A House Judiciary subcommittee report has accused the Justice Department of “weaponizing” the FBI against parents who criticize school board officials. Republicans have claimed that a 2021 memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland that cites a “disturbing spike” in school board threats was really “a political offensive meant to quell swelling discord.” They’ve cited a letter the National School Boards Association (NSBA) issued that suggested such threats were akin to “domestic terrorism.” The NSBA later apologized for the language, and, when Garland testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2021, he said parents are “protected by the First Amendment, as long as there are no threats of violence.”

Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten argues that it’s time to leave conservative parents alone.

Literally, the day before the NSBA issued its letter, Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe asserted that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He would lose his race. This was precisely the perspective that led parents to rebel against public school authorities — parents the Biden administration evidently felt they had to attack. Why? If parents, not left-wing unions and politicians, control public schools, progressives lose those schools as indoctrination factories, and with it, control over the next generation of voters and activists, and ultimately the country.

The DOJ engaged in an information operation, framing concerned parents as domestic terrorists in the run-up to an election — colluding with progressive education groups who’d urged them to target parents, as the Weaponization Subcommittee report details. Worse, the DOJ and FBI went ahead and pursued parents accordingly, diverting valuable time and resources from real threats to the homeland, as opposed to threats to their power.

Siccing the secret police on parents for having the gall to be concerned about the education, health, and safety of their kids in schools is as chilling and despicable an act as one could possibly imagine — infinitely more egregious than the already egregious political act of smearing and slandering them as domestic terrorists for political ends. The Weaponization Subcommittee report calls on Garland to rescind the baseless memorandum. 

I’d go further: he and every other senior official involved in this policy should be impeached, as a bare minimum, as a starting point. Those targeted can never be made whole. But we can start by bringing their attackers to justice.