Merrick Garland told the FBI to treat parents at school board meetings like domestic terrorists.
An Illinois father found out exactly what that machine felt like from the inside.
After he spoke against sexually explicit books in a public school library, Biden's DOJ tried to destroy him.
How One SPLC Hit Piece Sent the FBI to His Door and Revoked His Family's TSA PreCheck
Terry Newsome is an Illinois father who stood up at a school board meeting in 2021 against Gender Queer – a sexually explicit LGBT book available to teenagers in Community High School District 99 libraries.
He never faced a single January 6 charge – he left the Capitol grounds before anyone breached the final police line and went home to Illinois.
None of that mattered to Jeff Tischauser.
Tischauser is a senior research analyst at the SPLC's Intelligence Project with documented public ties to ANTIFA networks – including a July 4, 2022 post directing complaints to an "ANTIFA Foot Soldiers" email address.
On November 30, 2022, Tischauser published "Illinois Radical Parent Activist Has Hate Group Ties, History of Racist Posts" – labeling Newsome an extremist based on a public law-enforcement event photo, a sarcastic hand gesture, old social media posts stripped of context, and his presence in Washington on January 6.
A national SPLC press release went out the next morning.
Four days later, Tischauser posted publicly that he had asked Newsome why he "tried to overthrow the government on 1/6."
Newsome says that conversation never happened.
The FBI's FOIA response – 50 pages of 346 the Bureau admits it holds – shows the FBI opened an investigation on Newsome within a week of the article running.
Fifteen days after the SPLC piece, TSA initiated a "recurrent review" of his PreCheck eligibility.
Newsome received a Determination of Ineligibility dated January 13, 2023 – no failed standard identified, no decision-maker named.
When he traveled to Turning Point USA's AmFest with his wife, 15-year-old twins, and two of their friends as VIP guests of Charlie Kirk, every member of his family was flagged Quad-S and subjected to enhanced screening.
Biden's FBI Showed Up to Protect Him From Antifa Then Asked if He Tried to Overthrow the Government
In March 2023, FBI agents arrived unannounced at Newsome's home – he had no idea he was under federal investigation.
They told him they were there because ANTIFA had made threats against him and other parent groups.
Then the questions shifted to January 6 and his alleged connections to the Proud Boys.
He has ring-camera footage of every word they said.
Congressman Matt Gaetz sent a formal demand letter to Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on June 2, 2023.
He asked whether Newsome was on a federal watchlist, why his family received SSSS designations, whether DOJ maintains a list of Americans who were near the Capitol on January 6 without being charged, and whether DOJ maintains a separate list of parents who spoke at school board meetings.
All three acknowledged the letter.
None answered a single question.
DOJ Weaponization Report Confirms Garland Labeled Parents Domestic Terrorists Despite Zero Evidence of Violence
The DOJ's Weaponization Working Group report documents exactly how Garland built the machine that hit Newsome.
The White House described the push to investigate parents as "fairly urgent."
Career DOJ attorneys repeatedly warned leadership that pushing forward would look like an anti-MAGA task force – one attorney called it "a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration."
Garland had no real evidence of violence at school board meetings.
He issued the memo anyway.
The FBI's Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created "EDUOFFICIALS" threat tags to track parents reported through a federal snitch line.
The Bureau opened 25 Guardian assessments targeting parents across the country.
Whistleblowers told the House Judiciary Committee that field offices opened cases on parents simply for belonging to "right-wing mom's groups," owning guns, or "railing against the government."
Terry Newsome checked every box.
The second SPLC hit piece came in February 2025, after Newsome met with border czar Tom Homan in Chicago.
Tischauser labeled him a Proud Boys associate – and that characterization was later inserted into Homan's Wikipedia page.
Weeks later, Capgemini fired Newsome after 23 years – the man who had won their top sales award seven times, more than any other employee in company history.
HR told him the termination was "not due to performance."
He was 63 and still recovering from Stage 4 prostate cancer treatments.
The SPLC is not a civil rights organization.
It's a political targeting operation that employs ANTIFA-linked analysts who manufacture hit pieces – and those hit pieces move into federal law enforcement systems within days.
Garland's memo gave them a direct pipeline into the FBI and TSA.
The DOJ Weaponization Working Group report – released October 5, 2026, by AG Todd Blanche on the five-year anniversary of the memo – confirms the White House drove the entire operation over the objections of career DOJ attorneys, and that Garland used it to bring federal power against parents whose real offense was showing up at school board meetings.
The agencies have never explained the coincidence of those timestamps.
Now they have to.
AG Todd Blanche didn't release that 273-page report by accident.
He released it with hundreds of internal emails and named officials – and every page makes denial harder for the people who signed their names to what happened to Terry Newsome.
Newsome lost 23 years, his TSA PreCheck, his income, and his health to a machine Garland built on White House pressure and manufactured urgency – and the officials who built it are now named in a federal document Trump's DOJ published on purpose.
Sources:
- National Review, "Biden White House Pressured DOJ to Investigate Parents Despite Internal Pushback," National Review, October 5, 2026.
- Jarrett Stepman, "Biden DOJ Officials Warned Garland Memo Targeting Parents Looked Like an 'Anti-MAGA Task Force'," The Daily Signal, October 5, 2026.
- Mollie Hemingway, "Report: Biden White House Drove DOJ Targeting Of Parents Who Protested CRT, Covid Mandates," The Federalist, October 5, 2026.
- "DOJ Report Details Biden Admin's Apparent Conspiracy Against Parents Who Dared to Defend Their Kids," The Blaze, October 5, 2026.
- Hans von Spakovsky, "Are Parents Being Tagged as 'Domestic Terrorists' by the FBI?" Heritage Foundation, 2022.
- House Judiciary Committee, "Whistleblowers: The FBI Has Labeled Dozens of Investigations Into Parents With a Threat Tag Created by the FBI's Counterterrorism Division," May 11, 2022.
- "EXCLUSIVE: SPLC, FBI, TSA and ANTIFA Colluded Against Illinois Parent After He Fought Porn in Schools," The Gateway Pundit, October 2026.
