Washington — In welcoming remarks at Mothers for Freedom’s annual gathering in the nation’s capital on Friday, the group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice urged members to “fight like mothers” against the Democratic presidential candidates.
Later that night, she personally endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump for president after interviewing him onstage, their talk-show-style exchange being preceded by chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” from the audience.
The weekend rally brought together parent activists from across the country, signaling Moms for Liberty’s move to fully embrace Trump and his political message as the November election approaches. The group is officially a nonpartisan, nonprofit and says it is open to anyone who wants parents to have more of a say in their children’s education, but it has made little mention of which side of the nation’s political divide it has chosen.
The painting, prominently displayed on an easel next to the security booth that attendees had to pass before entering the conference center, depicted Vice President Kamala Harris kneeling over a dead bald eagle, wearing a communist symbol on her jacket and with blood dripping from her mouth. A spokesman for Moms for Liberty said he had not seen the gruesome painting and noted that the event’s official signage only featured the group’s logo.
This group’s enthusiasm for Trump is likely to benefit him this fall by solidifying key parts of his base: parents who share his views that the Department of Education is bloated and inefficient, equity programs distract from academic fundamentals, vaccination mandates infringe on parental rights and schools that accept transgender children put other students at risk.
But what’s less clear is how Moms for Liberty’s support for Trump and his policies will affect local school board elections, which are already among the most contentious on many ballots starting in 2022, a year after the group was founded.
Many communities where Moms for Liberty candidates have taken control of school board majorities are frustrated by their laser-like focus on removing textbooks, questioning lessons about race, and rejecting LGBTQ+ identities. The lack of progress on improving academic performance has in turn sparked opposition among more moderate and liberal parents and teachers unions.
Moms for Liberty has said it won’t officially endorse the presidential race, but that doesn’t mean it’s shying away from involvement: The group’s founders recently wrote an open letter to parents warning that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school social studies teacher, would lead to “the most anti-parent, extremist administration in American history.”
During its first three years, the group became synonymous with the “parent rights” movement on local school boards, but in recent years it has become more involved in national politics, serving on the advisory board of Project 2025, a controversial conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, and investing more than $3 million in four key swing states in the presidential election. The money was used to run ads in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin with messages critical of the Biden administration.
Justice said the ads have increased Moms for Liberty’s membership in those states and encouraged previously inactive members to register to vote.
“I think there will be a lot of new voters who understand that their vote and their voice matters,” she said in an interview.
She added that as the group continues to advocate in local school board elections, she is encouraged that 60 percent of the candidates Moms for Liberty supported in Florida’s recent primary election advanced to this fall’s general election, some running for the first time.
But those victories were offset by undeniable losses for the group, including two in Republican-majority Sarasota County and two in Pinellas County, where a Moms for Liberty-backed candidate handily won a school board seat two years ago.
These results come after conservative candidates struggled to gain voter support in local school board elections across the country last fall, when Moms for Liberty said only 40 percent of the candidates it endorsed won.
Jonathan Collins, co-director of the Politics and Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, said parent-rights candidates across the country may be struggling because they are focused on dismantling existing policies and materials rather than offering clear, forward-looking plans to make up for learning losses caused by the pandemic.
“They’re not losing to people who are fighting cultural attacks with their own cultural attacks,” he said. “They’re losing to people who are fighting cultural attacks with very practical, local ideas for improving their schools and their districts.”
Across the country, some school board members who are supported by or implement the policies of Free Mothers have been fired in recent months by local residents who claim their policies are causing confusion.
In Woodland, north of California’s capital city, a school board member backed by Moms for Liberty members was recalled in March after expressing concern that children were coming out as transgender “as a result of social contagion” during a 2023 school board meeting.
In Southern California, a Temecula Valley Unified School District board member was removed from his position after he and two of his colleagues voted to reject a social studies curriculum because it included the history of the gay rights movement.
And in southern Idaho, where Republican support is strong, local residents across the political spectrum rose up to remove two right-wing board members last year who had sought to eradicate critical race theory and establish conservative policies.
Katie Blacksberg, a Pinellas County candidate facing the only remaining Moms for Liberty-affiliated candidate on the county’s school board this fall, said the group’s “bad faith” and “divisiveness” “doesn’t lead to any good work.”
But a group of more than 600 Moms for Liberty supporters who exchanged phone numbers in Washington on Friday and listened intently to a slide presentation offered a different perspective.
Gretchen Schmidt, president of the Orange County, North Carolina, chapter of Freedom for Moms, said her chapter was instrumental in pushing for a new parental rights law in her state, which passed last year in a heavily redistricted state legislature overriding a veto by the Democratic governor.
Schmidt said that previously, parents would call schools asking for information about assignments and not get a response, but now “we’re getting a lot more responses.”
On Saturday, Moms for Liberty’s four-day summit paused its daytime sessions for a demonstration organized by a coalition of more than 30 conservative groups a mile away. Wearing yellow rhinestone visors, Rachel Mack and Sarah Lecupero said they drove from Florida to support protections for all children, especially in sports.
“I’m definitely someone who supports women in women’s sports and men in men’s sports,” Mack said.
A few blocks away, opponents of Moms for Liberty were holding a competing event, “Reading Celebration,” which opposed the book ban and advocated for a more inclusive environment for children. Heidi Ross came from Buckeye, Arizona, to volunteer after seeing a Facebook post about the event.
“I have a 2-year-old granddaughter, and I want her to grow up in a world where she can read whatever she wants and no one will bother her or bother her,” she said. “So I flew for her and for all my children.”
___
Associated Press writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to strengthen its commentary coverage of elections and democracy. Learn more about the AP Democracy Initiative here. The Associated Press is solely responsible for all content.
