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The Devolution of the DOJ

Merrick Garland's focus on school board meetings over violent crime diminishes the department

Merrick Garland (Getty Images)

Merrick Garland's Department of Justice has discovered a new group that poses a pressing threat to the country's safety and wellbeing.

Their potential crimes are heinous: Objecting to the propagation in our schools of critical race theory and anti-white racism.

How deep does this criminal behavior go? We can't say. Announcing a "partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff," Garland offers no statistical evidence about the rising threat of infuriated parents. He makes no mention of any arrests. He doesn't say whether a police department or state anywhere has asked for the federal government's assistance in stopping "threats against public servants."

Those are curious omissions, given that the FBI just last week released a trove of crime data detailing information about victims as well as the perpetrators and their motivations. It suggests the so-called threat is either an empty political concoction intended to mollify left-wing activists concerned that parents are wising up or, more troubling, that the Justice Department intends to conflate the protests of concerned parents with criminal behavior.

If Garland has heard that the country's murder rate last year spiked nearly 30 percent nationwide—the largest one-year increase ever recorded, and presumably a development that falls within the Justice Department's remit—he is choosing to focus his attention on matters he has deemed more important. To wit: Garland hasn't sent any letters about assembling a task force to address the fact that this year's homicide rate is on track to surpass 2020.

Though Garland pledged at his confirmation hearing to "fend off any effort by anyone to make prosecutions or investigations partisan or political in any way," his letter this week demonstrates the acceleration of the Justice Department's transformation into an unofficial wing of the Democratic Party.

The country is likely to suffer the consequences for decades to come.