Jim Jordan Subpoenas National School Board Officials over Request for Federal Crackdown on Parents

Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio.) issued a series of subpoenas on Monday aimed at senior executives of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) as part of an investigation into the organization’s push to have the Biden administration to crack down on parent protesters, who they accused of engaging in “domestic terrorism.”

Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that former NSBA interim executive director, Chip Slaven, and the current treasurer-secretary of the organization, Viola Garcia, provide documents and testimony before Congress about their efforts to target parents critical of “woke” school-board policies.

In September 2021, the NSBA, a nationwide non-profit that represents 90,000 school board members and 14,000 districts, sent a letter to Joe Biden asking the president to investigate threats made against educators over policies such as mask mandates.

The note cited 20 episodes across the United States in which teachers and administrators were allegedly harassed, threatened, or intimidated by members of the public for instituting Covid-related policies and/or introducing progressive notions about sexuality and race into school curricula. However, based on local news reports the NSBA cited, the vast majority of incidents enumerated did not qualify as threats of physical violence.

Examples cited in the document include a Michigan man disrupting a school meeting performing a Nazi salute to protest Covid-19 policies and a letter emailed to an Ohio school board member warning: “We are coming after you.”

Nevertheless, a month after NSBA submitted the letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to work alongside state attorneys to investigate whether prosecutable offenses did occur. According to the NSBA letter, these threats “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Later on, the organization issued a statement saying its members “regret and apologize for the letter” following public pushback.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona actually solicited the letter from the NSBA, according to emails obtained by the nonprofit Parents Defending Education.

Growing concern amongst parents that the plea for federal assistance crossed the line is leading the Ohio Republican to take the organization to task for allegedly targeting parents. Specifically, Jordan alleges that the Department of Justice created “a specific threat tag” targeting concerned parents and empowering the agency to investigate parents “simply for speaking out on behalf of their children.”

A third member included in Representative Jordan’s subpoena request was Nina Jankowicz, the short server leader of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board.

The body was quickly disbanded a mere three weeks after its inception following public uproar. Many Republicans derided the new body as the “Ministry of Truth,” a reference to the dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell.

Jankowicz condemned the subpoena, telling The Hill:

“Under Jim Jordan, the abuse of congressional oversight powers is about to get wildly out of control. His ‘weaponization’ committee is the entity that is actually weaponizing our government, and the American people deserve better.”