One year ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to investigate concerned parents who were speaking out at local school board meetings as possible domestic terrorists. The organization behind the memo, the National School Boards Association, has since apologized for accusing parents of engaging in “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials.” But for all intents and purposes, Garland’s memo is still in effect.
Garland has refused to retract the directive, defending it as a necessary step to prevent “violence, threats of violence, and other criminal conduct.” But as the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial on Thursday, Garland’s vague and sweeping definition of potentially violent conduct has been used against parents whose only crime was speaking out against school policies with which they disagreed.
In Michigan, the Wall Street Journal recalls, Sandra Herden’s local school board reported her to her employer, the local police department, and to the Department of Justice after she criticized the school district’s decision to keep schools closed during the pandemic. Herden’s son is a special needs student, and she watched during the pandemic as his GPA slipped from a 3.5 to a 1.5. She began to attend local school board meetings, urging the board to end virtual learning and the harmful mask mandates that prevented her son from learning.
School board trustee Elizabeth Pyden’s response was to report Herden to her employer in an email, saying, “I do not believe that you would like anyone expressing this level of anger, disrespect and veiled racism in your community.”
School board President Frank Bednard went a step further, informing his colleagues that he had forwarded an email from Herden to the DOJ for potential investigation the day after Garland sent his memo to the FBI. The timing of this was no coincidence. Bednard felt that he had not only the right but the responsibility to report a concerned mother as a domestic terrorist to the federal government because of Garland’s unconscionable and un-American directive.
That the DOJ even wrote and sent the memo in the first place is an indictment of Garland’s judgment. His refusal to correct course and undo the damage to parents all over the country, who have been wrongly smeared and vilified as a result, is a sign that it was deliberate. Garland knew what he was doing. He knew the memo would intimidate parents and maybe even make them think twice before challenging the education establishment again.
In many cases, it likely worked. How many parents would have had the courage not only to keep speaking out but take the issue to court after being threatened with unemployment and a federal investigation the way Herden did?
Garland needs to end his war on parents and revoke his disastrous memo immediately.
Kaylee McGhee White is the deputy editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
