees elections, campaign finance, voter registration, public communications about elections, and the official machinery by which Michigan voters place trust in the democratic process.”

“The request asks a simple and important public question,” the request reads.

Cox wrote the following part in bold: “Did Michigan’s chief election officer, her senior staff, or the Department of State communicate, coordinate, partner, rely upon, or maintain official contact with SPLC while Benson served as Secretary of State?”

“The public has a right to know the answer,” Cox wrote.

Benson has denied answers. But she cannot escape scrutiny through Nov. 3.

[Heather Dow @PatriotPostGirl]

Jocelyn Benson wanted $10K and two months to hand over her SPLC emails, and 80 days later, she still hasn’t complied. Much like her SPLC scandal, she’s largely ignored the racial discrimination lawsuits against her. What is she hiding under her hood?

[Anna Hoffman @shoesonplease]

Speaking of field trips…

Here’s 2010 Jocelyn Benson talking about her annual spring break trip to SPLC with her law students 👀

[Heather Dow @PatriotPostGirl]

Heidi Beirich just got indicted for routing SPLC donor money to KKK informants and sharing a bank account with one she was dating. And what was Jocelyn Benson doing while this was happening? She was sitting on the SPLC board when those checks were clearing. Funding hate groups has never looked so collaborative.

[Heather Dow @PatriotPostGirl]

Jocelyn Benson joined the SPLC board in 2014, the exact same year the DOJ now says the SPLC started secretly funneling millions of dollars in donor cash to KKK members, neo-Nazis, and Aryan Nations informants. Benson claims she’s accountability-free, despite the secret hate group payroll starting when she became an SPLC trustee.

[Michigan GOP @MIGOP]

🚨 MEET JOCELYN BENSON, the corrupt, career politician that Democrats nominated for governor here in Michigan, despite the serious questions surrounding her time at the now scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Benson, who first joined the SPLC in 2014, regularly touted her experience as a leader of the group that the Department of Justice now says secretly funneled money to the KKK and other hate groups they were purportedly tracking.

The DOJ charged the SPLC with wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

What did Benson know and when did she know it?

[John James @JohnJamesMI]

Did you know that the SPLC started funding the KKK and other hate groups the year Jocelyn Benson joined their board?

Read this: https://t.co/ZkWUXgBerD

[The Gateway Pundit @gatewaypundit]

FINALLY! MI Sec of State Jocelyn Benson Gets Served By Former MI Attorney General Over Her Potential Involvement In Funding Hate Groups Like KKK While Sitting on SPLC Board [VIDEO]

Link in the comment section.

[Anna Hoffman @shoesonplease]

Think Benson’s SPLC relationship chilled in 2019? It most certainly did not.

Here she is in 2024 during another trip to Selma -

[Anna Hoffman @shoesonplease]

Here’s a collection of 1999 newspaper articles welcoming Jocelyn Benson and Heidi Beirich to the SPLC intelligence project.

Benson’s involvement with the SPLC spanned 20 years and directly overlapped with Heidi Beirich: 🤔

[John James @JohnJamesMI]

Jocelyn Benson openly bragged about her time working for the Southern Poverty Law Center and even served on their board.

Now she is trying to downplay her involvement because she's running for Governor, likely due to the SPLC's well documented ties to extremist groups like the KKK.

Michigan voters are wondering, was Benson lying then or is she lying now?

📰 https://t.co/3stzi7OoiW

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@jocelynbenson We have not forgot!

Michigan Bans Many Stores From Selling Seeds, Home Gardening Supplies, Calls Them “Not Necessary” via @forbes https://t.co/2rnoX3D0hi

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@GOP_is_Gutless @jocelynbenson We have not forgot!

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@RobGouveiaEsq @jocelynbenson We have not forgot!

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@GOP_is_Gutless @jocelynbenson We have not forgot!

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@aricnesbitt @jocelynbenson We have not forgot!

[RaeMcMI @RaeMcMI]

@Charlieleduff @jocelynbenson We have not forgot!