Republicans Gonna LOCK HER UP The FBI For Crime Of ... Not Letting Parents Threaten Teachers

In their defense, the parents thought the teachers were preaching CRT. Because that's what the GOP told them.

In the fall of 2021, Republicans pretended to get their panties in a giant wad over the FBI harassing and intimidating conservative parents who merely threaten violence over public health measures and phantom lessons on critical race theory.

"I think parents across this country are going to be stunned to learn — stunned! — that if they show up at a local school board meeting, by the way where they have the right to appear and be heard, where they have the right to say something about their children's education, where they have the right to vote, and you are attempting to intimidate them," shrieked Senator Josh Hawley, commandeering a hearing on the Violence Against Women Act to hector Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco about his latest bullshit culture war issue. "You are attempting to silence them. You are attempting to interfere with their rights as parents, and yes, with their rights as voters."

 Teachers and school boards were being bombarded with threats and harassment and even physically assaulted by lunatics, some of whom showed up armed, to protest COVID restrictions and supposed "race indoctrination." The National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting protection from the maniacs the GOP was spinning up — the same ones who'd led an assault on the Capitol just nine months earlier. And when the DOJ responded that yes, it would prosecute domestic terrorists who threaten educators, Republicans demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland's resignation, howling that the Biden administration was targeting conservative parents for exercising their First Amendment rights. Because if it wasn't for bad faith, these filthy fuckers would have no faith at all.

The thing about getting slapped around by that weenus Josh Hawley is that he's actually smart, even though he plays a frothing moron on TV. He knows that he can't act the complete buffoon if he actually aspires to be president one day. But Rep. Jim Jordan knows he's hit his ceiling, and the best he can look forward to is another decade of chewing the furniture and shouting inanities. And now he's got the gavel of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as leading the Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government — something Republicans have likened to the vaunted Church Committee , although it's more like the Church of Saint Joe McCarthy. Jordan is hot to trot on a whole host of dumbshit LAPTOP issues that get the MAGA faithful tingling in their bits, including this nonsense about the "troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement to target concerned parents at local school board meetings and chill their protected First Amendment activity."

That quote is from letters sent to officials at the NSBA and the National Assessment Governing Board, a non-partisan educational evaluation group, demanding that they come in and testify to the Subcommittee about the supposed abuse of parents by jackbooted federal agents. And on February 3, the Subcommittee announced that it had "subpoenaed the Biden Administration for withheld documents relating to the Administration's targeting of parents for exercising their First Amendment rights at school board meetings."

"Whistleblowers have disclosed how, shortly after Attorney General Garland formally directed the FBI to take action, the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a specific threat tag for school board-related threats and even opened investigations into parents simply for speaking out on behalf of their children," Jordan bloviated. "The Attorney General's directive followed a letter from the National School Boards Association to President Biden, urging him to weaponize the Patriot Act against parents. Emails later showed how the Biden White House had advance knowledge of this letter and its contents and raised no objection."

Surely there was great rolling of eyes and wanking of hands over at the Justice Department.

Hey, remember when Rep. Nancy Pelosi wouldn't seat Jordan and Rep. Jim Banks on the House January 6 Select Committee, so Kevin McCarthy just noped out and let the Democrats plus Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger run the show? Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is not A IDIOT, so he's doing not that , although it's not entirely clear which Democrats will sit at the table with this band of misfit weirdos . (Chip Roy, Elise Stefanik, Harriet Hagemen, and Mike Johnson? ¡Ay, por Dios! )

As Greg Sargent points out at the Washington Post , Democrats need to do more than factcheck the GOP's nonsensical claims about persecuted parents. They have to go on the offensive and demonstrate the real threats of violence teachers are facing thanks to Republican lies:

Instead, Democrats should make these hearings about what Republicans did. This entails using spectacle to show what happened to educators as a result ofRepublicans systematically smearing them with hateful propaganda . Why not try to bring in educators to testify emotionally about the threats and harassment they’ve faced?

"The American people need to see these people’s faces and understand the fear that they’re living in,” Rep. Eric Swalwell agreed with Sargent. “Republicans feel that fear should have a green light to continue.”

And hey, guess what's coming up tomorrow at noon ET in Room 2141 Rayburn House Office Building? The first public hearing from the Neo-McCarthy Committee. Will Democrats show up ready to play ball? Or are they going to let these filthy sumbitches peddle their nonsense without response?

Guess we're about to find out ...

[ WaPo / NYT ]

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