The House Judiciary Committee held a markup Wednesday of Republican-backed measures that would compel the White House and Department of Justice to turn over communications relating to their coordination with the National School Boards Association to investigate parents as “domestic terrorists.”
Introduced by GOP representatives Scott Fitzgerald and Mike Johnson, respectively, the two pieces of legislation would force disclosure of 2021 correspondence between the three parties surrounding their push to probe and potentially prosecute parents who protested radical curricula and Covid-19 restrictions at school board meetings. The committee is in the process of reviewing the bills before it advances them to the House floor.
In October, Attorney General Merrick Garland published a memo authorizing the FBI to collaborate with state U.S. attorneys and federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies to investigate violent threats against teachers and administrators in school districts nationwide.
The memo was prompted by a letter from the NSBA to the DOJ asking that parent demonstrations at school board meetings be considered a “form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Later, National Review determined that the vast majority of incidents cited in the NSBA letter to demonstrate the case for such sweeping action did not qualify as threats of physical violence.
Moreover, non-profit Parents Defending Education discovered in February that the White House conspired with the NSBA to draft the letter before it was sent to the DOJ. In an email exchange between NSBA board members on October 5, 2021, it was revealed that former NSBA executive director and CEO Chip Slaven “knew about the U.S. AG directives before they were published,” according to documents obtained by PDE.
House Resolution 1238 would require discussion between the White House and the DOJ and NSBA on October 4, 2021, the day the Garland memo went live, to be given to the Committee. House Resolution 1239 would additionally require information from the FBI and intelligence agencies used to justify the labeling of parents as threats to be released to the Committee.
“Trust between parents and the education system is frayed, and steps must be taken to rebuild this relationship. The American people deserve transparency from the various players in the Biden Administration – the White House, Department of Education, and Department of Justice – about who was involved and why, and those individuals must be held accountable for their actions,” PDE President Nicole Neily said in a statement about the pending House resolutions. “Our tax dollars and law enforcement apparatus were weaponized against us, and we will not rest until we have answers.”