kids who did the best were the ones who had parental involvement in their education. does that make sense to you? yes, i think parental involvement is very important in education. thank you. with that in mind having parents involved in their children s education i have to say i find it deeply disturbing that the national school board association convinced the biden administration to sic you and your justice department, the f.b.i., the full power of the federal law enforcement in this country on involved parents. as if they were domestic terrorists. one of the tools in your arsenal of weapons is the patriot act that i just mentioned. not many current members of this committee were here when we passed the patriot act but i was. and mr. chairman, you were, too. and i remember clearly that we were both concerned about potential abuse of this new law
enforcement tool and why for example we insisted on sunset provisions on some aspects of the patriot act. i can tell you, not in a million years did we dream that one day we would see the justice department treat american parents as domestic terrorists. and in a primer on domestic terrorism issued last november by none other than the f.b.i. mr. attorney general. they explicitly stated that quote, under f.b.i. policy and federal law, no investigative activity related to domestic terrorism may be initiated based on first amendment activity, unquote. parents speaking up at a school board meeting against the teaching of critical race theory or anything else that they want to talk about is clearly a first amendment activity. now of course school board meetings can sometimes be
that you will follow the precedent, you will follow the law in the ordinary course of events. i would just note that your defense of the rule of law for the department of justice and your standing for the rule of law also means the rule of law for the congress of the united states, article 1 was the first article for a reason. we have a role to play in making sure that our democratic institutions are defended. i thank you for your service to our country and i look forward to your deliberations so that the congress of the united states can play its rightful role in defending our institutions and adopting legislation that will strengthen our institutions and preserve and protect our democratic republic. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. mr. gohmert.
lawlessness of the last administration while maintaining the department s independence. january 6th insurgents stormed the capitol building in a pre-planned organized assault on our government seeking to overturn the votes of their fellow americans and believing in the lie told them by president trump and his followers. i commend the department for doing the important work of bringing those responsible for the violence of january 6th to justice. i ask only that you continue to follow the facts and the law where they lead because although you have rightly brought hundreds of charges against those who physically trespassed in the capitol the evidence suggests you will have hard decisions to make about those who organized and incited the attack in the first place. we must acknowledge the simple truth that none of the individuals who attacked the capitol that day appeared out of thin air. according to the southern poverty law center, membership in white nationalist groups
race. the justice department thinks any state is doing that they can go to court. my prediction is they ll lose in georgia, they ll lose in texas, kentucky also passed a new law supported mostly by democrats signed by a democratic governor and our law is arguably more restrictive than the georgia law or the texas law but you don t hear anybody complaining about the kentucky law because the democratic governor signed it. this is a solution in search of a problem. americans all over the country can easily vote right now. dana: let me ask you to project a little bit to the mid-terms in 2022. there is reporting this morning that senator chuck schumer s pac in briefings is saying to its members we have some real problems on our hands. while they have raised a lot of money the senate incumbanlt democrats, they realize that president biden s poll numbers are down. people s concerns about inflation are way up.