Killed in a Footnote: Important New DOJ Order Lost in the Flood of Big Moves
A culturally significant development has been lost in the flood of news.
In September of 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a shameful letter to part-time President Joe Biden demanding that aggressive parental criticism of local school boards be coded as threats and treated as criminal behavior. If you’ve forgotten that letter, the NSBA specifically asked the Biden administration to use “the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism” against parents. Attorney General Merrick Garland quickly gave the NSBA what it wanted, issuing guidance to federal law enforcement to investigate parental criticism as potential federal crimes, under the premise that spirited disagreement is threatening behavior. The resulting controversy tore the NSBA apart, as state boards flooded out of the national group.
Last week, in a move that appears to have made no headlines, Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded Garland’s memorandum on schools.
Bondi rescinded that DOJ guidance as she sent forth a flood of new policy, and this is how she announced that Garland’s shameful directive had been reversed:
One of the most culturally significant debates of the Biden years just ended with a whimper.
The New York Times, you’ll be shocked to hear, is treating Bondi’s urgent depoliticization of the DOJ as the opposite, warning that she’s politicizing the department:
Hours after being sworn in as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi declared to the entire Justice Department work force, “This shameful era ends today.”
That assertion, in one of 14 memos she issued on Wednesday, underscored what many current and former law enforcement officials describe as a major — and alarming — departure from years of Justice Department practice in which it steered clear of political rhetoric. The new tone, they said, suggests the opposite, seeming to promise a campaign of intimidation against career prosecutors and agents viewed as insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
Other news organizations were relatively fair and accurate, if we grade on a curve, and some were thematically dead-on, but none highlighted the ending of the NSBA’s reign of error. In an era when parental rights have been an example of terrifying far-right extremist rhetoric, Pam Bondi has just written an exceptionally important footnote.
It just wouldn't be a NYT article without that " -- and alarming -- snippet. You MUST maintain heightened levels of anxiety at all time. Never let your guard down, take your pearl clutching all the way to the grave with you, dear citizen.
One reason for the arrogance of the school board gangsters is that so many parents turn their kids over to the state for handling and don't research, nor challenge, what they're being taught. So, when some parents do, they get into high dungeon at the audacity of the peasantry questioning them. This move by Bondi from Trump is going to set many wrongs, right. I hope lawsuits are filed against these districts, given the behavior of some of these comrades.
Danny Huckabee