The revival of Moms for Liberty

It’s easy to chuckle at the failures of Moms for Liberty. The far-right “parental rights” group — founded in Florida during the Covid-19 pandemic to encourage re-opening schools without mask mandates or vaccine requirements — has invited laughter for its distorted, sometimes bizarre claims about plots to undermine American education, warning members that “Globalists, utopians, socialists, totalitarians, and the UN are using public schools to undermine freedom and Christianity.” It requires little effort to arrange the group’s most unhinged statements into a cornucopia of lunacy, surpassed in recent memory only by the tinfoil conspiracism of QAnon. 

The so-called “joyful warriors” have led harassment campaigns in school districts across the country, demanding action against curricula on systemic racism and gender identity. They’ve worked to ban recent books like Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” and George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” as well as classics like Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” among others. But beyond lobbying for safeguards surrounding what is taught, Moms for Liberty activists have also spread harmful misinformation about those who teach it. They accuse teachers who cover systemic racism of engaging in “Marxist indoctrination” under the guise of Critical Race Theory — and those who emphasize LGBTQ+ inclusion are allegedly “grooming” and “sexualizing” children. 

But while the organization’s rhetoric can be laughably hyperbolic, a quick peek under the hood reveals a record that cannot be laughed away. Even amid its mounting local election losses, humiliating public scandals and designation as an “extremist anti-government” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Moms for Liberty remains a growing force in American politics.

That’s because in a Republican Party fueled by culture wars — where feelings often prevail over facts — Moms for Liberty has become a “political powerhouse” for its unique ability to energize conservative women by stoking rage over issues of race, identity and wokeness in schools. Rather than shunning the group as purveyors of misinformation when they were founded in 2021, the Republican Party was quick to celebrate its effective messaging and position it as a new GOP kingmaker. By 2023, five Republican presidential candidates spoke at the annual Moms for Liberty conference, each emphasizing their overlap with the group’s platform, including opposition to teacher unions and woke ideology, as well as support for school choice and book bans.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, challenged the organization’s designation as an “extremist” group, telling the audience, “When they mentioned this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘well then, count me as a Mom for Liberty.’” Donald Trump also dismissed the accusation before telling the crowd that they “are the best thing that ever happened to America.” And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has worked closely with the group, issued his steadfast support: “We will pull the levers that we have available to us to be able to defend the rights of parents.”

In retrospect, it’s easy why pundits have pegged this conference as the high water mark for Moms for Liberty’s influence. Since then, the group has been plagued by scandal, embarrassment and election losses. The group’s co-founder, Bridget Ziegler — who also helped author Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law banning LGBTQ+ curriculum from early grades — has been mired in controversy after she and her husband Christian, the chair of the Florida Republican Party, were caught in a scandal involving a threesome and an investigation into her husband’s alleged sexual assault of their partner. (He resigned his position after DeSantis called on him to step aside.)

Moms for Liberty’s other co-founders, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, have not escaped embarrassment. In a 2024 interview with “60 Minutes,” the pair were unable to mount a coherent explanation as CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley challenged them with simple questions, including one about why they accuse teachers of “grooming” kids. But Descovich and Justice often avoided questions and resorted to stock one-liners. Pelley even noted their evasiveness before suggesting that their organization intentionally misrepresents outliers — such as when books intended for high school students accidentally land on elementary school shelves — to produce skewed narratives of public schools.

Perhaps most glaring among its struggles, Moms for Liberty has failed to match its early success in school board elections. Back in 2022, on the heels of the pandemic, nearly half of the candidates endorsed by the organization won their elections. But in 2023, only a third of their candidates won. There are more recent signs that Moms for Liberty’s win rate is continuing its decline. In last November’s elections, Democratic candidates in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a political bellwether, enjoyed a sweeping defeat of conservatives who championed the group’s policies, as did others across the country.

These defeats were part of a nationwide trend for candidates endorsed by or aligned with Moms for Liberty. After the election, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “Last night, we saw voters support their local schools in towns, counties and cities across America, including important school board wins in Albuquerque; Wichita; Nashua, NH; Douglas County, CO; Cy-Fair, Texas; and Bucks County, PA.” 

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Major media outlets have been quick to present the organization’s recent struggles as a sign of declining influence. And while they might be right, it seems that what is happening is a shift in the group’s emphasis, one that compliments its early bottom-up approach that sent thousands of moms into school board meetings with a top-down approach that works from government down to schools.

Despite its grassroots origin story, Moms for Liberty has always been closely connected to the Republican establishment. But in recent years, the group’s efforts have expanded, aiming not only to win school board elections but to orchestrate legislative change and drive voter turnout in state and national elections.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, in which Moms for Liberty experienced diminishing returns on investments in school board elections, the group pumped three million dollars into swing state advertising and voter mobilization. Although the organization does not endorse presidential candidates, Moms for Liberty ran scathing anti-Biden ads in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. (As a 501(c)(4), the group is not required to disclose its funding sources, but records show ties to one of the most influential conservative super PACs, Richard Uihlein’s Restoration PAC.)

At the state level, Moms for Liberty lobbyists have worked with elected officials to craft “anti-woke” legislation, like Florida’s “Parents Bill of Rights” and “Don’t Say Gay” law, which, among other things, require teachers to notify parents when a child requests to change pronouns and bans “instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity” in K-12 schools. Moms for Liberty has helped pass similar legislation across the country, including in Arkansas, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana and in the Dakotas. They’ve worked on bills limiting “obscene materials” and banning minors from attending drag shows.

And with the Trump administration back in the White House, Moms for Liberty has achieved new national influence. Going beyond New Hampshire’s “divisive concepts” law, the Department of Education recently announced an “End DEI” portal, where the public can report teachers who “commit illegal discriminatory practices.” In the official Department of Education announcement, only one person was quoted —  co-founder Tiffany Justice, who later encouraged parents to use the new portal to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.”

Although the group’s top-down focus has grown, Moms for Liberty hasn’t forgotten that it caught fire by waging local school board battles. In fact, the organization is redoubling efforts to win school board elections with its recent launch of Moms for Liberty University, an online training program for political organizing — not a degree-granting university — where parents can master the group’s positions on race and gender while also exploring a Make America Healthy Again tool kit for those curious about food choices or vaccine requirements in schools. If the program works as planned, parents across the country will have the tools to organize their own battles in local public schools.

To be sure, Moms for Liberty has endured a rough stretch. The combination of salacious scandals and heavily publicized election losses have undercut the group’s image. Yet as the group develops its state and national work — shaping legislation, mobilizing voters in swing states and working directly with the Department of Education — its role in American public education is still growing, and so might its chilling effect on American teachers. After all, the group recently announced that “thousands of parents” have already reported teachers to the government’s new “End DEI” portal. While Mom’s for Liberty’s recent embarrassments might merit a good laugh, their critics should know it might not be the last one.

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