EXCLUSIVE — A top Biden administration official touted how his agency was “working with” Big Tech “to combat misinformation” in a private meeting with education groups weeks before the Justice Department’s scrutinized memo on alleged school board threats.
In late August 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told the National School Boards Association and other groups in a call with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that the government was taking steps to thwart “misinformation in many ways,” including in tandem with social media companies, documents reveal. The previously unreported meeting was just about one month prior to the NSBA’s Sept. 29, 2021, demand to President Joe Biden to investigate school board “domestic terrorist” parent protesters, followed by Attorney General Merrick Garland issuing his October memo.
REPUBLICANS RIP BIDEN FOR TRYING TO INSERT TAXES IN DEBT CEILING DEAL
“The desire to cut parents out of decisions about their children and urges to stifle the First Amendment rights of Americans are very disturbing but, unfortunately, not surprising,” said Michael Chamberlain, director of the ethics watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, which obtained the records and first shared them with the Washington Examiner.
The call, which took place on Aug. 26, 2021, appeared to revolve primarily around COVID-19 vaccination rates, social distancing, and masking, according to meeting notes. Attendees included American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, then-NSBA interim CEO Chip Slaven, and senior staff from the National Education Association, School Superintendents Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of State Boards of Education, and the National Governors Association, notes show.
Meeting notes show that Slaven, who informed the White House on Sept. 21, 2021, of the NSBA’s plans to craft the school boards letter, “asked for advice on combating misinformation and proposed possible [sic] doing a national town hall to address some of the misinformation head on.”
“Chip noted that misinformation is taking over in school board meetings and that the loud minority is taking over the space making it hard for school board members to do their jobs,” meeting notes read.
In response to Slaven, Murthy said on the call that there is an “importance of using trusted voices at all levels.” However, he “also noted that they are already working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies,” according to meeting notes reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Cardona then “proposed the idea for there to be a national ask made of school boards to have a local pediatrician come to a school board meeting to discuss misinformation,” according to meeting notes.
Murthy’s “misinformation” reference could indicate a more widespread effort than previously known by the Biden administration to seemingly coordinate with social media companies on content moderation. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Homeland Security repeatedly flagged purported misinformation examples to Facebook and Twitter staff in 2021 and offered talking points to push back on COVID-19 narratives, according to documents released by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and then-Attorney General and now-Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) as part of their “censorship” lawsuit against the Biden administration.
“Information revealed in the ‘Twitter Files’ and elsewhere in the public sphere indicates officials at HHS, DHS, and other agencies were coordinating with social media companies and other nonfederal actors to suppress speech,” Chamberlain told the Washington Examiner. “This meeting appears to provide additional confirmation.”
Meanwhile, the administration’s engagement with the NSBA has been well documented. The August 2021 meeting took place roughly one month before the group sent its letter to the DOJ requesting Garland to look into parents protesting at school board meetings under the Patriot Act and domestic terrorism statutes.
On Oct. 4, 2021, Garland issued a memo to establish a joint FBI-DOJ task force charged with investigating threats against school board members. The memo was widely condemned by parent activists, and the NSBA subsequently apologized for the letter and retracted it. To date, Garland has refused to rescind the October 2021 memo and has repeatedly defended it in congressional hearings.
The now-retracted NSBA letter subsequently received scrutiny after it was revealed that the Biden administration and the group had coordinated on the timing of the letter’s release, according to documents obtained by the parent activist group Parents Defending Education in 2021. The group also obtained emails indicating that the NSBA had sent the letter to Garland at the behest of Cardona, who, along with the Education Department, has repeatedly denied having anything to do with its drafting.
In the months following the fallout over the letter, House Judiciary Committee Republicans alleged that FBI whistleblowers had come forward to share that the agency was following up on purported threats made against school board officials. The purported investigations included the FBI interviewing a mother who had told her school board, “We’re coming for you,” since she owned guns and was a member of the parent activist group Moms for Liberty.
Other investigations centered on parents who “incited violence” for opposing vaccine mandates in school districts, according to the House Judiciary Committee.
As far as the August 2021 call between Biden officials and the education groups, Weingarten lamented how “young black males are seeing misinformation on YouTube” in connection to the “myth” that COVID-19 vaccines cause “infertility.” The AFT president, who has drawn scrutiny for her organization’s coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on school reopening guidance, also told Slaven she “will do whatever she can to give support to school board members on the ground level.”
The August call culminated with Cardona calling the reopening of schools “an equity issue,” according to meeting notes.
“This is another example of the Education Industrial Complex doing everything in its power to deep-six the voices of parents who were trying to get their children back to school,” Ian Prior, a senior adviser to America First Legal, a conservative legal group, told the Washington Examiner. “It should concern every American that the disgraced NSBA had such consistent access and power in dictating school policy at a national level, even going so far as to dismiss their valid concerns as being that of a vocal minority relying on so-called misinformation.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The HHS and Education Department did not reply to requests for comment.
The NSBA and AFT did not either.
