Five years ago, parents across the country were furious. Schools remained shuttered or offered only limited in-person instruction long after the academic and emotional damage to children became undeniable. Mask mandates persisted. And parents were discovering that schools had adopted controversial ideas about race and gender that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier.
So they did what citizens in a representative democracy are supposed to do: they showed up at public meetings, stood at the podium, asked questions, demanded answers, and challenged policies they believed were harming their children. For that, they were smeared, dismissed, and increasingly portrayed as something more sinister—a threat.
On September 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to President Joe Biden claiming that some activity surrounding school board meetings could be “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.” Just five days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum directing federal law enforcement to respond to a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school officials.
The remarkably fast turnaround raised an obvious question: How much of this was already in motion before the NSBA letter had even arrived? Defending Education, where I serve as senior director of communications, started digging. Through public records requests, we uncovered emails showing that the association had been in contact with the Biden White House before sending its letter. What had been presented publicly as an independent plea from the nation’s school boards was, we discovered, the product of weeks of behind-the-scenes communication with the White House.
Now, five years later, a Justice Department report fills in much more of the story. Most revealing are the contemporaneous emails and records showing what officials inside the government were saying as this unfolded. On September 22—a full week before the NSBA letter was sent—the White House Counsel’s Office forwarded the Justice Department an email from the association’s Chip Slaven to White House official Mary Wall that was, according to the report, “in substance, the same as the final NSBA Letter.” The Justice Department was already discussing a possible federal response a week before the letter that ostensibly prompted it had been sent.
The records also show weeks of collaboration involving the association’s leadership and senior Biden administration officials. Even as the White House sought federal action, officials inside the Justice Department and the FBI raised serious concerns about whether federal law enforcement should be involved at all. They noted that the conduct described in the letter was overwhelmingly state and local in nature and that much of it was protected First Amendment activity.
Some officials were remarkably blunt. One Justice Department attorney called the effort “ridiculous.” Another warned that if the Justice Department went forward, “they might as well rename the damn thing the anti-MAGA Task Force.” Another observed that almost all the alleged threats were protected by the First Amendment and warned that the Justice Department was “ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently non-federal conduct.”
The concerns extended to the FBI. One official wrote, “Not all who oppose school board actions or legislative decisions are Domestic Terrorists.” Another cautioned against treating someone as a domestic terrorism subject because of “policy or political disagreement with elected officials.” Yet the memo went forward.
The FBI ultimately opened 25 “Guardian assessments”—preliminary reviews of reported threats or activity. Six were handled by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and two involved its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The Justice Department says it is unaware of any prosecutions arising from those investigations.
Parents should never have to wonder whether criticizing a school board policy could attract the attention of federal law enforcement. Vigorous disagreement with government officials—even angry disagreement—is not extremism. It is part of citizenship. There were, of course, legitimate threats against school officials. Threats of violence should be taken seriously and prosecuted when appropriate. But that was precisely the distinction the Justice Department and FBI officials were making: Criminal threats and acts of violence are one thing; protected political speech is another.
Justice Department leadership should have recognized that distinction from the start. Defending Education is proud of the role we played in bringing the NSBA’s coordination with the White House to light. But this story was never really about us. It was about parents who were told that asking questions, demanding transparency, and objecting to government policy made them dangerous.
Five years later, the public has a much fuller record of what happened. And those parents deserve something they were denied at the time: acknowledgment that their concerns were legitimate, their rights mattered, and they had every right to speak up.
