Wednesday ahead of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony before the Senate regarding the Justice Department’s memo directing the FBI to investigate what it deemed threats of violence against local school boards, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) slammed the White House for “trying to diminish the involvement of parents in their kids’ schools.”
Garland ordered the FBI to probe parents speaking out against school boards because a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) labeled the concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.” The NSBA has since withdrawn and apologized for the letter.
Kennedy said Garland was acting as a “vessel” for the White House and “won’t back off until the White House tells him to.” He added that the order had a “chilling effect on parental involvement” with respect to what is being taught in schools.
“Merrick Garland is the vessel here. The prophet is President Biden and the White House. Merrick Garland won’t back off until the White House tells him to back off,” Kennedy declared. “And all of this was instigated by the White House. But you don’t have to be a Latin scholar to figure out what this is all really about. It’s about parental love. My late father used to tell me when I was a kid — he’d say you’ll never know love until you have a child, and he was right. And most parents want what’s best for their children. They don’t want their children to grow up to hate. They don’t want their children to grow up to be racist. And that’s what Critical Race Theory teaches. Should our kids learn about slavery and Jim Crow in school? Yes. Should our kids be taught about the Tulsa massacre? You bet. But should our kids be taught that white babies are born bad and black babies are born hopeless and can’t make it without the help of the government? That’s drivel, and most parents know that. They don’t want that because they don’t believe it. Most parents don’t believe that babies can be white supremacists, and that’s really what this is all about. And you strip away the politics; it’s about parental love.”
He later added, “Let me say it again … [Attorney] General Garland is just the vessel. This is all coming out of the White House. The National School Board Association wrote this letter because they’re tired of parents asking them about the teaching of Critical Race Theory. The National School Board Association colluded with President Biden and the White House to craft the letter. As soon as they got the letter, they sent it to Merrick Garland and told Merrick Garland to sic the FBI on our parents and call them, if not explicitly, implicitly, dangerous domestic terrorists … and it did have a chilling effect on parental involvement and parental activism with respect to what their kids are learning.”
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