Do Concerned Parents Deserve to Be Called Domestic Terrorists?

             Last week Attorney General Merrick Garland called on the FBI to address “violent threats against school officials and teachers.” He was referring to parents who oppose the woke ideology and critical race theory being taught in schools across the nation. Apparently, a letter from the national school board organization prompted the move.

            Luke Rosiak at The Daily Wire revealed that Scott Smith was arrested on June 22, 2021, at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting. Many people attending the meeting “vocally opposed a policy on transgender students,” and the meeting was determined to be an “unlawful assembly” because of the opposition. 

            Rosiak called Smith “the poster child” for the call by the National School Boards Association to equate parents with domestic terrorists. Smith was upset at the board meeting because his daughter was sexually assaulted during school, and the board was covering up the assault. He says that “a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter.”

Yet, minutes prior to Smith’s arrest, the superintendent of the Loudoun County Public Schools “lectured the public that concerns about the transgender policy were misplaced because the school system had no record of any assault occurring in any school bathroom.”

Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told The Daily Wire that “a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio, related to an incident that day at that school.”

Rep. Christ Stewart (R-Utah) discussed the incident with Glenn Beck. He said that sixty lawmakers sent a letter to Garland “demanding answers for why the FBI is targeting parents.” 

“We want to know … what kind of coordination took place between the White House, activist groups and teachers’ unions, and the Department of Justice,” Stewart told Glenn. “Because we have evidence that there was [coordination] and, in fact, that the White House are the ones who initiated this. They asked for these activist groups to write this inflammatory letter to the Department of Justice saying they were ‘intimidated’ and that they ‘felt threatened,’ giving the Department of Justice Attorney General Garland, the excuse to say, ‘Okay, well, we have to respond’.”

Stewart went on to say he believes the federal government would only involve the FBI in such an issue if its purpose is to silence and intimidate parents concerned about the “poison” being taught to their kids in school. So, what can he and the other representatives who disagree with the Biden administration’s overreach of power do to stop it?

            It gets worse. It appears that Garland has a personal interest in this issue and is “facing fresh scrutiny for his ties to a company that promotes the type of content parents are opposing in their ongoing battle with local school boards….” It seems that Garland’s “daughter is married to the cofounder of @PanoramaEd which is under fire for its multimillion [dollar] contracts with school boards.” Panorama also has ties to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his problems. 

            It appears that someone at the high levels of our government is seeking to silence parents. They are using threats from the FBI to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out against the woke agenda.

Why Does the Biden Administration Say that Parents Are Terrorists?

             The crisis at the southern border could be allowing terrorists to enter the United States. However, the Biden administration does not seem to care. They are more concerned about home-grown terrorists otherwise known as “parents.”

            On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the Department of Justice and the FBI to “launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.” In plain language, he is concerned about the increasing number of parents attending school board meetings and demanding that schools stop indoctrinating their children.

            Garland did not include any examples or evidence of terroristic actions. GianCarlo Canaparo and Mike Howell suggested that the memo from Garland “looks like an effort to use the FBI to threaten and silence parents who are outspoken opponents of critical race theory in schools.” They emphasized that being interrogated by FBI agents could be intimidating to parents. It is possible that Garland does not intend to use the FBI but is hoping that the memo will do the intimidating. Canaparo and Howell explained the following. 

To understand what Garland is doing with this memo, you’ll need a short primer on the background facts and government legalese.

Starting with the facts: What is this “rise in criminal conduct” against school officials? You won’t find any evidence cited in Garland’s memo. You won’t find any evidence in the FBI’s crime data either.

            The memo may be the result of a letter sent by the National School Boards Association to President Joe Biden. The authors wrote, “That letter made vague claims about ‘threats and acts of violence’ against school board members from parents who oppose critical race theory.” They continued, “The letter complained about ‘disruptions’ by angry parents but managed to find only one example of violence against a school official (likely a security guard), which was handled by local law enforcement.”

It is a sad day when the Attorney General answer does the bidding of school boards. The authors call this a clear “example of political influence seeping into the DOJ.” However, “Garland’s weaponization of the DOJ has a problem: There is no conceivable basis for federal law enforcement action against these parents.” Canaparo and Howell summarized the situation as follows.

First, there is no reason to bring federal law enforcement into this; local authorities have this under control.

Second, Garland has demonstrated, disappointingly, that he is beholden to powerful leftist political groups and perfectly happy to let them use the threat of federal government’s law enforcement power to suppress their critics’ right to free speech. The promised impendence of the DOJ is a farce.

Third, it is more important to Garland to spend scarce law enforcement resources appeasing liberal interest groups than on more pressing national concerns.

Fourth, some good news, parents need not be afraid. It is their constitutional right to push back in legal ways against schools teaching children critical race theory.

            The bottom line is: “Go forth to the school boards and make your voices heard.” Parents have the right and the responsibility to be involved in the education of their children