Biden’s DOJ Targets Parents
Biden’s DOJ Targets Parents
Attorney General Garland takes aim at parents who speak out against the indoctrination of their kids.
By Joseph Klein
President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland has declared war on parents protesting the far-left’s indoctrination rammed down their children’s throats. In doing so, Garland has declared war on the First Amendment.
Garland issued a memorandum on October 4th entitled “Partnership Among Federal, State, Local, Tribal, And Territorial Law Enforcement To Address Threats Against School Administrators, Board Members, Teachers, And Staff.” Garland acted in response to a request for assistance the Biden administration received from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). The NSBA accused parents who showed up at public school board meetings to strongly voice their objections of engaging in threatening behavior akin to “domestic terrorism.”
The NSBA’s letter asked the Biden administration for “a joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI, including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division, as well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional authority and oversight.”
The Biden administration obliged with Garland’s law enforcement memorandum.
Violence or threats calculated to incite imminent violence are not protected by the First Amendment. Such acts are intolerable in a free society, no matter who commits them or why. But Garland did not stop with using his law enforcement tools solely to combat the commission of violence or threats of imminent violence against other individuals. Garland also called upon the FBI, federal prosecutors, and other law enforcement “partners” to “discourage, identify, and prosecute” what he loosely characterized as “efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”
Garland is the one intimidating “individuals based on their views.” Biden’s Attorney General is abusing his authority over the FBI and federal prosecutors to intimidate or, in his words, “discourage” parents with a certain point of view from loudly voicing their opinions in public forums. These parents strongly oppose efforts by the Biden administration, school boards, school administrators, and educators to twist their children’s minds with Critical Race Theory and gender identity pronouns. Some parents have protested mask mandates for their children. Others have protested against overly long school closures.
Instead of standing up for the parents’ constitutional rights to freely express their opinions and “petition the Government for redress of grievances,” Garland has done precisely the opposite.
As Asra Nomani, vice president of investigations and strategy at Parents Defending Education, put it in her tweet addressed to Garland: “You are criminalizing parenting, and you owe the people of America a swift apology.” Nomani referred to herself sarcastically as “Domestic Terrorist” in her sign-off.
The Biden administration is applying a double standard in deciding when to take intimidation of public officials seriously.
The day before Garland issued his memorandum proscribing intimidation of school officials, a far-left progressive harassed Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema. This activist followed Senator Sinema, who teaches at Arizona State University, into a bathroom Sinema was using on campus. The social justice warrior then shouted slogans at Sinema while illegally recording the bathroom confrontation to post on Facebook.
How did Biden respond to this despicable attempt to intimidate a U.S. senator of his own party who happens to disagree with his spend-and-tax policies? Biden said that, while such behavior was inappropriate, “it happens to everybody.”
If such behavior is to be expected by public officials, why is the Biden administration coddling school board officials faced with less than what Senator Sinema experienced? Money talks.
According to Open Secrets, over 85 percent of education industry donations went to Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. The teachers’ unions are notorious for their generous donations to the Democrats’ coffers. They expect deference to their wishes in return.
The protesting parents confronted school board members at public board meetings where issues of vital concern to the parents were being discussed. The parents did not follow the school board members into bathrooms. Yet Garland is unleashing the FBI on parents for doing far less than the far-left progressives have done in getting in the faces of members of Congress without any consequences.
Some critics of the parents’ protests have said that all these parents have to do is to vote out the present members of school boards they don’t like and vote for their preferred alternative candidates. Protesting and voting are not mutually exclusive. Both are constitutional rights. Moreover, not all school boards are elected. In some cases, mayors decide who serves on the board.
It is revealing what happens when the tables are turned, and a school board member intimidates parents who voice opinions the school board member does not like.
In Virginia, for example, a particularly strident anti-parent school board member used a Facebook group she belonged to as a means for stirring up threats to “hack” and “expose” parents who opposed Critical Race Theory in schools.
“The Facebook group included several elected officials — including the county’s top elected prosecutor, Buta Biberaj,” the Daily Wire reported.
There is no opportunity for a popular recall vote in Virginia. Once triggered by the collection of the requisite number of signatures calling for a recall, the matter is turned over to a prosecutor for a trial in order to determine whether removal is warranted by reason of misconduct or incompetence.
Enough signatures were collected to initiate the recall process against the school board member who has intimidated parents resisting the indoctrination of their children with Critical Race Theory. The Catch 22 was that the same George Soros-funded prosecutor who aligned herself with the school board member’s “anti-racist” Facebook group refused to recuse herself from the recall proceeding. She was standing in the way of allowing the recall initiative to move forward in accordance with Virginia law.
Fortunately, the parents did not give up. A judge ruled on October 5th that a special prosecutor could take over.
This is not an isolated case of a leftist prosecutor’s obstruction of the process for recalling a school board member in Virginia. Another Soros-funded far-left prosecutor in Virginia simply dropped a recall initiative against a school board member even though the initiative had amassed the requisite number of signatures for the prosecutor to proceed.
The left has already succeeded in infiltrating the major U.S. universities and colleges to push their radical ideology on impressionable students. Now they have their sights on elementary and high school kids.
With the support of a web of George Soros-backed activist groups, leftists are taking over local school boards. Using their power to dictate school curricula and policies, these school boards are pushing ahead with incorporating Critical Race Theory, gender identity terminology, and other leftist dogma into the public schools they govern.
Once many parents began to realize what their children were being taught, they began to rise up and protest. Arrogant school board members couldn’t take the heat and appealed for help from the Biden administration, which has been busy promoting Critical Race Theory and transgender ideology throughout the federal government, military, and in education.
Attorney General Garland’s October 4th law enforcement signals the Biden administration’s intention to persecute these dissenting parents.
Image Credit: © Chris Dorney