The National School Boards Association board of directors issued an apology for the letter sent to President Biden in which it called on the administration to treat “angry mobs” of parents opposing Critical Race Theory, masking, and LGBTQ-related issues as “domestic terrorists.” The Department of Justice, however, continues to defend its subsequent memo that tasked the FBI to address the issue.
In a memorandum sent to NSBA members on Friday, the board said, “we regret and apologize for the letter.” The board explained that while “the safety of school board members, other public school officials, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue,” at the same time, “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”
The message added that “we deeply value not only the work of local school boards that make important contributions within our communities, but also the voices of parents, who should and must continue to be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety.”
The board promised to “do better going forward,” and to improve communication between the national board and local chapters, which were neither informed nor consulted in the process of crafting the original letter to Biden.
The key message of the original September 29 letter was that the instances of the verbal confrontations and other disruptions at the local school board meetings across the United States constituted “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” and were “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
NSBA requested that the administration employ “appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regard to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute.”
NSBA specifically asked the president to mobilize such federal bodies against the parents as the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center.
The association further called on Biden to issue an executive order to enforce all applicable federal laws that would allow for the persecution of the “extremist” parents.
As The New American reported on Friday, the recently leaked email exchange between Biden administration officials and NSBA leadership revealed that the local school board chapters were kept in the dark in regard to the crafting of the letter. As a result, as of October 21, the chapters from 21 states have distanced themselves from the controversial letter, arguing that the association’s national leadership overstepped its bounds and violated the constitutional authority of local school boards to manage the public-school systems in their states.
On top of that, NSBA seems to have failed to consult with its own board of directors before sending the letter to President Biden, as appears from the emails.
On October 4, five days after the letter was made public, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland tasked the FBI with looking into what he called “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
On Thursday, ranking member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tore into Garland during the House Judiciary Committee hearings in regard to the pre-planned assault on parents’ rights that involved the White House, the DOJ, the major teachers’ unions, and NSBA. Garland denied that anyone from the White House had spoken to him about the NSBA letter before it was published, but added, “I am sure — at least, I certainly would believe that the White House communicated its concerns about the letter to the Justice Department.”
Garland then added that “the communication from the National Association of School Boards was discussed between the White House and the Justice Department and that’s perfectly appropriate.”
Jordan inquired if the FBI agents would be attending the local school board meetings to keep the concerned parents in check, quoting the DOJ press release, which announced the creation of a “task force, consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs.”
Specifically, involvement of the National Security Division, a part of the DOJ that is tasked with addressing terrorist threats and that was created by the PATRIOT Act, suggests that the DOJ has agreed to NSBA’s calls to treat parents as terrorists despite Garland stating that he “can’t imagine a circumstance where they [parents] would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”
Asked if there was any official data that showed the “uptick of the threats and violence” against the school board members and school employees, which Garland relied on when issuing the memo, the AG cited the NSBA letter and news reports as his sources of such information.
Most of the incidents cited by NSBA, however, did not involve threats of physical violence or instances of actual violence. Instead, the association referred to news articles about “disruptions,” “disorderly conduct,” and “contentious behavior,” all of which were handled quickly and effectively by local law enforcement.
