The head of the Southern Poverty Law Center on Friday announced that he is stepping down, the latest high-profile departure from the watchdog organization best known for its work monitoring extremist groups.
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen sent an email to staff saying that he would be stepping down from his leadership role at the organization. The organization last week fired founder and prominent civil rights attorney Morris Dees for unspecified reasons.
"Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them," Cohen wrote.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, file photo, Morris Dees with the Southern Poverty Law Center, right, listens during a news conference, at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson, Miss. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a nationally known nonprofit that monitors hate organizations, said Thursday, March 14, 2019, it had fired co-founder Morris Dees, who once won a lawsuit that bankrupted a leading Ku Klux Klan group. (Joe EllisThe Clarion-Ledger via AP, File)
Cohen in October had approached the organization's board about finding a "new generation" of leadership. He wrote Friday that he was stepping up that timeframe in light of recent events, and asked the organization's board to immediately begin the search for an interim president "in order to give the organization the best chance to heal."
He also asked his staff for patience as they bring in an outside party to review the organization's workplace environment.
The SPLC did not elaborate on the reasons behind Dees' termination. In a statement about Dees' departure, Cohen only said the organization is "committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world."
The group this week announced it hired Tina Tchen, a one-time aide to former first lady Michelle Obama, to review its workplace. Tchen was chief of staff to the former first lady and now works for a Chicago law firm focusing on workplace issues including gender and racial equity and sexual harassment.
Cohen asked SPLC staff to let the "process play out before jumping to conclusions."
"We're going through a difficult period right now, and I know that we'll emerge stronger at the end of the process that we've launched with Tina Tchen," Cohen wrote.
Dees founded the Montgomery-based law center with a partner in 1971 as a watchdog for minorities and the underprivileged. A decade later he won a $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, whose son was murdered by KKK members in Mobile.
The organization has sometimes been criticized for its aggressive fundraising tactics. In 2017, tax records show, the organization had some $450 million in assets.
Last year, it agreed to pay a $3.4 million settlement after wrongly labeling a British organization and its founder as extremists.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).
Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.
That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.
In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.
Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.
In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.
“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.
Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.
It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.
“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.
It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.
While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.
“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.
Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.
Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
