Ramaswamy: Biden admin working against parental rights groups
BOWIE, Md. (CITC) — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says parents' rights groups should feel they have a target on their back from the Biden administration.
The Biden administration is currently facing a lawsuit over its alleged coordination with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the group's addition of several parents' rights groups to its "Hate Map."
In June, SPLC placed nationally recognized Parents Defending Education and Moms for Liberty on the same map as the Ku Klux Klan, designating them as "antigovernment extremist groups" promoting "hate."
During an interview Tuesday evening, Crisis in the Classroom (CITC) asked Ramaswamy whether the lawsuit gives those pushing for parental rights "reason to believe" that the Biden administration "is working against them."
Yes," Ramaswamy answered. "The Justice Department has been badly weaponized
READ MORE | Biden admin sued for records surrounding parents' rights groups being labeled 'extremist'
Ramaswamy went on to say that "the same agency that 60 years ago was going after" Martin Luther King Jr. now has a new focus.
Parents who show up at school board meetings being labeled 'domestic terrorists' -- I reject that," he told CITC. "That's why I've said that I will shut down the FBI, but do it in a very practical way.
In October 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI to address "a disturbing spike in harassment" against "school administrators" at school board meetings nationwide. The directive followed a since-retracted National School Boards Association letter describing parents' actions at such meetings as "domestic terrorism and hate crimes."
READ MORE | Ramaswamy renews call to abolish teachers' unions: 'Blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability'
The Department of Justice (DOJ) was later sued in response to the memorandum, with critics arguing that Garland's directive was politically motivated. House Republicans later contested that Garland had "no legitimate basis" to request that parents be investigated.
Ramaswamy is not the sole Republican to question whether the Biden administration is working against parents' rights groups. After SPLC released its "Hate Map," Florida Republicans penned a letter to President Joe Biden alleging that Susan Corke, the SPLC official who penned the nonprofit's 2022 "Year in Hate," met with a leader of the U.S. National Security Council earlier this year.
READ MORE | GOP suspects White House involvement in SPLC labeling parent groups as 'extremist'
"This meeting raises serious questions as to whether the White House encouraged SPLC to work on behalf of the administration to label parental rights groups and organizations as 'extremist groups,'" the letter, led by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl., reads.
Member of Parents Defending Education and Moms for Liberty previously decried their inclusion on SPLC's map, saying that it is "neither hateful nor extreme to raise concerns" about their children's education.
Any thinking person knows that it is neither hateful nor extreme to raise concerns or object to classroom content that is ideological, hyper-sexual and politically driven," Erika Sanzi, Director of Outreach for Parents Defending Education, told CITC in June.
The lawsuit against the Biden administration was filed on behalf of Moms for Liberty. Included in it are citations to media coverage showing that SPLC officials have repeatedly visited the White House.