By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Is there a more Norman Rockwell moment than a parent telling school board members they disagree with a policy decision?
It’s classic Americana – the very definition of the First Amendment in action – a citizen telling truth to power. This is exactly what the framers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Unfortunately, that’s a bit too much freedom for the National School Boards Association. They don’t want any parent to have the right to disagree with one of the school boards – especially during a public meeting. So, last week they sent a letter to Joe Biden, asking him to jack-up these pesky concerned parents, classify them as domestic terrorists and then unleash all the hellish might in the federal arsenal. And they want all of the arsenal – the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI and its National Security Branch, which oversees counterintelligence, terrorism, the terrorist screening center and the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) directorate.
WMDs?
Do these parents have nukes?
The school board officials want these parents surveilled and prosecuted by the PATRIOT Act, the Gun-Free Schools Zones Act, federal hate crimes statutes and, as if that’s not enough, they want Biden to issue yet another executive order “to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.”
“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the school board association wrote in their letter to Biden.
Instead of laughing at the NSBA’s over-the-top request, Biden’s supposed apolitical Justice Department jumped on it like a duck on a Junebug.
In a memo sent Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI and all U.S. Attorneys to address the “increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools.”
“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” Garland wrote in his memo.
What these measures will entail is not known. Watchlists? Covert surveillance through the PATRIOT Act? Title III wiretaps? Infiltration by undercover FBI agents? Surreptitious search warrants?
For the Biden-Harris administration, as crazy as the school board request was, it was a public relations godsend. Biden’s presidency is tanking – his entire political agenda has collapsed. He’s underwater in the polls, including blue states, and he’s become a national laughingstock – the subject of profane chants during sporting events.
Biden needed something like this wackiness to change the narrative. He needed to pivot away from his recent failure to get David Chipman confirmed as ATF director. Chipman isn’t helping matters. He’s telling anyone who will listen how he was hung out to dry by the White House staff, who failed to defend him once his idiocy became apparent and his fitness for office was questioned.
Unleashing some federal might against concerned parents is just what Biden needed, regardless of whether it’s constitutional – and it’s not.
To be clear, there is no federal predicate to investigate misconduct at local school board meetings. If tempers get out of hand, there are plenty of local and state laws that apply, such as disorderly conduct or terrorist threats. The PATRIOT Act isn’t needed to settle local disagreements, and concerned parents don’t need to be labeled as domestic terrorists. Unfortunately, none of that will matter to the Biden-Harris administration. What they can’t accomplish through legal means they seek to accomplish through intimidation and bullying. No one knows that better than gun owners. Just look at the crazy shenanigans they have tried to pull on us.
Unleashing the full power of the Justice Department at parents who are only concerned about what their kids are being taught will have a chilling effect on the First Amendment. Instead of participating in the education of the children, parents will opt to stay home and not get uninvolved. They certainly won’t want anything they say to be misconstrued as some type of threat and weaponized by the feds.
What does this have to do with gun owners?
Everything.
If Joe Biden can successfully label concerned parents as domestic terrorists, we’re next. The Biden-Harris administration has shown they won’t let the constitution or civil rights get in the way of their anti-gun rights agenda. While they may be giving gun owners a temporary reprieve to let the sting of the Chipman fiasco wane, they’ll be coming back at us soon, armed with a whole new set of civil-rights violating tools, which they’re about to unleash on well-meaning parents.
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