While there has been a general rise in crime rates in the U.S. in recent years, according to the FBI, Americans are seeing more of this uptick in smaller aspects of life. Hate crimes, unruly passengers, and threats against school boards have skyrocketed all across the country. 

But as the FBI, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, attempts to fight against the latter threat, they are met with backlash from Republicans.

On November 16, the GOP Twitter account shared an FBI email from a “whistleblower.” The email itself asked that FBI officials tag “investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers and staff” with the threat tag “EDUOFFICIAL”.

Yet, the first part of the same Twitter thread from the House Judiciary GOP account states that “Whistleblower Discloses Explosive Documents Showing FBI Using Counterterrorism Tools to Investigate Parents.”

The issues the whistleblower is addressing started back at the end of September: A letter from the National School Board Association got slammed for “[likening] parents to domestic terrorists,” according to Fox News. However, the letter never mentioned parents at any point. The letter did mention hate groups, including an instance of two men doing a Nazi salute at a school board meeting. So if that was an example of the “concerned parent” that the GOP is championing, then they might want to examine some things. 

The use of “domestic terrorism” is taken mostly out of context in this instance. The NSBA letter actually says, “as these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The NSBA has since apologized for the letter and it can no longer be found on their website. There is definitely some sort of irony that an organization that was supposedly blocking freedom of speech was forced to delete a message that broke no laws. 

US Code defines domestic terrorism as activities that are intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” and “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”

People threatening school board members definitely fall under that definition.

Even if they were not domestic terrorists, they are committing a crime of violence. Crimes of violence are defined as “threatened use of physical force against the person or prop­erty of another” in US Code.

Granted, these things would be, and should be, examined in a court of law. The NSBA letter even asks for “a joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI.”

The government is not cracking down on anti maskers. It’s cracking down on those who are actively doing crimes. There is a clear line between talking out against mask mandates/vaccines and threatening bodily harm. Anyone worried about crossing that line needs to examine what they are saying.

School Boards aren’t asking for an end to free speech, they are asking for safety and justice against those that seek to harm them.

It should not sit right with people that a clearly targeted group reached out for help and was slammed for a word they never used, and never even implied the use of. And if those slamming them for preventing free speech really cared about freedom of speech, the NSBA would be allowed to speak up for itself.