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https://www.alternet.org/far-right-womens-cult-like/

as far-right extremists continue to coalesce around Donald Trump and his third run for president, women, some of whom were once derided as "mommy bloggers," are taking an increasingly larger role as the faces of the movement.

According to a report from theGuardian, from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to "martyr" Ashli Babbitt, who lost her life in the Jan. 6 riot, increasing numbers of women are recruiting or being used as recruiting tools to draw in other women that one researcher claims are susceptible to finding cults appealing.

As the Guardian's MacKenzie Ryan wrote, “alt-right” women have "shifted to influential public-facing roles in rightwing media production and far-right national politics," as they defend the rioters who stormed the Capitol or ostensibly use the protection of children to push a far-right agenda like the controversial Moms for Liberty."

According to Dr. Sandra Jeppesen of Lakehead University, "[Far-right women] have a lot more power than you think,” adding, "I think women definitely want power. I don’t think ‘alt-right’ women go into politics for altruistic reasons.”

Case in point, the rapid ascension of lawmaker Taylor Greene, with the Guardian reporting, "In the days leading up to 6 January 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist congresswoman from Georgia, paid tens of thousands of dollars for a promoted Parlor post stating the need for a grassroots army and created a Photoshopped image of her and Donald Trump. The post, used as an election fundraiser for Greene’s campaign, garnered millions of views and played a strong role in mobilizing people to the Capitol,Jeppesen explained."

The protection of children is a central selling point to recruiting more adherents with Iowyth Ulthiin, a PhD student at Toronto Metropolitan University, explaining, "Who doesn’t love children and want them to be safe?”

The Guardian report states, "The far right can take the same recruitment posture online. Ulthiin’s research has seen women in the 'mommy blogger aesthetic' on Instagram, known for sharing photos of 'lovely, enviable lives', become subtly political and then escalate rapidly into conspiracy theories."

Ulthiin suggested, "women who fall into the far-right trap often have similar psychological profiles, stating, "It would be a similar crowd to those who are in danger of joining a cult." [link]

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right-wing group Moms for Liberty was recently hit with an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaint probing "whether Moms for Liberty is a political educational organization," The Guardian reports.

Per The Guardian, the eight-page complaint filed against the "extremist" group by a Michigan attorney "alleges that the rightwing organization is in violation of its 501(c)4 non-profit status," and also questions "if Moms for Liberty is an action organization, raising questions about its participation in political campaigns and active recruitment of school board candidates."

University of Pittsburgh Associate Professor of Law Phillip Hackney told the news outlet he doesn't believe the complaint will go far, but "said he does think the complaint is correct in bringing up the group's intervention in political campaigns."

READ MORE: Top Democrats ignorant of 'extremist' Moms for Liberty despite warnings the group is dangerous

The Guardian reports:

IRS investigations into a 501(c)4 like Moms for Liberty would be 'heavily fact intensive', Hackney said, with an agent reviewing materials and going back and forth with attorneys for 18 months. The IRS has a statute of limitations to complete an investigation within three years, he said. If the group's status is revoked after that time, it probably would not owe back taxes but would reorganize as a taxable, private organization with even less transparency and no prohibitions on political campaigning.

The complaint obtained by the news outlet states, "The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity."

The document also emphasizes, "It would be a permissible educational purpose if there were advocating to remove gender discussions from classrooms and schools if there was a balanced presentation of benefits and drawbacks of using a person's preferred pronouns, supporting LGBTQ youth, impacts on children of being 'exposed' to LGBTQ supportive environments. There is not."

during a segment of MSNBC's Inside with Jen Psaki earlier this month, Psaki exposed the group in a scathing report, noting, "As for their claim that they are just a group of concerned, nonpartisan moms who happen to care about liberty, consider this: One of the founders, who's name is notably emitted from its website, is a current Republican school board member, who is married to the now-chairman of the Florida Republican Party. In 2021, he told The Washington Post, "I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year old females involved with the Republican Party. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me."

READ MORE: 'May not be what you think': Jen Psaki exposes 'unapologetically extreme' Moms for Liberty group

The Guardian's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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Tax complaint filed against rightwing parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty

Michigan attorney alleges organization, named an extremist group by Southern Poverty Law Center, in violation of non-profit status

MacKenzie Ryan

Sat 29 Jul 2023

A Michigan attorney has confirmed she filed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaint against Moms for Liberty, the parental rights group with positions against racially inclusive and LGBTQ+ education in schools. The complaint, which is private but was obtained by the Guardian, alleges that the rightwing organization is in violation of its 501(c)4 non-profit status.

Experts in tax law say an IRS investigation into the Moms for Liberty, named an extremist group by Southern Poverty Law Center, would take at least two years. If their non-profit status is revoked, it would most likely cause the group to re-characterize as a private organization, further decreasing transparency about how money is flowing into it.

Representatives for Moms for Liberty declined to comment, saying they would be unable to respond to questions without seeing a copy of the complaint.

The eight-page complaint questions whether Moms for Liberty is a political educational organization and notes public posts endorsing Republican candidates, the group’s campaigning for Republican candidates, and links to partisan training materials.

“It would be a permissible educational purpose if there were advocating to remove gender discussions from classrooms and schools if there was a balanced presentation of benefits and drawbacks of using a person’s preferred pronouns, supporting LGBTQ youth, impacts on children of being ‘exposed’ to LGBTQ supportive environments,” the complaint states. “There is not.”

The complaint cites a landmark case, American Campaign Academy v Commissioner, in which a school for Republican candidates was ultimately denied its non-profit status because it was providing partisan-only education.

Admission to local chapters is through private Facebook pages and controlled by the national organization, the complaint continues, obscuring the ability to determine how the group’s educational activities benefit the public.

The IRS complaint also examines if Moms for Liberty is an action organization, raising questions about its participation in political campaigns and active recruitment of school board candidates.

“The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office,” the complaint reads. “However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity.”

Many of the elements of the complaint – the issues raised about Moms for Liberty’s private memberships and websites and questions about it being a political educational organization – will not pass muster, Phillip Hackney, associate professor of law at University of Pittsburgh said, though Hackney said he does think the complaint is correct in bringing up the group’s intervention in political campaigns. 501(c)4 groups, the most common type of dark money organizations, are allowed to endorse candidates and participate in an unlimited amount of lobbying. Hackney warned the group’s campaigning and promoting candidates can theoreticallyget into “a damage area” if it exceeds 25% of their group’s activities.

If it stretches past that to 25 to 50% of the group’s activities, it reaches “a real danger zone”, he said. Once campaigning becomes more than half of what the group is participating in, they can lose their non-profit status. With continuing budget resolutions, Hackney said Congress has made it hard for the IRS to give clarity in this space.

Additionally, Hackey calls 501(c)4 groups “charitable-organizations lite”, formed exclusively for social welfare purposes with the goal of doing something broadly in the public interest. Social welfare is a hard-to-define term, he said; as a result, the organizations that don’t quite fit the standards for a charitable non-profit will instead go into the “trash bin” of a 501(c)4.

A wide range of organizations can fit into the gray-area definition of social welfare. An Urban Institute study found that the majority of 501(c)4 groups are community service clubs, but also include sports leagues, veterans organizations,health providers and insurers, and homeowner and tenant associations.

More people are familiar with 501(c)3non-profit, tax-exempt charitable organizations that do not need to pay taxes on earnings or donations, a benefit that makes this type of non-profit “superior” to 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, Hackney said. Charities can do a small amount of lobbying, though the exact amount of activities and expenses they’re allowed to contribute according to IRS law remains unclear. They are nonetheless prohibited from “intervening in a political campaign directly or indirectly”, such as endorsing a presidential candidate, Hackney said.

“That same prohibition does not apply to a (c)4. A number of charitable organizations will set up a charity, then have a sister social welfare organization that conducts lobbying,” Hackney said, calling it a “troublesome space”.

The charity will not be able to intervene with a political campaign, while the sister organization will. The organizations need to ensure the money coming in through the charity does not get mixed in with the 501(c)4 sister organization.

Social welfare organizations do not receive the same type of far-reaching tax benefits as charities. For example, they do not need to pay taxes on their goods and services if they further the organization’s purpose. If that standard isn’t met, a business tax applies. Nevertheless, this type of non-profit structure contains a tremendous boon for wealthy donors: tax exemption on gifted securities.

Barre Seid, a Chicago billionaire, donated $1.65bn in securities to the Marble Freedom Trust, a rightwing 501(c)4 run by Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo. Marble Freedom and Seid did not need to pay taxes on the stock transfer, which represented 100% of Seid’s ownership of the electrical goods manufacturing company Tripp Lite. If the securities had appreciated during the time frame Marble Freedom Trust owned the stock, it wouldn’t have been required to pay taxes on those gains. However, the conservative fund ultimately sold the stock; the power management company Eaton Corporation acquired it in March 2021.

Within a month, Marble Freedom Trust used the proceeds from the sale to funnel tens of millions of dollars into other conservative groups advocating for rightwing judges and greater privacy protections for libertarian and conservative donors, CNN reported.

Currently, charitable organizations and social welfare organizations do not need to disclose their donors. IRS rules about non-profit donor disclosures changed during the Trump administration, opening the tap for dark money to flood election politics without the public knowing about it. Hackney argued that disclosure is “a reasonable thing” that is “part of the democratic fabric”, but social welfare organizations are able to operate in a way that resists it, particularly when they are doing issue advocacy.

IRS investigations into a 501(c)4 like Moms for Liberty would be “heavily fact intensive”, Hackney said, with an agent reviewing materials and going back and forth with attorneys for 18 months. The IRS has a statute of limitations to complete an investigation within three years, he said. If the group’s status is revoked after that time, it probably would not owe back taxes but would reorganize as a taxable, private organization with even less transparency and no prohibitions on political campaigning.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-moms-for-libertys-summit-revealed-about-the-maga-movements-2024-strategy/

a parade of MAGA-minded presidential candidates drew cheers at the recent Moms for Liberty national summit with conspiracy theories, anti-LGBTQ smears, and calls for authoritarian policies to purge “wokeness” from American schools, businesses, and government agencies. It was a heady moment for a group that was founded by a handful of Florida mothers in 2021 to resist COVID-era vaccine and mask requirements in schools. The summit and its speakers revealed much about the vastly expanded mission to which M4L activists are being called: to be a political vanguard that will drive Democrats from power and save America from the supposed threats to its survival from communists, globalists, secularists, the “deep state,” teachers unions, promoters of “gender ideology,” and the rest of the MAGA movement’s perceived enemies.

Moms for Liberty Summit: Key Takeaways

Right Wing Watch attended the MAGA moms’ June 30-July 2 summit. Some of our key takeaways, followed by additional reporting and analysis:

Moms for Liberty has been fully adopted by the deep-pocketed powerhouses of the right-wing political movement. The group and its activists are being funded, trained, and organized by the Leadership Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and other right-wing groups.
Right-wing political strategists see M4L’s “mama bears” and “joyful warriors” as camera-friendly messengers for anti-government, anti-LGBTQ, anti-“woke” ideology—in other words, potential political kryptonite against Democratic officials and progressive candidates. M4L leaders and the operatives supporting them exude confidence that they are the keys to “taking America back.”
For all its leaders’ talk about being a movement grounded in love, M4L speakers demonized the group’s political opponents as haters of America, enemies of faith and freedom, “groomers” and child abusers, and agents of Satan in a spiritual war between the forces of good and evil.
M4L leaders say they’re against big government and its encroachment on liberty, but summit attendees cheered candidates’ authoritarian promises to wield presidential power to impose anti-diversity, anti-LGBTQ policies on schools, colleges, hospitals, and businesses.
Anti-transgender messaging suffused the conference, with multiple speakers using lurid rhetoric equating gender affirming health care endorsed by major medical associations with child abuse and “sexualization” and “mutilation” of children.
Leaders are aware that public scrutiny of M4L activists has harmed the movement’s reputation. Summit attendees were repeatedly urged to maintain a public posture as “joyful warriors” who are not motivated by hatred toward anyone but by love for their children and country.
Moms for Liberty’s goals and actions are generating spirited opposition in defense of the freedom to learn. People For the American Way launched its Grandparents For Truth organizing project at an enthusiastic rally and press conference the first day of M4L’s summit; the event was cosponsored by other anti-censorship and pro-public education organizations and addressed by progressive local and state elected officials.

Moms for Liberty and the MAGA Movement

With a big boost from right-wing media outlets, Moms for Liberty chapters sprouted up across the country over the past two years, bringing chaos to school board meetings along with demands that books dealing with sexuality and racism be removed from school libraries. M4L activists have led school board takeovers and fired well-respected school officials. Along the way, some Moms for Liberty leaders teamed up with Proud Boys and other extremist groups and militias, and engaged in targeted harassment of educators and political opponents.

Moms for Liberty leaders have promoted the lore that the group’s expansion and impact was a kind of nonpartisan grassroots prairie fire fueled by t-shirt sales and mama bears’ righteous desire to protect their children from sinister forces controlling their schools. The truth is that M4L’s expansion has been energetically supported by the massively funded infrastructure built by the right-wing political movement over the past five decades.

MAGA Moms and the Leadership Institute

At the Philadelphia summit, M4L leaders heaped praise on the Leadership Institute, a right-wing training powerhouse that has nurtured the careers of many influential far-right activists. M4L officials presented Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell with a “Sword of Liberty”; an introductory video stated that the institute has “trained thousands of joyful warriors to save our school boards” and that M4L and LI are “rapidly growing to meet the challenges and opportunity of this unique moment in history.”

Right Wing Watch reported in August 2021 that the Leadership Institute and other right-wing political groups were focusing on school board takeovers as a strategy for building political power. The institute was already promoting a 20-hour online course to train conservatives to run for school boards to “stop the teaching of Critical Race Theory before it destroys the fabric of our nation,” and was distributing an “e-book” of a speech made by James Lindsay portraying critical race theory as part of “a 100-year-long project to develop this kind of cultural super weapon that’s now ripping America apart.” In Philadelphia this month, Lindsay, now a member of M4L’s advisory board, told the MAGA moms that that they are fighting the American equivalent of Mao’s murderous 20th century cultural revolution in China.

LI leader Blackwell began advising Moms for Liberty leaders in their first two months; the Leadership Institute’s adoption of the group is so complete that it has hired M4L co-founder Bridget Ziegler—whose husband chairs the Florida Republican Party—as vice president of the Leadership Institute’s school board program. At the summit, activists could take training sessions on running for school board and on what to do in the first 100 days of taking power.

In his remarks at the summit, Blackwell claimed that “leftist indoctrination” is “sweeping through schools” and he denounced “leftist administrators and teachers, backed by big labor bosses,” who he claimed are “pushing far left ideology in the classroom, warping the minds of young children.” He said that LI is “building out a robust operation to train thousands and thousands more parents and concerned citizens to take back our school boards and save the country.”

Targeting Transgender People

Trump’s attack on transgender people reflected the intensity of the summit’s focus on “gender ideology,” which suggests that stoking fear and resistance to the visibility and legal equality of trans people will be one of the MAGA movement’s political themes in 2024. “I will also take historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology to restore the timeless truth that God created two genders, male and female,” Trump said. Similar comments were heard from other speakers and in breakout sessions where transgender people and their allies were vilified, and gender affirming care for teenagers that is supported by major medical associations was portrayed as child abuse and “mutilation.”

Deflecting Attention from Unpopular Abortion Bans

The overriding goal of Moms for Liberty’s right-wing backers is to convince and mobilize women to vote for right-wing candidates at every level of government. The extreme and unpopular abortion bans being passed around the country are a threat to that strategy, which explains why speakers at M4L and the religious-right Road to Majority conference a week before urged attendees to try to shift focus away from those bans by trying to portray pro-choice politicians as “the real extremists” for supporting measures to protect abortion rights in law. Trump, who bragged about his Supreme Court nominees voting to overturn Roe v. Wade, charged falsely that pro-choice leaders want to protect the killing of newborn children.

Mocking Climate Change Activism

In a month of extreme weather around the globe and what scientists say may have been the hottest day on Earth in 125,000 years, M4L speakers mocked concerns over climate change. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy waved away climate concerns, saying the solution to many of America’s problems is to achieve faster economic growth, for which his prescription was “drill, frack, burn coal, and embrace nuclear.” Trump mocked concerns that sea levels would rise 1/8 inch “over the next 200 to 300 years,” a far cry from recent official estimates of the potential for sea level rise along the U.S. coastline of at least two feet by the end of the century, and possibly significantly more.

Promoting Christian Nationalism and Spiritual Warfare

Most of the summit speakers who invoked faith did so not to celebrate the defining American values of pluralism and church-state separation, but to denounce the removal of official prayer and Bible readings from public schools and to portray American politics in terms of spiritual warfare between the supernatural forces of good and evil. The summit’s opening reception featured a presentation by Wallbuilders’ Tim Barton, who follows in the footsteps of his father David in promoting bogus Christian nationalist history to conservative audiences.

Among the conference sponsors was Patriot Mobile, a cellphone carrier that uses its revenues to support Christian nationalist idoelogy and right-wing school board takeovers. The executive director of Patriot Mobile Action introduced herself this way: “My name is Leigh Wambsganss. And my pronouns are Bible believer, Jesus lover, Gun Carrier and mama bear.” Wambsganss declared, “This is a spiritual war, not a political war,” and she vowed, “we will take America back.”

MAGA Extremism, MAGA Misinformation

Moms for Liberty attendees were treated to speeches by several Republican presidential candidates: former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Former South Carolina Gov. and former Trump administration official Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

The candidates’ speeches—like those of other M4L speakers and sponsors—were rife with warfare rhetoric, mockery and outrageous demonization of political opponents, and conspiracy theories. Trump’s hyperbolic speech denouncing the sinister forces he said want to destroy America by forcing “their sick creed of woke communism” on every American drew rapturous cheers and applause from the MAGA moms. About Democrats, Trump declared, “They hate God.”

While M4L activists cheered candidates’ vows to abolish the Department of Education and return control of education to the states, Trump and other presidential candidates championed their willingness to use the power of the presidency. Ramaswamy said he would act to prevent public school teachers from joining unions.

“I am proud to have laid out by far the most aggressive most visionary plan to liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system—they’re perverts,” Trump said, adding that he would issue an executive order on day one of a new Trump administration to cut federal funding “for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

He said he would implement “massive funding preferences” for states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure and said he would fight for direct election of school principals. “I’m also going to take very aggressive action to finally reclaim our higher education system from the Marxists and the communist left,” Trump said.

Trump echoed religious-right activists who portray secularism as a false religion. “The Marxist left and other lunatics preaching radical ideology have become a cult, with their own creeds and their own mantras and their own rituals. Instead of taking children to church, they believe in taking children to drag shows, you see what’s happening. ‘Let’s not go to church today, darling, let’s go to a drag show.’”

DeSantis’s speech was a reprise of his now-familiar denunciations of “woke” in all its forms, bragging about his administration’s actions to police the content of textbooks and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from public universities. He portrayed himself as a Churchillian hero in the war on woke: “And in Florida, we fought the woke all across the board, and as President, I will fight the woke in the corporations. I will fight the woke in the schools. I will fight the woke in the halls of Congress, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

Along with the Leadership Institute, the Heritage Foundation was one of the summit’s major financial backers. Heritage president Kevin Roberts denounced globalist elites who he said “don’t’ want our children to inherit liberty and freedom.”

Trump’s wildly applauded closing hit on the major messages of the MAGA movement and the Moms for Liberty summit:

This is our final battle.With you at my side, we willdemolish the deep state. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, we will throw off the sick political class that truly hates our country, we will rout thefake news media, we will take back our schools, we will defeat Joe Biden, and propelled by the spirit of July 4, 1776,we will win a righteous victoryon November 5, 2024.

Tags: Bridget Ziegler Donald Trump Kevin Roberts Morton Blackwell Ron DeSantis Anti-Abortion Anti-LGBTQ Censorship Election 2024 Public Education Wokeness Heritage Foundation Leadership Institute Moms for Liberty Patriot Mobile Republican Party

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'May not be what you think': Jen Psaki exposes 'unapologetically extreme' Moms for Liberty group

Maya Boddie July 16, 2023

During the Sunday, July 16, episode of MSNBC's Inside with Jen Psaki, Psaki took a few minutes to educate viewers on the increasingly popular political group, Moms for Liberty.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, according to NPR, has deemed the nonprofit organization "extremist," saying, "They really are seeking to undermine public education holistically and to divide communities."

Psaki began the segment saying, "Since the height of the COVID pandemic, schools, teachers, and administrators have all become the targets of right-wing anger. First it was the reaction to COVID restrictions, which then morphed into outrage over the teaching of race and identity, and outrage over CRT — critical race theory. Which rapidly turned our education system into the frontline of the right's ongoing culture war. That anger no doubt sparked the rise of organizations, now focused on taking over school boards, pulling books from the shelves, and changing curriculums in schools across the country.

In fact, according to a 2022 report from a nonprofit that tracks censorship in America, 70 percent of those organizations were formed in about an 18 month period, beginning at the start of 2021. Among the largest of these new groups, which you may have heard of, is Moms for Liberty, and it's recently become something of a political powerhouse. Just a few weeks ago, they hosted five Republicans presidential candidates, including the frontrunners, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis — they all came out for Moms for Liberty."

READ MORE: Top Democrats ignorant of 'extremist' Moms for Liberty despite warnings the group is dangerous

She continued, "Now, the group has declared itself a nonpartisan organization, and its name does sound innocuous enough — Moms — great, sounds good. Liberty — awesome, who doesn't like liberty? "Moms for Liberty" — as the mom of two young kids, that even sounds good to me. But, it's vague enough, that even some of its own members are pretty unclear as to what the group is really all about, what they're a part of. One mom who became treasurer of an Indiana chapter was even quoted asking, 'What am I apart of? I need to know these things.' Fair question. Well, I'm here to help. I'm here to help you. Because as benign as Moms for Liberty may sound, its agenda is unmistakably extreme. For instance, you may not know that Moms for Liberty has been helping to lead the movement in pulling books from the library shelves, including classics, like The Bluest Eye — great book. The Kite Runner — amazing book. As well as other books that deal with race, diversity and sexuality."

Furthermore, Psaki said, "The group has turned school board meetings into unruly shouting matches. As an attendee at one Florida meeting described, 'They turn around and scream at me that I am a commie, and teachers want to see all kids fail. This group brings out the worst in people.' The group says this work, all this shouting, is the work of 'joyful warriors,' is what they call it. Sounds a lot more to me like pretty aggressive harassment. And that behavior is not isolated, it's part of a bigger pattern. Chapters and members across the country have led campaigns targeting community advocates, school board members, and opposing groups. They've repeatedly sent intimidating messages, openly threatened officials, and even baselessly leveled charges of child abuse and sympathizing with pedophilia. Unbelievably, an Indiana chapter even put out a newsletter that quoted Adolf Hitler, saying, 'He alone who owns the youth gains the future' — that is a Hitler quote. And while they eventually apologized, the organization seemed to later regret that apology."

The former White House press secretary then rolled a video of a MFL member saying to an audience that she supports the mom who quoted Hitler in the newsletter.

Psaki went on to say, "Standing by a mom who quotes Hitler in a newsletter. People cheering for that. That's what you just saw," adding, "And as for their claim that they are just a group of concerned, nonpartisan moms who happen to care about liberty, consider this: One of the founders, who's name is notably emitted from its website, is a current Republican school board member, who is married to the now-chairman of the Florida Republican Party. In 2021, he told the Washington Post, "I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year old females involved with the Republican Party. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me."

READ MORE: 'Treacherous march of normalization': ABC News slammed for 'puff piece' on Moms for Liberty

The MSNBC host sarcastically commented, "Sounds pretty apolitical," emphasizing, "So, below the surface of their friendly sounding name, and politically vague taglines, they're an unapologetically extreme organization that has built a long record of harassment and controversy, in a pretty short period of time. Some free advice out there for people who are not sure what the organization is about — whether it's called Moms for Liberty or Puppies for Ice cream — it's worth looking into the agenda of an organization before joining it. Sometimes, it may not be what you think."

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Shocking': Scholars condemn Philadelphia Museum for hosting Moms for Liberty event

NPR's full report is available at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Local Moms for Liberty chair says Biden leading 'coordinated effort to make more children trans and gay' ›

Moms of Liberty says it knows liberal groups are spying because it has its own moles: report ›

Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter scrambles to explain why it quoted Hitler in very first newsletter ›

Manufacturing terror to mobilize parents

We wanted to get a closer look at how Moms for Liberty instructs members behind closed doors, so Madeline Peltz, my colleague who was with me at the summit, and I split up the breakout sessions to cover more ground.

Kim Hermann, a lawyer affiliated with the Southeastern Legal Foundation, spoke in a breakout session which, according to the event description, was about “navigating legal challenges and advocating for your family.” She began by warning parents that they were “fighting a constitutional war.”

She said those running schools (“teacher unions, those that are indoctrinating our kids”) want to “undermine our republic and our way of government” and claimed that schools are intentionally withholding information from kids about their constitutional rights.

Her speech only got more extreme from there: She claimed that thesesame powerful actors are “trying to get rid of our Constitution” — somehow through critical race theory — and that their ultimate goal is to “destroy” America.

In another breakout session,Deb Fillman, a “homeschool consultant,” spent over an hour ranting about a faceless enemy attacking children through the weapon of social-emotional learning.

Fillman said that while she didn’t exactly know who benefits from this alleged child exploitation, she tends to agree that they’re probably “Marxists or globalists.”

But whoever they are, they’re out to “replace parents,” groom your children by creating an inappropriate “trust bond,” gather your child’s data to manipulate them, and ultimately pursue “world domination.”

Conspiracy theories about impending child microchips and Bill Gates were sprinkled in the presentation, too. Fillman suggested that math software owned by Gates’ Microsoft is being nefariously used to “get every data point they possibly can on a kid.” In the same vein of corrupt data collection, she told audience members that she fears that microchips tracking students in schools (allegedly an “experiment” in China) is coming to the United States soon, which means the government would “know everything.”

Education consultants teach how to overwhelm opponents

Amid all of the conspiracy theories and fearmongering, there were select breakout sessions that offered actual strategies to “fight” the evils attendees had learned about.

Education consultant Jordan Adams’ presentation was focused on successfully flipped school boards, and it included detailed instructions about how to get newly elected board majorities to bulldoze through Moms for Liberty policy priorities.

Adams presented audience members with a how-to guide on destabilizing school districts within the first 100 days of taking office, including a worksheet that he encouraged participants to fill out listing a timeline of tangible steps meant to overwhelm the opposition (the image includes my notes for his suggested actions based on the presentation). The reverse side of the handout encouraged attendees to familiarize themselves with and counter common talking points from adversaries.

In order to pass controversial policies without backlash, Adams suggests that school boards bombard the district with an array of demands and changes so that the opposition can’t keep up. “These [school] boards, these majorities, they need to be meeting on multiple fronts, multiple issues,” he said. “They need to keep moving, and the idea is that the other side, the powers that be, they cannot keep up with all of it. Right? Oftentimes there will be one small thing, one thing at a time. And they can rally people around that. They can’t counter everything.”

Some of the first steps include putting school administrators “on notice that they need to cooperate with all of this” and advertising “the values” the new board is implementing when posting job ads for new teachers.

The second month is defined by policies: “Start introducing policies on CRT [critical race theory], eliminating DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices, reviewing contracts and initiatives, eliminate student surveys.” He also suggested putting a “moratorium on new technology.”

Nearly every action step Adams discussed was also a consulting service he could both provide and profit from. Adams runs Vermilion Education, an education consulting business specializing in transparency audits, curriculum design, board advising, and teacher training. Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler (who also chairs the Sarasota County school board) suggested hiring Adams to her school system, which was the first to consider it.

Meanwhile, Adams suggested that schools are “raking in cash from the state, from taxpayers” and “funneling it off to their friends.”

His wasn’t the only session to highlight school finances.

The Heritage Foundation runs the show

Learning that there was going to be a “dark money in education” breakout session at the summit made me laugh (the irony!). Learning who the speakers were — Katie Gorka (former research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and wife of far-right political commentator Sebastian Gorka) and Rhyen Staley (a researcher at Koch-connected Parents Defending Education) — made me attend.

The message of the session was “follow the money.” Aside from some absurd conspiracy theories about the Centers for Disease Control trying to install puberty blockers “without the barrier of parental permissions”and Gorka’s claim that there’s dark money behind critical race theory, sex education, drag queen story hour, and transgenderism, the session loosely taught the audience how to determine who is really behind different educational organizations.

To determine influence, the speakers instructed audience members to look at who sponsors conferences and what foundations are giving them money in order to exert control. The examples they used were aboutteachers unions, but they could have also pointed to the summit’s sponsors.

The event, held in Philadelphia, was lavish: Nearly every meal was elaborately catered and served by waiters. The organizers also booked the Museum of the American Revolution and chartered buses to get attendees there, which wasn’t a cheap endeavor.They had money, but whose? Ticket sales and meager membership dues wouldn’t likely cover this kind of costly event.

Applying the same logic I learned in the “dark money” session to Moms for Liberty would suggest that the group’s chapters are shills for organizations like The Heritage Foundation and The Leadership Institute, a decades-old nonprofit that trains young conservative activists and policy leaders to sell right-wing ideals.

Both Heritage and Leadership sponsored the summit at the highest tier possible. Both have regularly partnered with and given resources to Moms for Liberty since the group’s infancy. And co-founder Ziegler is now running the Leadership Institute’s School Board Leaders Program.

And there’s more. Breakout session speaker “Billboard Chris” Elston, a Canadian anti-trans activist, revealed that the Heritage Foundation identified and brought together 40 people, including him, in March 2022 to “fight gender ideology” — indicating that the think tank is helping to organize this coalition.

In the same session, Jay Richards, a senior research fellow at Heritage, claimed that he was the first one to approach Heritage with the idea to “fight gender ideology”and has spearheaded that movement.

Moms for Liberty was awarded Heritage’s Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship in 2022 for embodying “the virtues of the American Founding.” It also came with a nice little $25,000 prize.

Backed by and affiliated with individuals and organizations attempting togut and privatize public schools, Heritage is one of the leading crusaders trying to destabilize public education. So it’s no surprise that it’s using Moms for Liberty members as pawns to further that cause.

Having closely monitored Moms for Liberty longer than just about anyone else, I can say with confidence that the group is only becoming more openly extreme. It’s been headed that way for years, but now the mask is off.

Moms for Liberty is embracing rhetoric that not only appeals to far-right conspiracy theorists, but creates them.

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What I learned from the lavish catering at Moms for Liberty's hate-filled conference

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 07/07/23

The Moms for Liberty conference offered a wide variety of liberal milks. Between small group sessions and speeches from the main stage in the Philadelphia Marriott ballroom, attendees had their choice to add oat, almond, or “ultra soy” milks to their caffeine at well-stocked coffee stations.

Not only were there multiple speciality milks, but for the price of $249 for a four day event, my colleague Olivia Little and I were fed an elaborate meal during all but one of the general sessions in the grand ballroom. The tables were decked out with white tablecloths, multiple sets of utensils, and floral centerpieces. It was like walking into a wedding reception three times a day.

The elaborate veneer of the conference belies the ugly truth of what Moms for Liberty stands for. The group is a far-right “parental rights” organization made up of local chapters across the country. Moms For Liberty was recently labeled an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and members have organized harassment campaigns, made violent threats against librarians, and repeatedly quoted Hitler. The group advocates for book banning in schools and backed bills targeting LGBTQ+ adults and children.

Protesters gathered outside the conference all weekend, and their presence was felt. The welcome reception at the Museum of the American Revolution was tense and uneasy as a dance party featuring pro-LGBTQ signs collected outside, a scene that reemerged outside the Philadelphia Marriott throughout the weekend. The protests pervaded remarks at the conference – speakers repeatedly denigrated activists who opposed Moms for Liberty’s presence in their city, clearly uncomfortable with their presence. As someone who was screamed at multiple times as an undercover attendee – I can assure you it was not fun, and the city’s objection was palpable.

Olivia’s report has the full rundown on the conspiracy-addled conference. Inside breakout “strategy sessions”, one speaker claimed that social-emotional learning curriculum is a backhanded plot to “replace parents” and gather data on children in order to manipulate them. Another suggested that the Center for Disease Control is trying to install puberty blockers “without the barrier of parental permissions.” Attending these sessions felt like a fever dream and I desperately swiped through the games on my phone to numb myself. As the weekend went on — and boy, did it feel like it would never end — I couldn’t stop thinking about how much they must have spent on food. At one point, I showed up for lunch, and the table was set with a salad topped with chicken at every place, despite the fact that Olivia and I were the only people sitting there. It was a massive waste.

Moms for Liberty first tried to feed me at the welcome reception. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures because I did yet not expect that my dispatch would revolve around catering, but the offerings were bizarre to the point of raising serious questions about what process went into developing the menu. Scattered throughout the museum were stations offering three options – chicken satay, Philly cheesesteaks with no cheese (so mini-Italian beef sandwiches without giardiniera), and cold macaroni salad. Waiters passed trays throughout the event, including tiny ice cream cones that I wanted to try but never were offered to me, alongside something that looked like mini beef patties on a cracker with a gummy egg on top. I did not eat this.

Thinking about how much the conference cost to put on is simply depressing, but eventually I settled into my surroundings and started expecting to be catered to. When they didn’t feed us dinner at the session featuring former President Donald Trump, I was downright offended, not only because I was hungry, but also on behalf of the catering staff, who for some inexplicable reason were required to stand around the perimeter of the room for the entire session.

Instead of dinner during Trump’s speech, which started late and ran late, they served us a charcuterie board and teatime desserts. The charcuterie featured salami and a dry aged meat that I think was supposed to be capicola, an unnecessarily large bowl of whole grain mustard that I did not touch and could not understand why there was so much of it, three types of cheese that all tasted pretty much the same, a bunch of grapes, and a tiny square of honeycomb that appeared inedible.

I shared the grapes with Olivia and wished there were more, because at this point in the weekend I was worried about developing scurvy and felt my sense of time and place slipping away. I was hungry and stressed, so I housed almost the entire thing while Olivia handled the mom sharing our table and grilling us about who we were and why we were there.

The mini desserts were pretty to look at, but inconsistent in terms of quality. One of my favorite treats is a chocolate covered strawberry, but this one was disappointing -- not enough chocolate.

I also tried the cheesecake bite and a mini custard cut in a graham cracker crust. I’m not really a cheesecake person, but my sister is and I think she would have enjoyed it, though I doubt she would have borne the cost of access. It’s not like I could say it was worth it. The graham cracker custard bite had a touch of jam and was quite good.

Overall, the highlights were the desserts. In fact, the best thing I had all weekend was the last – a chocolate pot de crème, served at the “Such a Time as This” Awards Dinner, which featured speeches from anti-LGBTQ activist Chris Elston, also known as “Billboard Chris” and Salem right-wing radio host Dennis Prager. The program concluded with an awards ceremony for outstanding Moms for Liberty Chapter leaders. Shockingly, the awards meant that there would be losers among us by the end of the night -- there were three nominees for every category, and the winner was announced at the dinner. Olivia and I took bets on who would win categories like the Sybil Ludington Award for Raising Awareness, each of which were named after “founding mothers” of this country.

Back to what’s important -- the pot de crème. It was topped with a layer of caramel sauce, raspberries, whipped cream and a sugar-soaked cookie and was delicious – a thick and creamy texture and satisfying chocolate flavor was amplified by the sticky caramel. The presentation was pleasing – nothing too fancy, just a simple mason jar, but with all the flourishes it felt elevated.

The lowlights mostly consisted of breakfast and lunch. At one session that featured a conversation between Vivek Ramiswamy and co-founder Tiffany Justice, I was especially uneasy due to Olivia’s absence, who had gone to run an errand while I went to lunch for the purpose of reporting this piece. The side salad of wilted spinach and watermelon radish looked inedible, so after stress eating several rolls, I waited for the main to be served.

When a chicken breast with risotto and broccoli arrived, I was hopeful then disappointed -- every element of it tasted like biting into a previously frozen brick of salt.

I left to go to Reading Terminal Market across the street to try Miller’s Twist, a pretzel stand in the famous food hall recommended to me by the mom who was pressing Olivia while we waited for Trump to take the stage. I got a pretzel dog, and while also extremely salty, but nonetheless fed my soul and restored my faith in Philadelphia.

Attending the Moms for Liberty conference was unquestionably worse than when I went to Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas earlier in June. Unlike the college-aged crowd at YWLS, the majority of the moms appeared to be in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and I couldn’t help but wonder about what impact the toxic ideology they had internalized may have had on their relationships, careers, and other achievements that manifest by mid-life.

The biographies of multiple moms who were nominated for awards noted they had been fired from their jobs. I can only imagine the hostility their radical politics brought to the workplace. By contrast, TPUSA’s summit for young women spoke to those at the beginning of the process of building an adult life, an exercise in identity politics framed by hatred of transgender people and regressive views on the role of women, wives and mothers. Attending the Moms for Liberty conference was like time traveling forward in the lives of those beginning the radicalization process at the TPUSA event. During the event, I felt gratitude for my own mom, who made me lunch every day for school and taught me never to hate others because they may be different from me.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/moms-liberty-will-feature-krisanne-hall-oath-keepers-militia-member-who-spoke-pro

pix krisAnne Hall speaking on her Oath Keepers TV program

Moms for Liberty’s upcoming national summit will feature KrisAnne Hall, a far-right commentator who has been a member and host for the anti-government Oath Keepers militia. Hall is also an election conspiracy theorist who “compared the U.S. Capitol police to Nazi S.S. troops” and gave an anti-government presentation to the white nationalist and pro-Confederate group League of the South.

Moms for Liberty is hosting a summit this week in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The right-wing organization works to pass anti-LGBTQ laws across the country, especially regarding education, and helps platform extremists. The organization has also repeatedly quoted Adolf Hitler.

Numerous right-wing politicians will be speaking at the event, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson will also appear. Robinson has a history of making vitrolic remarks about abortion, Jewish people, LGBTQ rights, school shootings, and other topics, including defending sexual predators Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.

Moms for Liberty has been heavily intertwined with vitriolic right-wing commentators. Anti-LGBTQ pundits Dennis Prager and James Lindsay are scheduled to address the summit. Anti-Muslim commentator Katie Gorkawill also speak.

The group is also giving the stage to fringe commentatorKrisAnne Hall. She is a lawyer who has appeared as a guest on far-right outlets, including on QAnon programs like BardsFM and RedPill78. She works with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a far-right and white nationalist-tied organization whose central tenet is that the authority of county sheriffs exceeds that of the state and federal government, and that those officials can nullify federal laws. She has spoken at previous Moms for Liberty events, including its national summit last year.

Hall works with her husband and former pastor JC Hall, who is also set to address the summit. The two frequently make media appearances together,including recently appearing on the program of mass shooting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The following are examples of the kind of rhetoric and beliefs that Moms for Liberty is branding themselves with by hosting KrisAnne Hall:

KrisAnne Hall is a member of the anti-government Oath Keepers militia and hosted a show for its streaming network. Hall has numerous ties to the Oath Keepers, the far-right anti-government militia. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes “and Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Florida chapter of the organization, were found guilty by a jury today of seditious conspiracy and other charges for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Hall has been involved with the Oath Keepers for years. She wrote in January 2014, “I am An Oath Keeper! ARE YOU?” She later encouraged people to sign up for the organization. Hall has also hosted a program on Oath Keepers TV and done an event for the group.

hall spoke at an event for League of the South, a white supremacist and neo-Confederate group.The League of the South is a white supremacist group that wants the South to secede from the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “in recent years, it has increasingly embraced violence, criticized perceived Jewish power and warned black people that they would be defeated in a future race war.”

The SPLC reported that Hall spoke at an event for theLeague of the South in August 2019, during which she displayed a presentation that “included information on the theory of nullification and why ‘federal use of undelegated power is theft.’” The group added that “Hall attempted to distance herself from LOS, saying that her teachings run contrary to the group’s position. But some of Hall’s rhetoric, such as her belief in both nullification and justification of secession, could help LOS reach new audiences.”

Hall is an election conspiracy theorist. Hall frequently pushed the conspiracy theory that Trump had the election stolen from him. She wrote on January 3, 2021: “Please call and email both of your State Senators AND your House Representative and demand they Stop the Steal. We have included a sample script to help you. … #StopTheSteal.” Hall’s script included lines demanding that the elected official “must publicly and actively stop the theft of this election or I will never” vote for that person again.

On January 6, she wrote: “THIS, America, is the REAL COUP, turning lawlessness into legal activity turning fraud into the means by which our elections are to be decided. What message will REAL AMERICANS send today? … #StopTheSteal.”

Hall has quoted Hitler and “compared the U.S. Capitol police to Nazi S.S. troops.” Hall, like Moms for Liberty, has quoted Hitler. She quoted him in June 2015 after complaining about government laws regarding children[ long twt]

hall, as the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported, “compared the U.S. Capitol police to Nazi S.S. troops.” The publication explained:

In another video, Hall suggests America is a “full-on Marxist” state that is bent on forcing people to become vaccinated against COVID-19. “Because this is America, they have to feed you lies to keep you under their Marxist agenda,” she says.

In that same video, she questions the authority of the U.S. Capitol police, whom she compares to Nazi Germany’s S.S., or Schutzstaffel, and the FBI to arrest and detain those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol if they travel outside the District of Columbia.

“These Capitol police say, ‘Oh, we’re just aiding the FBI,’ ” Hall says in the video. “The FBI does not have jurisdiction in your state, your county, or your city … The sheriff can override the governor and kick the feds out of the county … The feds know they don’t have jurisdiction. They know this. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying to trick your sheriff into mutual-jurisdiction agreements by dangling trinkets and gifts of money to your sheriff … They’re putting the Capitol police in your city because you have no control over them and they will have no loyalty, and no submission to you, whatsoever. They will be blind enforcers, like the S.S., just carrying out the bidding of the next tyrant that’s in office.”

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from June 29-July 2, the far-right MAGA group Moms for Liberty held its annual summit in a city so Democratic that it hasn't had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in January 1952: Philadelphia. The four-day event, held at the Philadelphia Marriott near Reading Terminal Market and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, was greeted by angry protesters who slammed the group for its campaign to exclude books by gay, lesbian and African-American authors from public schools.

Moms for Liberty (M4L) touts itself a "parental rights" group, but to critics, their real mission is to purge schools of as many Black and gay authors as possible.

In an article published by the Daily Beast on July 5, journalist Kate Briquelet offers an in-depth account of what she observed at the M4L gathering in Philly — where the speakers included Republican presidential hopefuls such as former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Far-right radio host Dennis Prager was also there.

Briquelet notes that while attending the summit, she didn't go out of her way to broadcast the fact that she was a Daily Beast reporter.

"My mission was to blend in and get the full experience of this ideological sisterhood, one that came with a swag bag holding a Trump air freshener, comic book on the Pilgrims' journey aboard the Mayflower, and 'awake not woke' sticker with a passage of scripture," Briquelet explains. "Throughout the summit, once people asked where I was from and whether I was with a M4L chapter, they didn't dig much further. Only one person, a fellow infiltrator, asked about my profession."

Briquelet reports that DeSantis railed against "wokeness" during his speech, while Trump promised to "liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system" if elected president in 2024.

Trump told the crowd, "On Day 1, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children…. For any public schools that are engaged in these militant and country-destroying practices, I will instruct the DOJ to pursue them as violators of the establishment clause, of the free exercise clause, of our constitution.:

Briquelet notes that during the summit, "Moms for Liberty speakers and attendees seemed laser focused on defeating what they perceived as a cabal of educators, doctors and woke leftists who they claimed wanted to brainwash children into believing they were born in the wrong body. The end goal of such a conspiracy wasn't entirely clear to me."

During the event, Briquelet interviewed a lesbian activist who also attended to observe what was going on but disagrees vehemently with what Moms for Liberty represents.

The activist, identified by Briquelet as "Tina," told her, "I heard about this event when I was attending pride as a queer person. This is a group that's working against people like me and people in the community that I care deeply about, in ways that don't just result in psychological harm, but even suicide and physical assault. There's a danger to this kind of group, and they see people like me as a danger."

"Tina" continued, "I need to work harder against them, and I can learn more about them and do that more effectively if I attend this conference…. As a local and a non-white person, as a probably-being-perceived-as-queer person, I knew that the cards were stacked against me, and that there was a high likelihood that I would be seen as a suspicious interloper, potential disruptor, and could be kicked out of this private event. So I tried my darndest to fit in and to not trigger too many suspicions in my conversations."

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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US corporate media accused of 'normalizing the hate group' Moms for Liberty

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams July 04, 2023

ABC News this week joined other U.S. corporate media outlets in being accused of "normalizing" Moms for Liberty after publishing what one critic called a "puff piece" on the right-wing group that's behind a wave of school book bans and is linked to the neofascist Proud Boys and the Qanon conspiracy theory.

On Saturday, ABC News published an article by Brittany Shepherd titled "Moms for Liberty Are Fired Up in Philadelphia" as the self-described "parental rights" organization held its annual conference in Pennsylvania's largest city, where crowds of protesters turned out to denounce the group's bigotry.

"They call themselves joyful warriors—but this group of conservative moms are mad," Shepherd wrote in her lede.

Author and Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali called the article "shameful."

"Moms for Liberty is linked with the Proud Boys, a chapter quotes Hitler, they are behind book bans, they are funded by right-wing groups and... ABC News calls them 'joyful warriors,'" Ali tweeted. "The whiteness of it all is exhausting."

Historian Kevin Kruse wondered, "Did ABC let Moms for Liberty write this puff piece themselves?"

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Florida, noted that a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana included a quote from Adolf Hitler in its inaugural newsletter. The chapter chairperson subsequently apologized.

Founded in Florida in 2021 to oppose Covid-19 lockdowns and mandates, Moms for Liberty quickly gained a reputation for its anti-LGBTQ views and its harassment of school officials in service of the organization's far-right agenda.

The group—which says it has more than 115,000 members in 245 chapters in 45 states—wants to erase mention of LGBTQ+ rights, systemic racism, diversity, and other "woke" topics from school curricula.

Moms for Liberty—many of whose chapters are linked to extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters as well as the Qanon conspiracy theory—has spearheaded a successful movement to ban books, especially ones with LGBTQ+ and racial themes, from school libraries across the nation.

The American Library Association said earlier this year that it had recorded 1,269 demands to censor books from various groups and individuals in 2022, compared to 729 challenges counted in 2021.

In her article, Shepherd wrote how the Moms for Liberty conference "showcases how local issues like education can have tremendous, galvanizing national influence, as Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley tried to woo nearly 700 attendees."

The article continued:

Several key breakout sessions at the center of the group's mission, such as "Protecting Kids from Gender Ideology" and "Getting Flipped School Boards To Take Action" were kept behind closed doors, with media access barred. But still, the enthusiasm at open events was palpable, nearly bouncing off the ballroom walls.

The piece does note that Moms for Liberty is designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for spreading "hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community."

However, two paragraphs later Shepherd wrote that "Republicans will need this group to make up any lost ground" from last year's midterm elections.

In a Friday interview by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, extremism expert Kristofer Goldsmith urged viewers to spread the world about who Moms for Liberty are and what they stand for.

"We are talking book burning. We're talking about racism and we're talking about persecuting the LGBTQ community. These are the Proud Boys with a wig and lipstick," Goldsmith said. "That is all that they are. And because of the words 'Moms for Liberty,' not a lot of people are going to understand that."

"So folks watching this need to be evangelists, right?" he added. "You need to get out online and talk to your friends about what Moms for Liberty is, and help them understand that they are a pipeline into the most radical of extremism in this country."

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conservative group, Moms for Liberty, is set to rent space in Philadelphia's Museum of the American Revolution for an event later this week, and several prominent historical organizations are making their disapproval known, The New York Times reports.

This comes just days after the right-wing organization, known for pushing book bans in schools, issued an apology after including a quote from Adolf Hitler in a newsletter that read, "He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future," according to the Indianapolis Star.

After receiving significant backlash, NBC reports an Indiana chapter chairwoman, Paige Miller offered a statement, saying, "We condemn Adolf Hitler's actions and his dark place in human history. We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology."

Per the Times, earlier this month, "dozens of museum employees were calling on the museum to cancel the rental to Moms for Liberty, on the grounds that it undermined the museum's reputation and mission."

The Committee on L.G.B.T.Q. History, according to the report, urged the museum to renege on the rental, calling it "shocking that an organization dedicated to documenting and preserving American history would enter into any relationship with an organization that is so intent upon distorting the American experience."

Additionally, the American Historical Association wrote a letter earlier this week, urging the museum to reconsider hosting the upcoming event, saying, "Moms for Liberty is an organization that has vigorously advocated censorship and harassment of history teachers, banning history books from libraries and classrooms, and legislation that renders it impossible for historians to teach with professional integrity without risking job loss and other penalties."

Referring to the museum, the Organization of American Historians emphasized, "This work and gains that have been made in this space are in many respects fragile, and must be vigorously defended.

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former President Donald Trump received a rapturous hero’s welcome Saturday night as he delivered the closing keynote address to a room packed with religious-right activists in Washington, D.C. for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference.

Trump knew his audience. “We are warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,and we will restore our republic as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all,” Trump said. As part of his typically long and rambling speech, he denounced his recent indictments, bragged about his administration’s accomplishments–including his Supreme Court justices cementing the right-wing majority to overturn Roe v. Wade—and declared that Democrats have become “monsters.”

Trump thrilled the crowd with promises about what he would do as the 47th president, saying, “When I get back in the Oval Office, I will totally obliterate the Deep State.” And he vowed to push “school choice” plans—which divert public education dollars into private and religious schools and homeschooling—and, oddly, called for public school principals to be chosen by direct election by parents.

Trump’s speech and others at the conference signaled the issues and strategies around which the MAGA movement is mobilizing to try to take power in the 2024 elections: waging war on “wokeness,” demeaning transgender people and calling for institutionalized discrimination against them, mocking corporate support for diversity, equity, and environmental protection, and, in the name of parents’ rights,purging schools and libraries of materials that do not align with MAGA activists’ political and religious worldviews.

Trump’s speech was preceded by awards given to right-wing movement fundraising godfather Richard Viguerie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Viguerie declared that the nation is in “a spiritual civil war” that “the left has launched against Western civilization, America, our Constitution, Judeo-Christian moral values, and much else we value at home.” Viguerie encouraged activists to get more involved in any way they can, signing off with, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen. See you on the battlefield of the spiritual civil war, and don’t be late!”

Viguerie was not the only speaker equating American politics with spiritual warfare. Huckabee said that “the battle that we’re facing in this country is not a political battle. And it’s not an economic fight. And it’s not a sociological fight. It is a spiritual battle between the forces of evil and good.” Huckabee concluded with, “Let’s not give up, because the battle is not over, folks. It’s just getting started.”

Earlier in the conference, Christian nationalist and anti-LGBTQ North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson drew cheers when he declared, “This nation is at war, and we need a warrior at the helm,” and endorsed Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Robinson noted his own campaign for governor, and compared himself to the Union soldiers at Gettysburg, the Marines on Iwo Jima, and civil rights marchers, and insisted that he only looks “crazy” to people who are “insane.”

Before Saturday night’s gala, activists heard from nearly all the Republican presidential candidates, hard-right Republican elected officials, and MAGA movement activists like Kari Lake, the defeated-but-still-refusing-to-admit-it candidate for Arizona governor in 2022.

Trump’s major contender for the Republican nomination, Florida’s authoritarian Gov. Ron DeSantis, was greeted enthusiastically on Friday—giving a stump speech attacking “the woke mind virus” and declaring “We did not start this fire, but as president of the United States, I will lead the effort to extinguish the fire of cultural Marxism once and for all.” DeSantis pledged to “discipline” the federal bureaucracy, “impose our will on it,” and turn the Justice Department “inside out.”

At the beginning of Road to Majority, Reed urged participants to treat all speakers respectfully, which most did until former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had the audacity to question Trump’s character and tell activists that Trump had let them down—eliciting a chorus of boos.

The conference kicked off at a Thursday afternoon “town hall” on Capitol Hill, where Faith and Freedom founder Ralph Reed told the audience that God told him to create the organization because Christians who love this country and love God “should be the head and not the tail, and at the top and not the bottom of our political system.” Among the members of Congress who spoke were Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and Reps. Jim Banks, Patrick McHenry, Burgess Owens, Alex Mooney, and Tom Emmer—who spent much of his speech attacking the government of his own state of Minnesota.

Other speakers sounded Christian nationalist themes, including former Trump faith advisor Paula White, who declared, “We were established as a nation under God,” and Lake, who said, “With God on our side, nothing can stop us from taking back this government.”

At a panel featuring African American speakers representing the seven “mountains” in Seven Mountains Dominionism, Florida congressional candidate Carla Spalding declared that public officials must “write laws that are going to be according to the Bible” and if they don’t, “one by one we get them out.” Other speakers on the panel include anti-abortion activist Alveda King and failed congressional candidates Kim Klacik and Mark Burns. Burns is a Trump-promoting Christian nationalist pastor fond of warfare rhetoric; he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally on the eve of the Capitol insurrection, where he declared that the attempt to deny Trump a second term was “a demonic attack from the gates of Hell” and insisted that Joe Biden would “never” become president.

In addition to the relentless invocations of “wokeness” and its variants—Indiana representative and Senate candidate Jim Banks bragged about creating an “Anti-Woke Caucus” among House Republicans—speakers frequently denounced transgender people and their supporters, the “deep state,” and corporations that consider diversity and environmental consequences in their investment decision-making.

Another theme running through the conference—which fell on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade—was the need for Republican candidates to deflect focus from their unpopular abortion ban laws by portraying pro-choice Democrats as the “real extremists”—complete with lies from Trump and others that Democrats support killing babies after they are born.

Feminism itself—now “woke feminism”—continues to be a target of the religious-right movement. Nick Adams, a right-wing activist who immigrated to the U.S. from Australia, claimed that men are the most persecuted and maligned demographic in the world. “Every single problem in America today can be traced back to the absence of strength, strength that can come only from real men, genuine masculinity, and an alpha male mindset,” he said.

Also on display was the right-wing political strategy of “parents’ rights” as a rallying cry and voter mobilization tool. Moms for Liberty, a group founded to resist mask requirements that moved quickly into promoting book bans, school board takeovers, anti-LGBTQ smears, and authoritarian politics in general, had a significant presence at Road to Majority, which was held just a week beforetheir own national summit in Philadelphia. During Q&A at a panel on school choice, M4L’s national director Catalina Stubbe called teachers unions “enemies” and claimed that public schools are “abusing” and “indoctrinating” children. From the main stage, M4L cofounder Tiffany Justice claimed that “our parental rights are being obliterated by our government every single day.” She said that the group’s 135,000 members in close to 300 chapters spread out over 45 states are “unifying” their communities, a laughable assertion given the anger and chaos they have created at school board meetings and after they take over school boards.

In its speakers and panels, the Faith and Freedom Coalition made an effort to highlight its outreach to conservative Black and Hispanic Christians, a group that the Republican Party hopes to win over in greater numbers in 2024 and beyond. The 2024 elections were a major focus of conference speakers, and not just the presidential candidates. Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Adam Pipkin described the organization’s turnout strategies, including its use of postal change of address data to track targeted voters and make sure they update their registrations, and evangelical church-based ballot harvesting operations in Californiaand other states where permitted by law.

While Reed and the Faith and Freedom Coalition gave a platform to major, minor and relatively unheard of Republican presidential candidates, Road to Majority made it utterly clear that it is Donald Trump who has won the hearts of these activists, and that they will do everything they can to once again put him in the White House so that he can wage merciless war against the Americans they view as their common enemies.

Tags: Alex Mooney Bill Hagerty Burgess Owens Carla Spalding Catalina Stubbe Donald Trump Jim Banks Kari Lake Kimberly Klacik Mark Burns Mark Robinson Marsha Blackburn Mike Huckabee Patrick McHenry Paula White Ralph Reed Richard Viguerie Ron DeSantis Tiffany Justice Tom Emmer Anti-Abortion Anti-Choice Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Civil War Election 2024 Road to Majority Conference Spiritual Warfare Faith and Freedom Coalition Moms for Liberty Republican Party

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https://www.alternet.org/indiana-moms-for-liberty-chapter-scrambles-to-explain-why-it-quoted-hitler-in-very-first-newsletter-2661712891/

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https://boingboing.net/2023/06/22/nikki-haley-asks-to-join-hitler-quoting-group-if-moms4liberty-is-a-hate-group-add-me-to-the-list.html

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https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d93qd/moms-for-liberty-proud-boys

:{:{}:

alexandra Caballero was already well-known in Miami’s far-right scene as an organizer of anti-mask protests at school board meetings when, in August 2021, she joined the city’s chapter of the extremist “parental rights” group known as Moms for Liberty.

For six months, Caballero told VICE News that she was happy to be a member of the group. Founded in 2020, Moms for Liberty portrays itself as a wholesome, grassroots movement that is focused on protecting students. However, previous VICE News investigations uncovered a pattern of disturbing behavior by the group’s members, who have violently harassed and intimidated parents, school superintendents, school board members, and students who have stood up to them. Caballero took part in many of these protests and harassment campaigns until April 2022.

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Then, things turned sour.

After an argument with the local leader of the chapter, Eulalia María Jiménez-Hincapie, Caballero claims that she became the target of the very same harassment campaigns she’d once taken part in.

But the attacks didn’t just come from Moms for Liberty members, Caballero said; they also came from members of a local Proud Boys chapter. The Vice City Proud Boys were co-founded by former Proud Boy “chairman” Enrique Tarrio, who earlier this month was found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. The alleged attacks included threats to her business, deeply personal messages referencing past trauma, and false police reports against her.

It’s not just Proud Boys that Moms for Liberty has allegedly gotten involved with, however. A VICE News investigation has uncovered links between numerous Moms for Liberty chapters and extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, sovereign citizen groups, QAnon conspiracist, Christian nationalists, and in one case, with the founder of the AK-47-worshiping Rod of Iron Ministries church in Pennsylvania. Around the country, Moms for Liberty has formed links with extremist groups and militias, which are joining forces with the “parental rights” group at protests and school board meetings, and in turn pushing the already far-right organization toward even more extreme ideology.

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“There's an ongoing campaign by these neo-Nazi groups to radicalize some of these more benign patriot MAGA groups—and it's working because I've seen more Nazi content creeping into posts from Moms for Liberty people recently,” a researcher, who is known as Trash City, and who closely tracks Moms for Liberty activity, told VICE News earlier this month.

The attacks didn’t just come from Moms for Liberty members, Caballero said; they also came from members of a local Proud Boys chapter.

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Earlier this month, a day after former President Donald Trump announced he would speak at the group’s annual summit alongside fellow Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist” organization for the first time.

“The group’s primary goals are to fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students–primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families,” the SPLC said in its report published this week.

In an emailed statement to VICE News, Moms for Liberty dismissed the designation as “name-calling” and said “no amount of hate from groups like [the SPLC] is going to stop” what its members are doing.

“The common mission”

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During her six months as a member of Moms for Liberty, Caballero was involved in multiple situations where the group's members collaborated with the Proud Boys, she said, including a school board meeting in October 2021 where a left-wing activist was harassed outside a meeting for wearing a mask.

“The Proud Boys are heavily involved in the Miami chapter of Moms for Liberty,” Caballero said. "Moms for Liberty want to push their agenda with fear, harassment, and intimidation, and they have the Vice CityProud Boys as their foot soldiers.”

The two groups collaborated in Telegram chats, according to screenshots of the groups shared by Caballero and Miami Against Fascism, a group of online researchers who track the activity of far-right extremists in the region.

“They’ll create a Telegram chat group and they'll invite people and they'll do a call to action, and the call to action is usually attacking where the person works, making phone calls, leaving bad reviews,” Caballero said, describing the process of harassment.

“There's an ongoing campaign by these neo-Nazi groups to radicalize some of these more benign patriot MAGA groups—and it's working.”

:{:{}:

In those chats, Jiménez-Hincapie can be seen interacting with Tarrio prior to the revelations in January 2021 that he once worked as a police informant about a decade ago. In one message, Tarrio compares Moms for Liberty to the “gestapo with vaginas.”

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Tarrio was ousted soon after he was revealed as an informant, but Jiménez-Hincapie continued to collaborate with the local Proud Boys chapter, declaring in a message that she was “friends & loyal with Vice City.”

Jiménez-Hincapie also had a relationship with Chris Barcenas, one member of the local Proud Boys chapter who was part of the Proud Boys group that broke police lines on Jan. 6th. Jiménez-Hincapie admitted in a July 2022 Telegram post that they “went out a couple of times” over a period of several months.

Jiménez-Hincapie dismissed her group’s links to the Proud Boys, telling VICE News that “right leaning organizations congregate in common core events for the common mission.” She refused to answer any other questions.

The national office of Moms for Liberty did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including emails with detailed lists of questions about the group’s links to extremists. Caballero also sent a registered letter, viewed by VICE News, informing Moms for Liberty leaders about Jiménez-Hincapie’s online harassment campaigns and close links to the Proud Boys. She said she never heard back from them.

The Miami-Dade chapter of Moms for Liberty has also been fairly successful at accomplishing their goals. Earlier this month, the group took credit for filing the complaint that led to the removalof The Hill We Climb, a book adaptation of the poem Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, from a school library. The group has also successfully lobbied Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to include one of the liberal school board members in Miami Dade in his list of 14 school board seats he is targeting in next year’s elections.

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After breaking with the group, Caballero said her business was targeted with negative reviews and threatening messages were sent to her employees; Caballero believes, based on messages shared in Telegram groups she was a part of, that the harassment came from Moms for Liberty and the Proud Boys.

Caballero took out multiple restraining orders against Jiménez-Hincapie and others who were harassing her online, and, according to Caballero, only in recent weeks have the attacks subsided somewhat.

Other extremist links

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Across the country, Moms for Liberty chapters have forged close relationships with other far-right extremist groups. When Tonya Dodd posted a picture to Facebook of the first meeting of the Moms for Liberty chapter she leads in Chattanooga last month, she knew almost immediately that she’d made a mistake. “Oops, this was supposed to be on my personal Facebook,” Dodd wrote in a comment under the picture, which remains on the public Chattanooga Moms for Liberty page.

Sitting alongside Dodd and half-a-dozen other members of the Moms for Liberty group is Bobby Bean, a member of the Proud Boys who was at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. His identity isn’t hidden at all in the photo Dodd posted; in it, Bean is wearing a baseball hat with the Proud Boys insignia.

Bean’s presence at the meeting was first spotted by the Chattanooga-based open source researcher known as Trash Citywho has been tracking the close ties between the local Moms for Liberty chapter and extremist groups like the Proud Boys. Now, the researcher, who has seen members of these groups organizing online, believes that the groups are not only coordinating to disrupt school board meetings and harass those who oppose their far-right agenda, but the extremist groups are also beginning to infect the Moms for Liberty members with their own ideology.

Across the country, Moms for Liberty chapters have forged close relationships with other far-right extremist groups.

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In Florida, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill, he asked Moms for Liberty member Alicia Farrant to speak about her role in getting the book Gender Queer banned from the Orange County School District.

“I knew I could not remain silent, so I partnered with my friendJacob Engels, who is part of the LGB[T] community and also a reporter, who helped me expose the book at one of our school board meetings,” Farrant, who is now a school board member in Orange County, said at the press conference in March 2022.

What Farrant failed to tell the assembled reporters that day was that Engels is a member of the Proud Boys, an acolyte of Roger Stone, and a notorious figure in Florida’s far-right community.

When asked by VICE News about her relationship to Engels, Farrant did not respond. Engels told VICE News that he has never been a member of the Proud Boys and was a journalist “simply documenting the [Proud Boys] organization over the years.” When asked why he was pictured as part of a group of Proud Boys while wearing the distinctive uniform of a black and yellow Fred Perry t-shirt, Engels said:”I have been wearing Fred Perry for years, long before Proud Boys adopted it as a look.”

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The year prior, at a school board meeting in 2021 in Orange County, Florida, some activists said that Moms for Liberty brought in members of the Three Percenters.

“In September 2021 Moms for Liberty did bring some Three Percenters to the school board meeting and it broke out into this huge fight in the middle of the meeting,” Jen Cousins, the founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, told VICE News. “The board left the dias until everybody calmed down. But one of the Three Percenter guys came over and started berating me for shoes because I had rainbow shoe laces.”

Many of the Moms for Liberty members—and at least one leader—also espouse QAnon conspiracy theories. Jiménez-Hincapie openly boosted QAnon conspiracies on her Telegram channel, declaring that she had “followed Q” for years.

Esther Byrd, another Moms for Liberty member, was appointed by DeSantis to the Florida Board of Education last March despite the fact she had tweeted support of QAnon conspiracies and even flown a QAnon flag on her boat in 2021.

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And in Tennessee, the Chattanooga chapter of Moms for Liberty has close ties with a far-right sovereign citizen group known as Tennessee Neighbors for Liberty. Many members belong to both groups, according to Trash City, the local researcher who infiltrated the sovereign citizen Facebook group.

Responding to critics on her radio show last year, Jamie Pappu Hall, who co-leads the Tennessee Neighbors for Liberty group with her mother, denied the group was calling for violence but in the same breath added: “In fact we have people who are ready for war. Because we are in a war of good versus evil. And historically, to win that war, it becomes an actual civil war.”

In the same radio broadcast, Hall denied knowing any Proud Boys and said her group was not aligned with the militia—though she was photographed alongside members of the group who were flashing a white supremacist sign at an anti-trans rally in Nashville last November.

“In fact we have people who are ready for war. Because we are in a war of good versus evil. And historically, to win that war, it becomes an actual civil war.”

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Pappu Hall did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

And in Pike County, Pennsylvania, the local Moms for Liberty chapter has close ties to another extremist group: The Rod of Iron Ministries, the MAGA-loving religious sect that worships with AR-15s, whose leader was tear gassed during the Capitol riot, and which has close ties to multiple other far-right and Christian nationalist groups.

Rod of Iron Ministries, also known as The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, is run by Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon. The gun-centric religious sect is a spinoff of the much larger Unification Church, run by Moon’s father, whose followers were known as the “Moonies.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Moon and his supporters began attending school board meetings to oppose mask mandates and school closures.

"I have been fighting Sean Moon's gun cult for 10 years, and now he was in the halls where my kids learn,” Amanda Pauley, a local parent and activist, told VICE News about seeing Moon at a school board meeting, adding: “It was obvious that they were really prepared at this meeting, more so than any other meetings. Every single person had a speech to read. They all walked in at the same time. The whole room clapped and cheered.”

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The crowd responded to Moon’s speech, during which he called America “the least racist country on the planet,” with loud cheers and applause. One man sitting close by leaned over and shook Moon’s hand as he sat back down.

Sean Moon and the Rod of Iron Ministries did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

At the time Moon spoke at the board meeting, there was no Moms for Liberty group active in Pike County, but a chapter formed in November 2022 just weeks after the majority conservative board voted against an effort to ban “pornographic” books in the district. One of the leading members is Kerry Williams, who has close ties to the Rod of Iron Ministries.

Williams attends school board meetings on behalf of Moms for Liberty, and is one of the administrators for the Facebook page for the Pike County Moms for Liberty chapter. She has also spoken at the Rod of Iron Ministries events in the past and has even hosted a podcast for the gun-worshiping church that relayed parts of the church’s Sunday service. During some Sunday services, she can be seen on the altar where she is referred to as “Queen Kerry.” Williams did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

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And just like Moms for Liberty has backed candidates for local elections, the Rod of Iron Ministries is following suit, running handpicked candidates not only for school board elections, but for county commissioner and town supervisor positions.

"My kids have been a target. My son has been called a pedophile and a groomer. He's 17 years old,” Pauley said.

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Pauley is a member of the activist group Red, Wine and Blue, and has been vocal in calling out the activities of Moms for Liberty and other extremist groups in her district. As a result, like the others standing up to the group, she and her family have been harassed.

"My kids have been a target. My son has been called a pedophile and a groomer. He's 17 years old,” Pauley said.

She also recounted an incident a few months ago with her 11-year-old daughter when they were verbally attacked by someone who has campaigned for Moms for Liberty candidates in local elections.

“A mom walked into the shop with her daughter, a little bit older than mine, and said 'Oh look the pedophile queen is here.' She shouted it so my daughter instantly went to the next aisle to hide her face,” Pauley said. “The woman told an older couple to keep their children away from me, that I was a pedophile and groomer. My daughter was hysterical, crying. Pauley said she had seen the same woman at events hosted by the Rod of Iron Ministries.

These connections appear to only be growing. In Florida, Moms for Liberty have been linked to the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs movement; in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania, the group has ties to the far-right**Patriots Network militia; and in northern Kentucky, a local Moms for Liberty chapter brought in Pastor Jon Schrock, who is affiliated with the far-right John Birch Society, to talk to its members about defunding public education.

At the event, Schrock shared the oft-repeated conspiracy that elementary school teachers are pushing critical race theory. Teaching social and emotional learning (SEL) is, according to Schrock, tantamount to emotionally manipulating children. He’s also claimed that math is racist. “Two plus two can equal broccoli,” Schrock said, in a video recording of the presentation viewed by VICE News.

Ultimately, Schrock got around to telling the Moms for Liberty his main recommendation: Pastors should replace teachers in an education system that is rooted in Christian fundamentalism. “Because public school teachers are grooming your kids for sex trafficking.”

Schrock did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

“There is a direct link between Moms for Liberty and other anti-American groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers,” Karen Svboda, the co-founder of Defense of Democracy, an activist group countering Moms for Liberty, told VICE News. “We are concerned that the connections between these groups will go quickly from acts of verbal terrorism and harassment to physical acts of violence. We have seen firsthand that Moms for Liberty will attack people and groups over social media, and these attacks almost always escalate.”

TAGGED:MOMS FOR LIBERTY PROUD BOYS EXTREMISM POLITICS LGBTQSCHOOLS FLORIDA ROD OF IRON MINISTRIES

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-abcs-of-moms-for-liberty-summit-speakers/

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rww 6 23

moms for Liberty, the political group whose members demand that books be pulled from school libraries, harass teachers and school officials, push right-wing takeovers of school boards, and align themselves with authoritarian, anti-equality politicians, are holding their second annual summit in Philadelphia at the end of this month. The summit’s speakers list is clear evidence that the group, far from being just a bunch of moms concerned about their kids’ education, has quickly become a hard-edged political player in the increasingly authoritarian MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

Moms for Liberty was created in Florida in late 2021 to mobilize parental opposition to schools requiring masks or vaccines as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The group’s political agenda expanded quickly as it teamed up with political leaders who build power by stoking white racial grievance and smearing LGBTQ people and their allies as threats to children.

In the name of parents’ rights, Moms for Liberty chapters mobilize censorship campaigns targeting books and library materials dealing with race, gender, and sexuality. Its leaders seek to take over school boards by inciting hostility toward school officials with dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric about critical race theory, LGBTQ-affirming policies, and efforts to make schools welcoming places for diverse student bodies. Local Moms for Liberty leaders have viciously harassed educators and parents who oppose their political agenda.

The speakers’ list for Moms for Liberty’s upcoming national summit is revealing of the group’s appalling agenda for schools, students, and the country. It features former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now battling each other for the support of the GOP’s MAGA wing. It includes the extremely anti-LGBTQ North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Christian nationalist activist Tim Barton, and Heritage Foundation’s hard-right Kevin Roberts, as well as promoters of stolen election lies and false narratives about the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Moms for Liberty In Brief

Leaders:

Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, and Bridget Ziegler co-founded Moms for Liberty. Marie Rogerson is Moms For Liberty’s campaign consultant. Rogerson, Descovich, and Justice now make up the executive board, which approves new county chapters.
Bridget Ziegler is currently chair of the Sarasota School Board and is married to Florida Republican Party chair Christian Ziegler.
Local chapters choose their own leaders.

Influence/Impact:

With a huge boost from right-wing media figures, Moms For Liberty has spread quickly across the country. It claims 115,000 members across 280 chapters in 45 states.
Moms for Liberty reportedly won 275 of 500 school board races it was involved in last year. Candidates backed by Moms for Liberty and the allied 1776 PAC won slightly less than half of their school board races this spring in Wisconsin and Illinois.
When Moms for Liberty and allied right-wing candidates win school board majorities, they often create chaos by firing school superintendents and other school officials. For example, in Berkeley County, South Carolina, a November 2022 Moms for Liberty takeover led to the immediate firing of the superintendent and lawyer for the school district.

Strategies and Tactics:

Moms for Liberty members have frequently attacked LGBTQ-themed books, fueling what one journalist has called a “porn panic” that has been weaponized in political races. They also target books dealing with race and racism.
Moms for Liberty’s activists and school board members have stripped books from classrooms and libraries across the country. A 2021 Moms for Liberty letter to a Tennessee legislator was accompanied by an 11-page spreadsheet of objectionable books and included a suggestion that books about the civil rights movement might violate a new state law restricting teaching about racism.
Among books targeted by Moms for Liberty are a book about seahorses (for showing mating seahorses and noting that male seahorses carry eggs) and a book about the Plains Indians that “paints white people in a negative light.”
A graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary was removed from the Vero Beach High School library in 2023.
A Moms for Liberty challenge this year led to a poem that was read at President Biden’s inauguration being banned from an elementary school.
In 2023, a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indian River, Florida, urged the school board to abolish a racial equity policy unanimously adopted just three years ago.
In Sarasota County, Florida, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler was elected chair of the school board, and moved unsuccessfully in April 2023 tohire a former Hillsdale College employee as a consultant to review school materials,policies, and personnel (Hillsdale is a conservative evangelical school deeply involved in right-wing culture war politics). Another Moms for Liberty member has repeatedly used the public comment period at board meetings to smear another school board member as a “groomer.”
Moms for Liberty is associated with religious-right groups; the chapter in Santa Rosa County, Florida, declared that it would push for the county school board to start its meetings with prayer.
The Campbell County, Kentucky, Moms for Liberty chapter teamed up with the Boone County Republican Party for a “Defund Public Education” rally.
Moms For Liberty partners with and promotes materials from anti-public-education right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Leadership Institute as well as the religious-right American Family Association’s voter guide, which promotes candidates who espouse “conservative principles and Biblical values.”

End Game:

Moms for Liberty’s efforts are part of a much broader project by its right-wing and anti-public-education allies to inflame conservative anger about school policies as a way to drive up voter turnout and help elect conservatives to office at all levels of government. Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida GOP, told the Washington Post in 2021 (when he was vice chair), “I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.’”

Tags: Bridget Ziegler Donald Trump Ron DeSantis Tiffany Justice Tina Descovich Authoritarianism banned books Censorship Election 2024 Moms for Liberty Republican Party

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/how-moms-liberty-helping-states-pass-vicious-anti-lgbtq-bills

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May 22, 2023

Hannah Natanson and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff @ The Washington Post: Book removals may have violated student civil rights, Education Dept. says.
David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: Moms for Liberty Leader Says Biden Behind High-Level, Coordinated Effort to Make Kids LGBTQ.
David Gilbert @ Vice News: A Far Right Moms Group Is Targeting Students. These Women Are Fighting Back.
Nicole Carr @ ProPublica: He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened.
Sara Boboltz @ HuffPost: Rep. George Santos Names Himself Treasurer Of His Campaign.
Joe Jervis: QAnon Televangelist Threatens To Sue Anybody Who Claims He’s Having An Adulterous Affair With Boebert.
Tori Otten @ The New Republic: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Who Loves Demonizing Drag Queens, Now Defends Drag-Wearing Boyfriend.
John Fea @ Current: Doug Mastriano will announce next week if he is going to run for Senate.

Tags: Doug Mastriano George Santos Lauren Boebert Marjorie Taylor Greene Sean Feucht Round-Up Moms for Liberty

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https://www.alternet.org/moms-for-liberty-chair-biden/

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May 8, 2023 5:13 pm

Sean Feucht penned an op-ed for Charisma News declaring “the righteous must seize cultural authority”: “It is not controversial for us to boldly declare that we want Christians to be writing the laws of the land according to the Word of God.”
Eric Metaxas reports that he was recently running “through Central Park in Harlem” when he “saw four teenagers smoking weed,” so he decided to give them a little advice: “As I passed them I shouted in a firm but friendly voice: ‘Smells like failure!’ and kept going. I said it as an act of love, honestly. I hope that at some point one of them might think about it.”
Jason Rapert has high hopes for the 2024 presidential election: “My hope is that the people of this nation will reelect Jesus to be on the throne here again in our country.”
Mark Robinson and Tim Barton are scheduled to speak at an upcoming Moms For Liberty event in Pennsylvania.
Finally, while Nick Fuentes hasn’t had his own account restored, he thinks that Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been a boon for white nationalists because Musk has reinstated a lot of them and personally shares their views: “Not only has he replatformed thousands of rw accounts, but he himself is using his platform to post content that is more based than almost anyone in the mainstream American Right on race and other issues.”

Tags: Elon Musk Eric Metaxas Jason Rapert Mark Robinson Nick Fuentes Sean Feucht Tim Barton Leftovers Moms for Liberty

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/cbs-book-banning-segment-irresponsibly-whitewashed-extremist-parental-rights-group

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April 26, 2023

David Gilbert @ Vice News: A Far-Right Moms Group Is Terrorizing Schools in the Name of Protecting Kids.
Matt Cohen @ The American Independent: How Leonard Leo became a conservative power broker in judicial elections.
Prem Thakker @ The New Republic: MAGA’s New Culprit in Carlson’s Firing: RINO Globalist Paul Ryan!
Matt Young @ The Daily Beast: New Audio Shows Ted Cruz Scheming to Steal 2020 Election.
David McAfee @ Raw Story: Steve Bannon’s associate gets four years for Trump border wall fraud.
Ian Millhiser @ Vox: The Supreme Court’s tone-deaf response to the Clarence Thomas corruption scandal.
Keila Szpaller, Blair Miller and Nicole Girten @ The Daily Montanan: Montana House votes to discipline Rep. Zephyr, ban from floor, agenda.

Tags: Brian Kolfage Leonard Leo Ted Cruz Tucker Carlson Round-Up Zooey Zephyr Moms for Liberty

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April 13, 2023

Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski @ ProPublica: Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.
Kaila Philo @ Talking Points Memo: Another Far Right Group Was Posting Conspiracy Theories About Voter Roll Program As Red States Cut Ties.
Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: ‘Shockingly Racist Even For Tucker Carlson’: Critics TORCH Fox News Host’s Rant About Expelled Black TN Rep. Justin Pearson.
Kelly Weill and Kate Briquelet @:{The Daily Beast: Moms for Liberty Leader Allegedly Hijacked Dead Woman’s Facebook Page to Harass Foes.}:
Matt Shuham @ HuffPost: Arizona House Expels Far-Right Lawmaker After Wild Conspiracy-Laden Hearing.
Justin Horowitz @ Media Matters: White nationalist ally “Sneako” claims he will collaborate with Donald Trump Jr.

Tags: Clarence Thomas Donald Trump Jr. Liz Harris Nico Kenn De Balinthazy Nicole Prussman Sneako Tucker Carlson Round-Up Moms for Liberty

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moms for Liberty has gotten away with repeated instances of targeted harassment while maintaining some semblance of outward innocence and respectability because it falls back on the tired excuse of just being a group of concerned parents. But in reality, Moms for Liberty wields an image of caring mothers in order to covertly — and often with impunity for its public image — spread bigotry, hate, and sometimes messages of violence.

The group’s history of harassment started at the top, with co-founder Tiffany Justice, a former Florida school board member who has been described as an “antagonizing and disruptive force” who has frequently made “inappropriate outbursts.” But it has spread well beyond her, with members — and often leadership — of various Moms for Liberty chapters harassing community members and school officials across the United States.

Justice once visited her son’s elementary school to oppose the district’s COVID-19 mask mandate, and her conduct with teachers and administrators was reportedly “so disruptive and disrespectful” that the superintendent “warned she could be barred from the campus.” Justice also went after a local news outlet that critically covered the school board, writing in leaked texts that she was “starting the takedown” of the outlet.

Jenkins noted that the group first targeted the county’s LGBTQ guidelines that protected students by allowing for “the right to dress and use bathrooms according to the gender they identify with.” According to Jenkins, parents reportedly began calling school board members “pedophiles” and threatening them, saying, “We’re coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

Someone even falsely reported Jenkins for child abuse, she said, prompting an investigation from the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The harassment has since spread. Here are some of the most egregious examples of Moms for Liberty’s harassment problem:

The chairperson of the Monroe County, Pennsylvania, chapter was arrested on a “summary charge of harassment” after allegedly repeatedly harassing an individual with messages.
The head of communications of the Lonoke County, Arkansas, chapter threatened gun violence against librarians. In audio obtained by Media Matters, the chapter’s head of communications and media, Melissa “Missy” Bosch, threatened librarians in the district, saying, “I’m telling you, if I was -- any mental issues, they would all be plowed down with a freaking gun by now.”
The chapter chair of the Livingston County, Michigan, chapter allegedly led a harassment campaign against a community advocate and was issued a restraining order. Moms for Liberty chapter chair Jennifer Smith led an alleged harassment campaign against Sarah Cross, an advocate for tougher COVID-19 protocols. Cross said Smith and other members of Moms for Liberty “prayed for her soul and equated her to doing the work of the devil during public comment at an election commission meeting,” as Livingston Daily described it. The outlet also reported Cross’ claim that Smith, under a pseudonym, “published Cross' home address on the recall election website, posted online that Cross would be collecting signatures alone, has made allegations that Cross has harassed her children, made comments with various pseudonyms on the blog Livingston Lantern about how Cross and other community members had child pornography.” In 2021, Smith told Brighton Area School Board members that “we’re coming for you. Take it as a threat. Call the FBI. I don’t care!” According to a local Livingston news outlet, Smith adheres to the QAnon conspiracy theory and screenshots of her TikTok page show her using the acronym “WWG1WGA.”
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, Moms for Liberty members harassed an opposing group and threatened to report them for child abuse and called them “pedophile sympathizers.” Moms for Social Justice — a group that predates Moms for Liberty by three years — spearheaded a campaign to diversify reading lists to include “protagonists of color, and LGBTQ protagonists, and queer authors, and authors of color.” Following this, the group reportedly received “constant harassment” from Moms for Liberty members who “threatened to report them for child abuse or distribution of pornography, publicly accused them of grooming children, and tagged them as #PedophileSympathizers in their closed Facebook group.”
Moms for Liberty harassment at a school board meeting in Wauwatosa County, Wisconsin, prompted police presence. Police presence was eventually needed at a Wauwatosa School Board meeting when members of Moms for Liberty and Gays Against Groomers “accused attendees of being groomers, not actually being gay and wanting to show explicit pictures to children. The group’s members even brought a 10-year-old student to tears.”
A Moms for Liberty-affiliated school board member in Charleston, South Carolina, said he would show up at an educator’s doorstep with a gun if his child’s teacher came out as transgender. Charleston County School Board member Ed Kelley attended a Moms for Liberty meeting and publicly stated that he would bring a gun to the home of his child’s teacher if the teacher came out as trans.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/lara-logan-headlined-moms-liberty-event-and-spouted-unhinged-conspiracy-theories-45

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note aha-ish parental rights is almost only issue gop has for midterms, and key to sweatervest win va

https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-he-supports-book-banning-including-beloved-which-he

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Moms For Liberty, founded in 2021, is the far-right group that has been pushing for MAGA curriculums in schools and trying to pressure teachers into avoiding any topics having to do with gay rights or the United States’ history of racism. In Moms for Liberty’s world, discussing the beliefs of Malcolm X or Cecil B. Moore in a classroom could be considered teaching “critical race theory” — although the academic field of study known as CRT didn’t exist until the 1980s, which was after the deaths of Malcolm X in 1965 and Moore in 1979.

Now, according to journalist Melissa Gira Grant, a Moms for Liberty offshoot is focusing specifically on book repositories: Moms for Libraries.

In an article published by The New Republic on January 11, Grant reports, “Conservatives have made libraries a target of extreme ire over the past several years, as in the moral panic over drag queen story hour events, now common from Idaho to New York. But it’s school libraries that are likely to get an extra level of right-wing scrutiny in the year ahead, thanks to a group born from Moms for Liberty. Courting a child star, former Trump officials, and a tech billionaire as their North Star and potential influencers, Moms for Libraries is hoping to entrench itself this year in libraries across the country.”

Grant describes Moms for Libraries, launched in 2022, as “part of that much larger and better-known national group Moms for Liberty, whose financial backers are largely unknown and which is organizing conservative women to influence and/or take over school boards.”

“On the surface,” Grant observes, “Moms for Libraries prompts supporters to purchase copies of books from a handful of small conservative publishers it’s chosen, such as Heroes of Liberty, which released a book in December valorizing Elon Musk…. Another Moms for Libraries partner,Brave Books,recently used a book by former ‘Growing Pains’ star Kirk Cameron to fuel a misinformation campaign thatlibraries are discriminating against Christians.

Grant notes that Moms for Libraries founder Catherine Rahimian “started off as the founder of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Orange County, California.”

“On one level, Moms for Libraries may seem to be not much more than a way to push a promo code for conservative publishers — one that has managed to get only about 5000 books donated to it to distribute to schools,” Grant explains. “But the group’s mission is to turn libraries into the kind of battle fronts it can command, from social media to Fox News, as it has before with school boards. School librarians witnessed the toxic environment that Moms for Liberty has stoked, and on which Moms for Libraries is now focused, using the massive, apparently well-resourced network that Moms for Liberty has built so quickly.”

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Angry Right-Wing Moms Are Trying to Have Librarians Arrested by “Constitutional Sheriffs”

BY JESSICA PISHKO

NOV 04, 2022

Pippin wearing a "Moms for Liberty" shirt and placing her hands over stacks of books.

Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, helped launch a criminal investigation of her local school library, seeking to criminalize Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, among other books. Giorgio Viera/Getty Images

In March, special counsel to the sheriff of Hamilton County, Tennessee, Coty Wamp, was campaigning for district attorney when she met with a group of parents calling themselves Moms for Liberty. Wamp said afterwards that she had facilitated a meeting between the “parents’ rights” group and the sheriff’s office because she thought law enforcement could help the group in its goal of banning books. “I think that there’s going to come a time with some of these books where it crosses a criminal line,” Wamp said. “It’s called contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Wamp won that promotion to district attorney and was one of the earliest law enforcement figures to begin to establish a frightening new alliance between far-right sheriff’s offices and the radical right-wing parent’s group seeking to upend America’s educational system.

After Wamp’s meeting, she did not shy away from the possibility of filing charges for “criminal” books, although she later told Jezebel that she did not intend to suggest she was going to go about arresting librarians. Whatever her actual intentions, the alliance Wamp sought to foster is a dangerous one and one that is spreading.

Across the country, members of Mothers for Liberty, a far-right group focused on banning library books and whitewashing school curricula, have appealed to sheriffs as allies in these goals. Much like the partnerships between sheriffs and militia members, or sheriffs and election deniers, this alliance is another example of how sheriffs have become the arm of the law willing to enforce the radical agenda of the far-right. It also shows how determined groups like M4L are to be seen as having legal legitimacy—and how willing sheriffs are to provide it.

I have spent the past few years reporting on far-right sheriffs and their allies and confidants. One notable change since 2020 has been the increasing number of women who identify with the politics of far-right groups like the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. While most people associate groups like CSPOA with hyper-masculine-fueled violence, women are often key facilitators between these groups and voters.

Much of this alliance emerged during the pandemic, when far-right parent groups opposed masking in schools. On forums like Facebook, these parents, mostly mothers, passed around information about the so-called constitutional sheriff movement, citing its members as potential allies. This blossomed into an anti-public-school movement focused on altering classroom curricula to eliminate material about racism, sex, or LGBTQ people; policing classrooms and libraries; eliminating requirements for all forms of vaccines as well as masking for COVID; and pushing parents to embrace home-schooling as an ideal way to escape federal and state government indoctrination.

While many anti-mask and election conspiracy rallies were filled with men clad in military-style apparel and carrying long guns, women presented a softer side and turned out in equal—if not stronger—numbers, in my observation. During the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s “Arise USA Resurrection Tour” last year, the two women founders of Freedom Angels appeared onstage to talk not just about resisting mask and vaccine orders but also about establishing entire communities free from government regulation, like food co-ops and alternative home-schooling. Large public events sponsored by CSPOA drew crowds approaching gender parity.

Moms 4 Liberty—their slogan is “Parents’ Rights”—is just one of these influential women-led groups. It was formed in Florida by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice after both lost their reelection campaigns for their respective local school boards. Their latest conference theme was “Joyful Warriors,” another example of how far-right women mitigate the toxic masculinity associated with groups like the Oath Keepers, border militias, and the Proud Boys. According to recent reporting by Mother Jones, the group now claims 100,000 members across 38 states.

While M4L has been accused of various direct actions like harassing local school board officials with emails, calls, and threats, it has lately begun to approach county sheriffs as a way to legitimize its grievances and gain actual traction in criminal courts. Granted, it hasn’t been too successful yet. But these alliances suggest that should it not achieve its goals via democratic means, M4L is perfectly willing to find its own firepower.

One strategy has been to bring criminal complaints to sympathetic sheriffs, which become “sex crime” investigations, further spreading the QAnon-influenced anxieties that children are being recruited or brainwashed by sex predators presenting as progressives. In the spring, Jennifer Pippin, who is an M4L chapter chair, filed a criminal complaint against a school library in Indian River County, Florida, for failing to remove dozens of books flagged by the members as inappropriate. The original list of books for examination included more than 150 titles, and while some were removed, not all of them were. In an email, Pippin told a member of the school board that she was focused on “ALL of the books currently in the libraries that have sex, rape, drugs etc etc in them that need to be removed immediately so they don’t get into the hands of anymore students in our district.” She threatened, “I’m holding all of you accountable.”

Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers—who last year was aSheriff Fellow at the far-right think tank Claremont Institute—assigned a sergeant to investigate the issue, reviewing emails between an M4L representative and various local officials. There were even annotated pages of the books in question, including sections of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer about a 9-year-old boy whose father is killed in the 9/11 attacks. (The book has been the subject of previous attacks by some parents since it was published.) The pages are annotated with handwritten notes like “sexual encounter” and “masterbation.”

The six-week investigation resulted in a 74-page report, which concluded that “no crime occurred.” Whether patently unconstitutional charges are ultimately filed in cases like these, though, is not the issue. The chilling effect of the threat is.

That threat is real. In a letter to the school superintendent, Flowers wrote that “the totality of the circumstances do not allow us to make an arrest in this case,” but added, “We do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.” Flowers then recommended “stricter oversight” for children’s books.

Other sheriffs—especially those in Florida, where M4L began and has garnered support from Gov. Ron DeSantis—have conducted similar investigations into so-called dirty books, and while no criminal charges have resulted thus far, they indicate that going to the sheriff is an accepted strategy. In Flagler County, Florida, another M4L member filed an almost identical complaint to Pippin’s. And in Polk County, Florida, a dark money group called County Citizens Defending Freedom funded a series of complaints about books (under the guise of citizen complaints) to Sheriff Grady Judd, who deemed the material “vile and nasty and inappropriate” but not pornographic. Judd added that the matter was “under review to determine if there will be a criminal investigation” based on additional complaints, which all appear to have stemmed from the same dark money group that produced the initial complaints.

Sheriff candidates in many counties are also courting M4L members as political allies, appearing alongside them at events, providing legal legitimacy to their fears, and contributing to the spread of misinformation. Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, who was recently exposed for potentially trying to bribe political candidates he did not like to exit races and endorse his preferred candidates, has embraced M4L-allied members for school board.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sheriff Vic Regalado did an April speaking event with an M4L county chair in which he supplied background on “applicable laws,” explaining that many criminal laws do not apply to book banning, even things that would “make a normal person puke.” He noted, however, regarding a book of poetry, “If an individual on the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were showing this to a child, they would be in cuffs like that”—snapping his fingers—“and they would be prosecuted, but I don’t know that they would be convicted in today’s world.”

“This is now accepted,” he continued, waving a page around, arguing that a jury would be unlikely to convict because “a lot of parents are apathetic,” and blaming in particular single mothers. He ended by promising to consult with the district attorney about “how we can insert law enforcement into this thing.”

It might seem unusual to have elected law enforcement—especially in a time of much-hyped fears of violent crime and alleged understaffing—insert themselves into whether a book should be in a school library. Sheriffs, as politicians, need not justify the use of their resources, though, whether they are used to solve murders, investigate non-existent election fraud, or thoroughly report out whether Jonathan Safran Foer’s book about 9/11 is too sexy for the youths.

The alliance between sheriffs and M4L makes further levels of political sense as well. Local police chiefs are unlikely to be allies, as their budgets are scrutinized by city leadership and they tend to be in larger cities. Sheriffs serve longer terms than police chiefs and are politicians at heart, having the ability to deploy time and personnel however they see fit, with little if any oversight. And even if there were oversight, in most states where M4L is active, it has the support of state actors and other powerful politicians. Investigating a school book is both safe, easy, and popular in these jurisdictions, especially compared with solving actual crime.

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Fox News pushes midterm election message with a panel of “Virginia parents” who are really Republican activists

The network is back to its usual tricks; as one of its supposed news anchors warns, “Don’t mess with parents”

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM TYLER MONROE

PUBLISHED 10/14/22

In its latest propaganda push ahead of the midterm elections, Fox News hosted a focus group billed as a “panel of Virginia parents” to deride progressive and Democratic policies that was, in fact, largely made up of conservative activists, including a former Trump administration official.

This is not the first time Fox has presented a handpicked gallery of right-wing activists as an ordinary sample of concerned Virginia voters. The network employed the same strategy repeatedly throughout 2021 in the run-up to the Virginia gubernatorial race that year, during which the network actively promoted the successful campaign of Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.

The six programming blocks on Friday’s edition of Fox & Friends totaled roughly 35 minutes of airtime. All the panelists delivered messages that went against progressive politics, with sales pitches ranging from a quasi-nonpartisan appeal to urging viewers to defeat every single Democratic candidate, and even warning against the supposedly looming threat of communism in America today.

The show opened with a brief look at co-host Ainsley Earhardtwith the panel, as she asked them to raise their hands on which issues mattered to them in the midterm elections. The panelists indicated their concerns over inflation and crime, as well as other Fox-promoted scare campaigns such as “gender ideology,” while literally laughing at a question about climate change. The one panelist who said abortion was an “important” issue expressed his strong support for the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. (He is also a former official in the Trump administration, a fact that was not disclosed during the program.)

Video

CitationFrom the October 14, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends

The rest of the panel discussions, which aired throughout the morning on Fox & Friends, can be viewed here, here, here, here, and here.

Later during Fox’s purported “straight news” coverage on America’s Newsroom, Fox News anchor Sandra Smith presented a clips reel of the panel.

Video

CitationFrom the October 14, 2022, edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom

SANDRA SMITH (CO-ANCHOR): Polls showing education will be and is top of the mind for American voters come Election Day. And it will be, could be, the deciding factor in some of the nation's key races. A panel of Virginia voters spoke with [i]Fox & Friends[/i] earlier, and here is what they had to say.

…

SMITH: Don’t mess with parents. They want control over what their kids are learning in the classroom.

The panelists were in fact dedicated political activists, with nearly all of them having ties to various conservative organizations and Republican politics.

Amie Bowman is treasurer of the Fauquier County chapter of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group with ties to the Republican Party and which has received extensive promotion in right-wing media. Bowman’s own personal activities have included pushing to ban books from her local high school library.

Will Estrada is a former Trump administration official, who worked for over three years in the Department of Health and Human Services. He is also a long-time figure in the Christian home-schooling movement, and is now the full-time president of Parentalrights.org. Earhardt noted Estrada’s foundation when she introduced him, but never once mentioned his prior role in the Trump administration.

Christy Hudson and Bonnie Myshrall are members of Fairfax County Parents Association, which Myshrall initially founded under the name Open Fairfax County Public Schools “to lobby for a return to in-person learning” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cheryl Onderchain is a member of theMoms for Liberty chapter in Loudoun County.

Fred Rege has been featured on Fox News before as a member of Fight for Schools, a political action committee led by Ian Prior, another former Trump administration official who has appeared frequently on Fox News.

Xi Van Fleet is activist affiliated with the conservative groupIndependent Women’s Forum, which spreads the claim that America today resembles Maoist China under the Cultural Revolution, an argument she repeated throughout the Fox & Friends panel,and which the network replayed during the America’s Newsroom segment. (For some important context, the Cultural Revolution was a violent period of political and economic turmoil that resulted in the deaths of up to two million people over the course of 10 years, according to estimates by some historians.)

Ram Venkatachalam was a rare exception to the dishonest presentation of the panel, as he and Earhardt openly stated that he’d previously run for school board and intended to do so again next year.

Smith’s introduction of the clips reel also demonstrated a pattern in which a Fox anchor announces what the election issues would be, then presents a Fox panel’s take on what to think about those issues. This was exactly what Fox did last year, too, as part of its saturation coverage of handpicked issues in the Virginia elections, and which the network is looking to repeat nationwide.

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As we enter Banned Books Week 2022, a new movement to gut public school libraries is sweeping the nation, with far-right “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty and two pro-censorship organizations — Book Look and Book Looks — at the forefront.

Moms for Liberty’s book banning campaign is growing in both size and intensity, with a clear strategy: manufacture moral panic in your community to pressure public schools into removing titles with LGBTQ themes or discussions of racism in American history. With the help of Book Look and Book Looks, it's been increasingly successful.

With over 200 chapters, Moms for Liberty has become the largest driver of the nationwide book banning crusade, which has led to harassment and threats against public school teachers, librarians, and education officials. Moms for Liberty chapters have challenged Martin Luther King Jr. and the March to Washington because of “photographs of political violence” and Ruby Bridges Goes to School because of “racist remarks,” among other objections. Moms for Liberty is also a vocally anti-LGBTQ organization and has advocated for trans bathroom bans in public schools.

Now, Media Matters has obtained documentation showing that Moms for Liberty has created “Books/Library Director” chapter positions that would be responsible for surveying and evaluating library book lists and challenging them within local school districts. These positions would allow each individual chapter to have a member organizing the gutting of public school libraries. One chapter has already started a “book review committee” and encouraged parents to go to their child’s public school open house and take pictures of books in the library containing “material most of us would not want our kids reading.”

Media Matters has also uncovered evidence that Moms for Liberty chapters “have teamed up” with Book Look and Book Looks, which appear to be distinct entities that are crowdsourcing parents’ book reviews and using them as justification for literature bans in public schools. And while the two organizations are separate, they use nearly the same book rating system, have overlapping book reviews, and operate in a seemingly identical manner.

[13 reasons why]

Book Look and Book Looks both collect reports to expedite the process of challenging books, helping conservative activists organize campaigns around parents’ outrage and demand a book’s removal without even reading it. Anonymous volunteers create reports by documenting examples of profane or inappropriate content with their corresponding page number, which are then packaged into “easy to understand book content reviews centered around objectionable content.” Books are given a rating on a scale from zero to five, with zero being “appropriate for all audiences” and five being “might be arrested for reading at school board meetings.”

The rating system allows heavily biased right-wing reviewers to disguise themselves as objective arbiters. For example, a Book Looks report about Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home — an award-winning graphic novel about the author’s “journey from childhood to college student to adult in relation to both her identity as a lesbian and her dynamic with her family, particularly her father who is a closeted gay man” — cites the depiction of “alternative sexualities” and “alternative gender ideologies” among other justifications for why it should be removed from school libraries. It was given a four rating: “Not for minors.”

In addition to rating books, sharing out-of-context quotes on Facebook of “objectionable” books is another part of the groups’ broader strategy that they say “gathers attention” on social media and “gets people engaged with outrage.” Individuals are also encouraged to send school boards snippets of the most objectionable books and attend board meetings to “ask publicly about progress,” or, “if you have brave volunteers, attempt to read some passages from these books and ask if the board thinks this is OK for minors. Let them stand behind this material and own it if they are not working to get rid of it.”

Notably, Book Look’s website directs parents to links about the anti-LGBTQ “grooming” smear and articles about Moms for Liberty “fighting against porn” in schools; it also provides users with anti-trans memes to spread on social media. Some of the group’s infographics push back against the accusation that Book Look and Moms for Liberty encourage banning books, claiming that they “support the process of challenging and removing books in school libraries” and establishing “book boundaries” — which they argue is distinct from “the banning of books.” (It’s not.)

There is a clear electoral initiative in this strategy, as the last point on Book Look’s plan of action is to “vote them [school board members] out next election if they refuse to work on this issue.” Taking over school boards has been a key strategy of Moms for Liberty since its inception, and it’s no surprise that the group's efforts are accelerating as the midterms approach.

In addition to overlapping strategies, there is an undeniable connection between Moms for Liberty and these two organizations. Book Look was originally formed as the Moms for Liberty Library Book Committee, and while Book Looks claims to be unaffiliated with Moms for Liberty, Book Riot uncovered that the organization was actually spearheaded by a Moms for Liberty member. Book Looks also uses the same rating system that was shared on the Moms For Liberty Brevard County public Facebook page one month before the group formally began.

Even though the organizations are clearly tied, they have successfully duped reporters. The Washington Post extensively reported on Book Look and Book Looks without mentioning their close affiliation with Moms for Liberty (although the piece did quote the chair of a local Moms for Liberty chapter praising the group’s efforts to “prevent children from encountering sexually explicit material”). MIT’s Technology Review did the same.

Moms for Liberty has positioned itself at the center of the book banning movement to whitewash American history and push an anti-LGBTQ agenda while placing right-wing propaganda in school libraries instead. And it is using the cover of supposed parent reviews to advance this right-wing campaign, intentionally stoking outrage and encouraging distrust in public schools.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/moms-liberty-placing-right-wing-propaganda-public-school-libraries-while

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https://www.salon.com/2022/02/08/whats-behind-the-right-wing-book-ban-frenzy-big-money-and-a-long-term-plan/

...last week, The Guardian reported GUK that a number of ostensible grassroots groups on the frontlines of the "parental rights" movement have connections to right-wing politicians and donor networks who are highly skilled at "astroturfing" local conflicts on a national scale.

Notable among these groups is Moms for Liberty, a 70,000-member nonprofit with 165 chapters throughout the country. The group is operated by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, two former school board members. But according to its articles of incorporation, Moms for Liberty was originally co-founded and co-directed by Bridget Ziegler, the wife of Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, as Media Matters noted. Marie Rogerson, a former campaign consultant who now serves as the group's director of development, formerly worked for Republican state Rep. Randy Fine, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers. Fine himself has been a central figure in Florida Republicans' crusade against "critical race theory."

While Moms for Liberty is perhaps the most high-visibility advocacy groups of its kind, there are many others in the mix. Groups like Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn in Education also operate in the same ecosystem and, like Moms for Liberty, have connections to big players in right-wing politics. ...

Parents Defending Education — a self-described "grassroots organization" promoting "the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids" — is led by Nicole Neily, whose résumé is littered with connections to the Koch brothers. Neily was the president and founder of the pro-free speech group Speech First, which according to The Nation, runs "a highly professional astro-turfing campaign, with a board of former Bush administration lawyers and longtime affiliates of the Koch family." Neily has also served in leadership capacities at the Independent Women's Forum and the Cato Institute, both of which are direct recipients of Koch cash.

At present, nonprofit law does not require nonprofit organizations such as Moms for Liberty to disclose their donors. But in an interview with Salon, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice denied speculation that the group is funded by big-money benefactors, claiming it is mostly financed through memberships, small donations, and t-shirt sales. ...

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https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/unmasking-moms-liberty

Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit claiming to advocate for “parental rights,” appears to be using parents as pawns to advance a far-right agenda.

The group — which has quickly gained substantial media attention, becoming a right-wing sweetheart and mainstream spectacle — has attempted to paint itself as a grassroots entity driven entirely by passionate parents. But in reality, it benefits from right-wing funding and ties to traditional Republican political figures.

As issues related to parents, schools, and so-called “critical race theory” drive local organizing and elections, it is essential that media report on Moms for Liberty and similar groups with the appropriate context.

The Washington Post published a report on Moms for Liberty in October, framing the organization as “channeling a powerful frustration among conservative mothers.” In fact, these well-connected partisans are opportunistically manufacturing outrage and selling it to parents under the guise of empowerment.

The article not only wrongly portrays the group as a grassroots organization and suggests that it’s primarily member-funded, it also leaves out key details about the co-founders and the group's right-wing affiliations. For example, after interviewing the vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party about his enthusiasm for the group, the Post notes that his wife is “loosely aligned with Moms for Liberty.” In reality, the group’s initial incorporation documents list her as a co-director.

Moms for Liberty is run by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, two former school board members serving in neighboring Florida counties. The group was incorporated on January 1 and has since “grown to 135 chapters in 35 states, with 56,000 members and supporters, according to the organization’s founders,” per the Post.

Moms for Liberty has county-specific chapters across the country that target local school board meetings, school board members, administrators, and teachers. The group advocates to strip districts of protective COVID-19 measures and modify classroom curriculum to exclude the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT) and sex education, all in the name of “parental rights.”

[flow chart]

“Parental rights” means strategically harassing public schools

On October 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland released a memo condemning a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” Although Moms for Liberty is not the only factor in this spike in harassment, the group grew in membership during this same time period that school board members across the United States started facing an increase in threats from angry parents and community members.

Jennifer Jenkins, a Brevard County School Board member who unseated Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, traced harassment in her district back to the beginning of Moms for Liberty protests during school board meetings. Writing in The Washington Post, Jenkins noted that the group first targeted the county’s LGBTQ guidelines that protected students by allowing for “the right to dress and use bathrooms according to the gender they identify with.” According to Jenkins, parents reportedly began calling school board members “pedophiles” and threatening them, saying, “We’re coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

She was later targeted by Florida state Rep. Randy Fine, a Moms for Liberty supporter and donor, who posted Jenkins’ cell phone number on Facebook and instructed his followers to “stand up for your rights, call Jenkins RIGHT NOW and let her know exactly how you feel.” Someone even falsely reported Jenkins for child abuse, she said, prompting an investigation from the Florida Department of Children and Families.

An administrator of the Facebook group for the Livingston County, Michigan, chapter posted a threatening message directed to anyone backing Biden’s review of school board threats and violence: “Not a single person on the right side of the aisle better be backing this, if they are they better be prepared to be REMOVED 1776 style.” (The “1776” reference is about the American Revolution; in far-right circles, “1776” often implies the threat of political violence.)

This sort of conduct is no surprise given the previous behavior of one of the group’s co-founders. According to Vero News, a local news outlet for Indian River County, Florida, co-founder Justice visited her fifth-grade son’s school to oppose the district’s COVID-19 mask mandate and was “being so disruptive and disrespectful in her interactions with Beachland teachers and administrators” that the school’s superintendent “warned she could be barred from the campus.” The district’s superintendent wrote a memo to the school board after Justice’s visit, promising that “if this behavior continues, the district will initiate the process to trespass this individual through law enforcement.”

Justice’s behavior was not new. She was also criticized for her lack of professionalism while serving on the school board because of her frequent “inappropriate outbursts,” and she even attacked local news coverage of the school board during her term.

Funding: more than just T-shirt sales

In a Washington Post interview, co-founder Descovich dodged a question about the group receiving financial support from GOP donors, saying, “If someone wants to give us a million dollars, we would take it, but it’s just not happening.” She claimed that instead, the organization is funded by individual memberships and proceeds from T-shirts sales.

In an interview with education news site The 74, Descovich once again hyped the claim that the group sells “a lot of T-shirts” and that's its “biggest funding source right now.” Its annual budget is allegedly about $150,000 and, according to Descovich, “funded by mostly just small donors.”

There are few, if any, financial disclosures available to review since the group is newly incorporated. But there is ample evidence, via donor lists posted from events and political action committee finances, to suggest that the group is supported by far more than just T-shirt sales and membership fees.

For example, Moms for Liberty Inc. (the group’s official name) is the recipient of funds from Conservatives for Good Government, a right-wing Florida political action committee. The group also hosts a number of high-dollar fundraisers, such as an event on June 15 featuring former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. An archived version of the event page and a list of top sponsors show that the named sponsors alone gave $57,000 — and that doesn’t include general admission tickets ($50), bonus promotional packs ($30), and any anonymous donors. The event also boasted several GOP-affiliated donors, including Florida state Sen. Debbie Mayfield and Florida House of Representative members Randy Fine and Tyler Sirois.

Moms for Liberty has serious GOP connections

Moms for Liberty presents itself as a grassroots effort led by parents, but in reality the organization is well-connected with a variety of Republican politicians and entities.

The group’s most notable GOP affiliation comes from Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Ziegler spoke to The Washington Post and praised Moms for Liberty, saying, “I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.”

He also said he expects Moms for Liberty’s members to, as the Post put it, “become foot soldiers” for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection campaign. Ziegler served as a “media surrogate” on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and was once a Heritage Foundation congressional fellow.

vern buchanan? https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianmziegler

The Washington Post reported that Ziegler’s wife is “loosely aligned with Moms for Liberty.” In reality, Ziegler’s wife, Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler, is listed on the initial Moms for Liberty incorporation document as a co-director of the organization, and Descovich credited her in a December 10, 2020, Facebook post as one of the creators of Moms for Liberty. (A February 8 amendment shows that Ziegler was later removed from the document as director.) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis even reportedly praised her by name at an October 15 event[twt pearls]

moms for Liberty members have also been pictured with DeSantis, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), his wife Kelley Paul, Trump's son Eric Trump, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ralph Rebandt participated in a discussion in a closed Moms for Liberty chapter Facebook group in which he called the COVID-19 vaccine a “genetic altering shot.”

Other right-wing and far-right affiliations

Moms for Liberty also enjoys the partnership and support of a number of right-wing and even far-right organizations. The organization has partnered with Parents Defending Education, a group of “corporate school privatizers going hard right to attack school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers.” PDE President Nicole Neily has been described as a “veteran political operative affiliated with the Koch network.” According to Justice’s Facebook post, Moms for Liberty partnered with PDE in May.

PDE Director of Outreach Erika Sanzi has been regularly interacting with Moms for Liberty’s Twitter account since February. And Jill Simonian, director of outreach for propaganda outlet PragerU, also reached out to co-founders Justice and Descovich in June on Twitter, writing, “Hi ladies, please message me xo.” Since then, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account has frequently interacted with both PragerU and Simonian, encouraging followers to watch PragerU videos and asking Simonian for resources to share. In October, Simonian thanked Moms for Liberty on Twitter for “standing UP.”

Pictures from an October 15 Moms for Liberty event about CRT in public schools also revealed the conspiratorial basis for the group’s claims. A projected slide from the event claimed that “globalists, utopians, socialists, totalitarians and the UN are using public schools to undermine freedom and Christianity.”

[pix ppt] From a Moms for Liberty event held on October 15, 2021

Moms for Liberty regularly boosts the Heritage Foundation

Moms for Liberty also appears to be affiliated with -- or at least a frequent promoter of -- the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Koch-funded think tank with a history of attempting to influence public education.

According to a recent report by the UnKoch My Campus campaign on “ultra right think tanks and critical race theory,” the Heritage Foundation and other groups have “used their influence to generate and spread talking points, briefed state and federal legislators on model policy, and attempted to generate grassroots mobilization against local school districts.”

The “resources for parents” page on Moms for Liberty’s website is almost exclusively composed of links to the Heritage Foundation. The page first directs parents to a “Heritage Action for America” guide to filing an open records request. Next, the page directs parents to the Leadership Institute -- an organization run by Morton Blackwell, who received the Heritage Foundation’s “Titan of Conservatism Award.” The Heritage Foundation’s website is listed as the next resource. After that, the Heritage Foundation’s guide to the Constitution is listed.

The Heritage Foundation has spent much of 2021 using scare tactics to boost opposition to CRT, publishing commentary, reports, and even a legislation tracker on the issue. [graf]

[graf]

Becoming right-wing media sweethearts

One peculiar piece of the Moms for Liberty puzzle is the unusually quick amplification from right-wing media after the group was first launched. Descovich was a guest on The Rush Limbaugh Show on January 27, just weeks after the organization was incorporated and when it had few members. The unusually speedy reception of the group, as well as its right-wing and far-right media connections, should raise flags.

Other Moms for Liberty interviews and media appearances, and favorable mentions include:

Moms for Liberty received a shoutout on Tucker Carlson Tonight in February from anti-vaxxer Dr. Naomi Wolf.
Breitbart wrote about Moms for Liberty in February, a month after the group’s official launch.
Descovich spoke with Glenn Beck in March, and Beck has since become an active supporter of the group — he even has a “Moms for Liberty” tag on his website.
In August, Descovich was interviewed by Newsmax, about the supposed “cancellation of MOM!”
In October, the Daily Caller favorably reported on Moms for Liberty, describing the group simply as “concerned parents” who organized.

It’s critical to accurately report on Moms for Liberty (and affiliated groups) by seriously examining the organization’s high-profile ties to right-wing elected officials, institutions, and media outlets. Without the spotlight of responsible media, the organization will continue to brand itself as ordinary moms banding together to fight for “parental liberties,” when it’s clear that powerful people and institutions on the right are actually pulling the strings.

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nh register

Opinion: Dark money behind school board conflicts

Christine Palm and Frank Hanley Santoro

Oct. 4, 2021

A woman carrying a sign protesting the teaching of critical race theory arrives at a Board of Education meeting at Central Middle School in Greenwich, Conn., on Thursday June 17, 2021. Members of the group Greenwich Patriots came out to the meeting to urge people to attend and speak at public comment to protest masking, vaccinations for students and critical race theory..

Schools are the latest battleground in the culture wars. Protests over issues such as critical race theory, masks and vaccines have cropped up all over the state, including in the towns of Guilford, New Canaan, Glastonbury, Haddam, Cheshire, Bristol and Fairfield. The protesters often characterize themselves as concerned parents. This may be partially true, but it is not the whole story. If you dig deep enough, you will find a web of dark money fueling political operatives in so-called “astroturf” groups — those that purport to be grassroots but are in fact formed and funded by hidden corporate and political sponsors. Their agenda has little to do with improving public education.

Protesters have a right to state their opinions (even suicidal ones in the case of vaccine opposition). But as the right-wing agenda increasingly infiltrates small towns, members of local school boards might find themselves portrayed as purveyors of an “increasingly hostile” threat to the community “rooted in Marxism” who will “stop at nothing” as they are “trying to socially replace you.” Those are words from the websites of the Center For Renewing America and its Citizens Renewing America Toolkit.

In fact, hostility against board of education members has gotten so ugly that the National School Boards Association this past week asked President Biden for help from federal law enforcement agencies. In reality, most of these folks are hardworking volunteers who are far more concerned with balancing a budget than they are with a radical agenda — be it on the left or the right. And yet, recently in Haddam, police had to escort board members to their cars following a contentious meeting in which anti-maskers shouted through a bullhorn and drowned out much of the proceedings.

Clearly, something is afoot. Why is this happening suddenly and simultaneously in so many different places around the state (and indeed the country)? Why is the pattern so similar? Why does it seem peculiar to affluent Connecticut towns? Why do some protests turn disruptive? Why pick on CRT, which schools don’t even teach (it’s a post-secondary pedagogical tool)? This doesn’t sound like something that just happened to occur to parents at a local bake sale.

The explanation may lie with Steve Bannon. According to Bannon, “This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,” and “The path to save the nation is very simple. It’s going to go through the school boards.” Before he was pardoned by Trump, Bannon was the guy arrested at sea off Westbrook on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht for allegedly siphoning over a million dollars from a “We Build the Wall” scheme. According to news reports, he was also accused by an ex-wife of objecting to the Archer School in Los Angeles for his daughters because, she said, he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”

The phenomenon may also be explained by Nicole Neily — the president of Parents Defending Education, whose targets include several Connecticut towns. PDE describes itself as a “grassroots” organization, and Neily once was quoted as saying, “We’re all working moms.” But according to several sources including Sourcewatch, Neily is a veteran operative of the Koch network. She’s not alone. Other astroturf operatives include Russ Vought, a former Trump official whose group publishes the “Toolkit” for taking over school boards; Christopher Rufo, whose anti-CRT activism earned him an invitation to the Trump White House; and Keri Rodriques, who was reportedly paid $388,000 in 2017 and 2018 for her advocacy work. Anti-CRT activity seems a profitable cottage industry for the apparatchiks of MAGA world.

Dark money is hard to ferret out because astroturf groups do not disclose their funders. But some information can be found. Among the sources are MassPoliticsProfs.org, the blog of Diane Ravitch, UnKochMyCampus.org, and a book called “Outside Money in School Board Elections.” Google searches also help. Our information is based largely on these sources.

A picture emerges of a shadowy and labyrinthine network of astroturf groups funded by big money. Funders include the Koch network, Turning Points USA, the DeVos Family Foundation, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, Donors’ Trust, and the Heritage Foundation. Some astroturf groups are local (Connecticut Parents Union). Most are national. Many have happy names like Citizens for Renewing America, the Center for Renewing America, Free to Learn, National Parents Union, Massachusetts Parents United, No Left Turn in Education, Moms for Liberty, and Fight for Schools. Some encourage their readers to report incidents (i.e., spy on teachers). One group calling itself School Board Watchlist models disruptive behavior on its website.

Our point is not necessarily to question the sincerity of the self-appointed disrupters, misguided though they are. But we believe they are pawns in a darker power grab of which they are probably unaware. The next time you hear that public schools are a threat to freedom, it’s good idea to follow the money.

Christine Palm is the state representative for the 36th Connecticut General Assembly District. Frank Hanley Santoro is a former assistant U.S. attorney.

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phenomenon may also be explained by Nicole Neily — the president of Parents Defending Education, whose targets include several towns. PDE describes itself as a “grassroots” organization, and Neily once was quoted as saying, “We’re all working moms.” But according to several sources including Sourcewatch, Neily is a veteran operative of the Koch network. She’s not alone. Other astroturf operatives include Russ Vought, a former Trump official whose group publishes the “Toolkit” for taking over school boards; Christopher Rufo, whose anti-CRT activism earned him an invitation to the Trump White House; and Keri Rodriques, who was reportedly paid $388,000 in 2017 and 2018 for her advocacy work. Anti-CRT activity seems a profitable cottage industry for the apparatchiks of MAGA world.

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