Merrick Garland is feeling the heat as House Republicans House Republicans are demanding answers from all 93 U.S. attorneys general about what steps they’ve taken against parents in the wake of the US Attorney General’s memo.
The memo, which directed the different attorneys general to provide assistance to police who in turn keep the peace at school board meetings, has raised the ire of parents nationwide as debates over public school curriculum intensify.
For instance, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, sent forth letters signed by 18 different Republicans to each U.S. attorney general in all fifty states and national territories.
The letters requested specific details regarding which actions federal prosecutors have taken with regards to Garland’s direction.
“We are continuing to investigate the troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement,” one letter reads, adding that the “heavy hand” of federal government has been used to “chill … protected First Amendment activity.”
Garland drafted a memo after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) issued a complain to the White House over the various threats that school board members allegedly received from various parents upset over various school policies and curricula, including critical race theory (CRT), transgender policies, and various COVID protocols, including mask mandates.
In addition, various internal emails also reveal that different NSBA board members had demonstrated a strong aversion to sending the letter to the Biden administration. After Garland’s House testimony in the past month, the NSBA withdrew its letter and issued an apology.
However, several state school board chapters have left the NSBA in protest of the highly controversial letter, which compared parents to domestic terrorists and requested for investigations into parents under the Patriot Act.
Consequently, Garland’s own memo declared that he was harnessing the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in order “to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”
House Republicans have subsequently expressed interest in the content of the aforementioned meetings, as demonstrated in their letter. They have requested numerous details regarding these meetings, including “all documents and communications referring or relating to convening meetings in your judicial district.”
In addition, the Republicans requested a response from Garland by Friday.
Aside from the focus on Garland, Republicans have also requested for the NSBA to provide documents containing its communication with the White House, noting that both the White House and NSBA likely engaged in “collusion” in order to provoke the Department of Justice into involving itself in localized education matters.
The potential collusion is even more problematic when considering its impact on First Amendment rights, as parents have the right to vocally protest against unseemly school curricula.
“Concerned parents voicing their strong opposition to controversial curricula at local schools are not domestic terrorists,” Representative Jordan, along with other Republicans, asserted.
