On January 11th, evidence emerged that Secretary Cardona had conspired with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to malign parents across the country who have been demanding accountability from their local school board members. According to emails obtained via FOIA request, the NSBA’s letter to the Biden administration last September which compared the actions of concerned parents to “domestic terrorism” was sent at the request of Cardona.

Secretary Cardona’s involvement in the conception of this letter is especially alarming considering that it was subsequently used by the Department of Justice to legitimize a new initiative cracking down on vaguely defined “threats” to school boards — and threatening the First Amendment rights of parents to speak freely and petition their government. If the NSBA’s letter was indeed crafted at Cardona’s request, this would mean that the DOJ’s action was based on a “crisis” that the Biden administration itself created.

Parents are not “domestic terrorists.” They have numerous serious reasons to be upset at the way public school officials have acted in recent months, including their unnecessary and harmful closure of schools, implementation of onerous and needless COVID-19 restrictions like student mask mandates, and injection of left-wing propaganda like critical race theory and gender ideology into the classroom. The Biden administration’s vilification of these parents is contemptible.

Given his apparent role in this effort to infringe on the rights of concerned parents, it is clear that Secretary Cardona can no longer credibly lead the U.S. Department of Education nor play a significant role in implementing federal education policy. We call on him to resign immediately.

We also call on Congress to further investigate the origins of the September NSBA letter to ensure any other Biden administration officials who were inappropriately involved are held accountable.

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