That report demonstrates the extent to which the Biden administration targeted as domestic terrorists moms and dads concerned about heavy-handed Chinese coronavirus policies and radical curricula.
The deeper takeaway from the subcommittee report is that our current rulers clearly believe it to be a strategic imperative that parents have no influence over classrooms, and therefore are willing to go to the most extreme lengths possible to persecute those who would try to have that influence, as an example to others to shut up and remain docile. Why? Because by maintaining control over schools as “woke” indoctrination centers of the next generation, the state perpetuates its monopoly over the narrative and therefore its monopoly on power.
The greater its control over the minds of kids—and the more it can cleave them from their parents, as in all tyrannical regimes—the better, from its perspective.
“These acts of malice, violence, and threats,” the NSBA said, “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The group urged the Justice Department, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies to “examine appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under ... the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism,” among other laws.
When the NSBA said, “Jump,” the DOJ asked, “How high?”
“The Department,” Garland wrote, “is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
Garland directed the FBI, “working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with ... leaders in each federal judicial district” to develop strategies to combat the purported threat.
Documents would show that the NSBA coordinated with the White House on the letter—that this was seemingly an orchestrated political hit job against parents who opposed policies and practices favored by the Biden administration and its backers in the educational establishment.
Despite the NSBA’s about-face, Garland was unbowed. He never rescinded the memo, and the FBI and DOJ pursued the policy apace.
When House Republicans, then in the minority, sought out information on Garland and the administration’s policy, they were stonewalled.
Now, the dam has broken. The Weaponization Subcommittee’s subpoenas of the DOJ, FBI, and Education Department have yielded documents bringing to light disturbing new revelations.
The FBI acknowledged that since dedicating resources to creating a telephone line for the reporting of alleged threats, it “has not observed an uptick of threats directed at school officials.”
Apparently, it did no due diligence about the purported threats before hastily issuing the memo.
The subcommittee reports that the FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessments”—tips logged in the FBI’s Guardian database—and that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division ran six of the associated investigations. A single case warranted a full investigation. Most were referred to state and local authorities.
“These admissions supplement whistleblower disclosures,” the report notes, that “the FBI investigated a mom because she belonged to a ‘right-wing mom’s group’ and ‘is a gun owner’ and a dad because ‘he rails against the government.’”
Not one of these investigations resulted in federal arrests or charges—this despite a narrative that parents were domestic terrorists emphasized by our nation’s preeminent law enforcement apparatus in the throes of a 2021 election season in which public schools were on the ballot.
This was particularly true in Virginia, where schools were a key battleground in a heated gubernatorial race, but also in New Jersey and elsewhere. Many Old Dominion parents, and indeed parents across the country, were outraged at what they learned about their schools, and what their kids were learning in the schools, during the pandemic.
The day before the NSBA issued its letter, Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe asserted, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He would lose his race to Republican Glenn Youngkin.
McAuliffe’s was precisely the perspective that led parents to rebel against public school authorities—parents the Biden administration evidently felt they had to attack. Why?
Again, if parents, not left-wing teachers’ unions and politicians, control public schools, progressives lose the schools as indoctrination factories, and with them, control over the next generation of voters and activists.
All in all, this effort was shameful and outrageous.
The DOJ engaged in an information operation, framing concerned parents as domestic terrorists in the run-up to an election—colluding with progressive education groups who’d urged them to target parents, as the Weaponization Subcommittee report details.
Worse, the DOJ and FBI went ahead and pursued parents accordingly—diverting valuable time and resources from real threats to the homeland, as opposed to threats to their power.
Siccing the secret police on parents for having the gall to be concerned about the health, safety, and education of their kids in schools is as chilling and despicable an act as one could possibly imagine—infinitely more egregious than the political act of smearing and slandering them as domestic terrorists for political ends.
The Weaponization Subcommittee report calls on Garland to rescind the baseless memorandum.
It should consider going further—he and every other senior official involved in this policy engaged in impeachable acts, and they ought to be held to account accordingly.
That has come to pass.
Those targeted can never be made whole.
But a good start would be bringing their attackers to justice.
