The Rebbitzin Bengelsdorf Trumpscum Fascist White Christian Supremacy: Proudly Promoting Hitler Youth Loving "Moms for Liberty"!
David Shasha
Who’s Afraid of Moms for Liberty?
By: Robert Pondiscio
https://www.aei.org/profile/robert-pondiscio/
https://fordhaminstitute.org/about/fordham-staff/robert-pondiscio
https://nypost.com/author/robert-pondiscio/
https://manhattan.institute/person/robert-pondiscio
https://www.city-journal.org/person/robert-pondiscio
https://www.commentary.org/author/robert-pondiscio/
https://www.commentary.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/March_2022_Full_Web_R1.pdf
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/dangers-sentimental-education
In a breakout session in a windowless conference room at last weekend’s Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warrior Summit” in Philadelphia, Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and father of three school-aged daughters, is stiffening spines. Dozens of attendees, mostly women, are nodding and taking notes as Ziegler explains how to work with local news media.
“Your product is parental rights. Your product is protecting children and eliminating indoctrination and the sexualization of children. You’re the grassroots. You’re on the ground. You’re the moms, the grandparents, the families that are impacted. The stories you tell help set a narrative,” Ziegler coaches them.
One story above us, the ballroom floor of the downtown Marriott is groaning under the weight of crowded press risers, where camera crews have set up for the parade of Republican presidential hopefuls coming here to curry favor with the more than 600 Moms for Liberty members attending—and a few thousand more watching the livestream.
Ron DeSantis held forth this morning. Nikki Haley is scheduled to speak at lunch. Donald Trump will close things out later this afternoon. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are on tap for tomorrow.
It’s an astonishing display of political drawing power, considering Moms for Liberty didn’t even exist three years ago. The candidates have all come to pay obeisance to the animating idea that has galvanized these women: that parents—not the government—should be in charge of how their children are raised and educated.
If you want to understand why these politicians have come, you need to go to the breakout sessions, away from the camera’s gaze, where, hour after hour, Moms for Liberty chapter leaders and foot soldiers learn how to run for school boards—and if they win, how to advance their agenda even when in the minority. There are talks on messaging strategies and mining school board minutes for signs of “woke indoctrination.” There are workshops on how to file public records requests and navigate the legal system.
They aren’t messing around. More than half of the 500 candidates Moms for Liberty endorsed for local school board elections last year won their races. “School choice moms” provided the margin of victory in DeSantis’ first run for Florida governor in 2018. Democrat Terry McAuliffe was leading the race for Virginia governor in 2021 before his debate remark that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” handed the win to Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Moms for Liberty is the beating heart of this country’s movement of angry parents—and American education has never seen anything quite like it.
Moms for Liberty launched in January 2021 when frustration with pandemic masking rules had reached a boiling point. Requests to form local chapters started coming in almost immediately after co-founder Tina Descovich called in to Glenn Beck’s radio show. Appearances on The Rush Limbaugh Show, Fox News, and Steve Bannon’s War Room quickly followed. Within six months, Megyn Kelly was hosting a fundraiser. Its slogan, emblazoned on thousands of t-shirts, is “We don’t co-parent with the government.”
That message has found an enormous and growing audience. With 120,000 members and nearly 300 chapters in 45 U.S. states, Moms for Liberty is already the most consequential education advocacy organization since Teach For America—but with none of the halo effect that inspired a generation of elite college grads to put off law school and Wall Street to teach in inner cities.
Moms for Liberty is Teach For America’s dark opposite number. They won’t be talked out of their conviction that malign forces in public schools—gender ideology, critical race theory, Marxism, anti-Americanism—have come for their children, and they’re having exactly none of it.
“I think they’re one of the few truly authentic and responsive edu-parental rights groups that has emerged in recent history,” says a prominent parent choice supporter not associated with Moms for Liberty, who would only speak anonymously because of the group’s radioactive reputation in education and philanthropic circles. “They’re not just mouthpieces on social media; they have a real following. If they weren’t effective, and if their message wasn’t resonant, they wouldn’t be so vilified.”
It’s true the group attracts and frequently abides a lunatic fringe, fueling its critics’ counternarrative that the movement is intolerant, racist even.
Just last week, an Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter put a Hitler quote in its newsletter and the story went national. The quote—“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future”—was intended to warn parents what happens when a regime targets its children for indoctrination. But when critics are calling you ultra-right wing Christofascists, it’s probably unwise to invoke Hitler in any context.
The local chapter chair apologized, “probably because she hasn’t gone through this” training, Ziegler tells the crowd.
“Frankly, it was bullshit.”
Even before the Hitler controversy, media coverage of the group has been harsh. The Nation described Moms for Liberty as “hateful fascist bigots.” The New Republic said the group has “created nightmares for schools across the country.” An article in Vice reported they have ties to the Proud Boys—a claim that co-founder Tiffany Justice strenuously denied to me. A story in The Washington Post led with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s recent designation of Moms for Liberty as an “extremist group” devoted to spreading “messages of anti-inclusion and hate.”
When Ziegler’s wife, Bridget, one of the original Moms for Liberty, started serving on the school board in Sarasota County, Florida, nearly a decade ago, the negative press coverage reduced her to tears. Now, Ziegler tells the room, the couple compares their bad press clips on date nights.
“You actually get to this amazing moment when you realize, ‘Hey, if they attack me, I can go raise money on this. I can get my message out by piggybacking on that attack,’ ” advises Ziegler.
“It’s brutal to be on defense,” he continues. “Always play offense. Never apologize. Never, ever, never,” he insists.
Ziegler, meanwhile, likes this morning’s Washington Post story just fine, even though it details a litany of complaints and criticisms aimed at the group. “Moms for Liberty didn’t exist three years ago. Now,” the paper says, “it’s a GOP kingmaker.”
“Probably the best headline I’ve ever seen,” he grins.
In 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) was forced to apologize after a letter it sent to the Biden administration went viral, asking for federal law enforcement to stop “domestic terrorism” at school board meetings. While Moms for Liberty was not mentioned by name, the letter cited several incidents at which members had protested. Since then, 25 state associations have cut ties with NSBA. At the Philadelphia summit, a handful of mothers were proudly wearing “Domestic Terrorist” t-shirts.
Outside the Marriott, protesters from ACT UP Philly and the Young Communist League are registering their displeasure with an all-day “dance party protest”—a strange response to the fascist threat they insist is unfolding four flights up. From beyond barricades several hundred feet away they shout at the hotel and wave signs: “Philly is a Trans City,” “Kancel Klanned Karenhood,” and “Moms for Liberty Go Home!”
But the Moms are unrepentant. They seem almost to revel in the abuse.
On the eve of the Philadelphia Summit, co-founder Tiffany Justice told me, “We are fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”
A few years ago, if you had to bet on which parent organization could influence the 2024 election, the smart wager would have been on the well-funded National Parents Union (NPU), which calls itself an “authentically parent-led organization,” a label that Moms for Liberty would undoubtedly use to describe itself.
The afternoon before Moms for Liberty kicked off their conference, NPU held a sparsely attended rally in Philadelphia’s Love Park to condemn its “evil and divisive” rival, which, it claimed, seeks school book bans and to whitewash history lessons taught to children. What Moms for Liberty insists are efforts to keep pornography out of school libraries and to combat “indoctrination” about critical race theory and gender fluidity, NPU says are attempts to attack and marginalize children of color and LGBTQ youth.
At the Love Park rally, NPU’s president publicly blasted Moms for Liberty, stating unironically that they’re bankrolled by “big checks from the evils of white supremacy.” NPU, for its part, has raised millions in philanthropic support from the Walton Family Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Charles Koch Institute-backed Vela Fund.
Moms for Liberty’s most recent tax filings from 2021 claim a modest $370,000 of revenue. Descovich says accountants are finalizing Moms for Liberty’s updated Form 990, which “will show that our revenue sources have grown from merchandise sales and small donors to include large donors too.” Justice confirms that she and Descovich now draw full-time salaries for their work. They are two of nine full-time staffers.
Their grassroots appeal is easily observable. At the summit, I ran into a neighbor who last year upended our small town in upstate New York with a failed campaign for school board, pushing back on “government overreach” and demanding a return to “traditional education.”
“What are the chances we’d run into each other here!” he greets me.
“Probably 100 percent,” I reply. I write about education for a living and he’s here with his wife, who’s thinking about launching a local chapter. They are the Moms for Liberty couple from central casting.
Until Moms for Liberty, efforts to organize parents into an effective political counterweight to teachers unions and to impose their will on K–12 education haven’t amounted to very much. Colleen Dippel, the founder of Houston-based Families Empowered, a parent support organization with no connection to the group, says of Moms for Liberty: “They are doing things that other organizations have received millions of dollars to do and haven’t been able to get done. The National Parents Union hasn’t flipped a school board. They haven’t changed a policy that I’m aware of.”
The rise of Moms for Liberty as a force in education policy, local elections, and now the 2024 campaign is, if anything, a function of their refusal to follow the playbook common to parent advocacy organizations, which tend to wither and die when their philanthropic support dries up.
“Philanthropists will never be able to control these women,” says Dippel. “Why? Because these women are college educated and they don’t need their money. They also have time, they have skills, and they’re empowered primary voters. The message they send to elected officials is, ‘No, no, no. My kid, my money, you work for me. And if you don’t, I’ll organize all these other women, tell them what’s going on, and kick you out of office, because that’s democracy, right?’ ”
At a private dinner on Friday night after Trump’s speech, pollster Jim McLaughlin presented Moms for Liberty’s leaders and advisers with the results of a survey he conducted of likely voters in the upcoming general election. A clear majority (67 percent) feel that K–12 public education in the U.S. is “on the wrong track,” including half of Democrats, he says. Nearly three-fourths, including independents and Biden voters, think it’s more important for schools to teach children “basics” like reading, writing, and math rather than “issues of social justice, reproductive rights, sex education, and transgender issues.”
Matt Palumbo, a 30-year veteran Republican political adviser who has worked on seven presidential campaigns and attended the briefing said, “I’ve never seen a consensus like this. This is a winning issue.”
Obviously, schools do not choose between teaching reading and gender ideology, but it was hard to miss the narrative taking shape in real time in Philadelphia. The basic thrust of Moms for Liberty’s advocacy—that parents, not the government, should have the ultimate say in what children are taught in public schools—has legs. Not one subgroup in McLaughlin’s crosstabs—Trump or Biden voters; pro-life or pro-choice; black, white, or Hispanic; urban, rural, or suburban—disagrees.
Education is a state issue, not a federal one; schools are ground zero in the country’s culture war, and Moms for Liberty is positioned to be at the center of it through next November. A majority of Americans simply don’t buy the idea that a person can be a gender other than the one “assigned at birth,” and they don’t want their children taught otherwise in public schools. Every presidential contender who came to the summit talked about it in one form or another. And the crowd leapt to its feet every time.
But the passion and energy that has rocketed Moms for Liberty to kingmaker status is also its Achilles heel: some overly zealous members have gone too far.
Members of a local Tennessee chapter last year, for example, sued to remove an outstanding English curriculum, Wit & Wisdom, from their school district, on the grounds that its elementary school texts about civil rights icons Ruby Bridges and Martin Luther King Jr. are too dark and disturbing for children and violate state laws against teaching critical race theory. A New Hampshire chapter offered a $500 bounty “for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this [state’s anti-critical race theory] law.” An Arkansas Mom was banned from school grounds after an audio recording captured her saying “if I had any mental issues, [school employees] would all be plowed down by a freaking gun right now.”
Neither are the group’s fanatical elements limited only to local chapters. On Saturday morning at the conference, Moms for Liberty fixture James Lindsay painted a picture of the organization as “war moms” fighting a “Maoist cultural revolution” engineered at the highest levels of government and elite institutions. When Mao came to power, Lindsay claimed, his first step was to close schools and reeducate teachers. “They shut down the schools for two years and came back with a whole new program. Does that sound familiar?”
Lindsay’s conspiracy theory earned him a raucous standing ovation.
Erika Donalds, the wife of Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and another former school board member who was present at the founding (she remains on Moms for Liberty’s board), believes the group is ready for its moment in the national spotlight, but she’s clear-eyed about the potential pitfalls of such a rapid rise. “They’re very intentional about who speaks on behalf of the organization. They train their members on the issues, and they get out in front of things,” she says. “But their biggest risk is some rogue woman wearing a Moms for Liberty shirt at a school board meeting acting like a cuckoo.”
Tiffany Justice acknowledges the risk to the brand but minimizes the downside.
“There is no doubt in my mind that there will be things that chapters do that we may not agree with, or we may not be able to stop in advance,” she tells me. “If it rises to something that’s the level of violating our code of conduct, we have no problem removing a chapter chair or taking the steps to remove a member. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. This work is difficult. And we know that.”
Teach For America, which is now derided by conservatives for its hard left turn into “woke” education, claims that 270 of its alumni serve in elected positions around the country “from state representatives to city council members to school board officials.” Moms for Liberty might have that many or more school board members already, and a multiple of that number weighing a run. Teach For America has been around for 30 years. Moms for Liberty? Thirty months. And the way things are going, their influence is likely to explode in the next few years.
“Today’s school board members are tomorrow’s state legislators,” said Christian Ziegler, the Florida Republican Party chairman, when I spoke with him a few days after the Philadelphia summit. His wife, Bridget, who is serving what she says will be her last school board term in Sarasota, is leading a new program for school board candidates at the Virginia-based Leadership Institute, which since 1979 has trained 250,000 conservative activists in campaigns, fundraising, and communications.
“And today’s state legislators are tomorrow’s congressmen.”
Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of How the Other Half Learns. Follow him on Twitter at @rpondiscio.
From The “Free” Press, July 13, 2023
The parents group Republicans are banking on to win the White House
By: Juan Perez Jr.
PHILADELPHIA — Republicans sharpening a schoolhouse-centered campaign are betting on a fast-growing ally to make a play for the suburbs.
Moms for Liberty kicked off its second-ever “Joyful Warriors” national summit in the urban heart of this critical swing state on Thursday, and the roster of special guests says plenty about a group that didn’t even exist three years ago. Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and three other GOP White House hopefuls are paying their respects to America’s newest culture warriors — as police and steel barricades block protestors from entering.
“When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that’s what I am,’” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told the crowd Friday morning, after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled her hosts as an anti-government extremist group this month.
Moms for Liberty was incorporated in January 2021 by three Florida women: School board members Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, and Bridget Ziegler, the DeSantis-endorsed chair of the Sarasota County School Board and wife of Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler. But during its brief existence, the group has funneled right-wing politics and millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity into a massive national campaign for parents’ votes that Republicans hope will boost the party’s fortunes ahead of the 2024 election.
“You have proven beyond all doubt that there is no earthly force more powerful than the love of a mother for her children — that’s true. In school board races, PTA meetings and town halls across the nation, you have taught the radical left Marxists and communists a lesson they will never forget: don’t mess with America’s moms,” Trump said on Friday. “The radical left is even slandering Moms for Liberty as a so-called ‘hate group.’”
“You’re not the threat to America,” Trump added. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to America.”
Moms for Liberty claims 285 chapters in 45 states and a membership that exceeds 115,000 people. It cultivated an early, formative relationship with Florida’s governor while its supporters mounted fierce opposition to library books and classroom curriculum that address race, gender and sexuality. The group has also reported raising a small fortune from a murky network of donors.
And Moms for Liberty’s rise in the conservative education movement — reinvigorated by pandemic-driven school closures and state fights over gender-affirming care — has left liberals scrambling to defend school board seats in battleground regions where they risk losing to an organization that skyrocketed to Republican stardom.
That includes Philadelphia, and the city’s surrounding communities.
“When we started Moms for Liberty, there were people that told us ‘You need to just focus on the red states,’” Justice, one of the co-founders, said in an interview. “Unless we’re ready to start taking stars off of the flag, we better start fighting for every state in this country.”
A ‘powerful force’
Trump was Friday’s keynote speaker. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are also on the weekend schedule. They’re all here to tap into the energy surrounding conservative women, after the Supreme Court rescinded federal abortion rights last year and Republican-led legislatures overhauled laws surrounding children and public education.
“What we’ve seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in this country: mama bears,” DeSantis told a crowd of hundreds of supporters on Friday. “The time to act is now. And I believe if we do it right, 2024 is going to be the year when the parents across this country finally fight back.”
Moms for Liberty will not endorse a presidential candidate, its founders have said. But Florida’s Republican Party chairman thinks the organization has enough influence to make that decision unnecessary.
“By these guys showing up at their conference, it shows what they’ve already accomplished,” Ziegler said of the weekend’s candidate appearances. “They can go and have a meeting with President Trump whenever they want. They can have a meeting with DeSantis, Haley, any of these guys. ... If you already have influence and you already have access, and you can make change, what’s the point.”
All of this has drawn plenty of detractors.
In early June, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning civil rights watchdog that sued DeSantis over flying dozens of migrants across the country, labeled Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist group.” A Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana apologized later in the month after quoting Hitler in a newsletter.
This week, the American Historical Association urged Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution to cancel a Moms for Liberty gathering, saying the group “has crossed a boundary in its attempts to silence and harass teachers, rather than participate in legitimate controversy.”
Moms for Liberty’s opponents say the group’s reach is limited and enables liberals to campaign against book bans, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and education’s newly divisive politics during low-turnout school board elections the organization brought to new prominence in 2022 and early this year.
“Moms for Liberty is more of a ‘grass tops’ organization in terms of being a highly-funded vocal minority of moms in America. The majority of moms, and people, in America, do not support book bans, exclusion and hate,” said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of the progressive MomsRising advocacy group, in an interview. “It’s not okay to use our schoolchildren and our schools and our families as political footballs,” she said.
A new “Save Our School Boards” initiative from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is also intended to serve as a liberal attempt to create a national school board slate.
“Our targets are largely battleground states,” the PCCC’s director of candidate services, Hannah Riddle, told POLITICO. “In 2023, Pennsylvania is going to be a huge focus for us,” she added. “These issues are going to drive people to the polls.”
Moms’ big cash flow
Moms for Liberty’s growth dovetailed with a rise in combative school board meetings during the pandemic.
In September 2021, the National School Boards Association asked President Joe Biden to have federal agencies stop “threats and acts of violence” on school officials during meetings consumed by public protests against mask mandates, critical race theory, and transgender student policies.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then ordered federal law enforcement authorities to huddle with local leaders to address what the nation’s top prosecutor called a “disturbing spike” in intimidation and violent threats against educators and board members. Two weeks after Garland’s directive, Moms for Liberty registered a trio of political action committees with the Federal Elections Commission.
When it comes to money, Moms for Liberty’s national hub uses a tax structure that lets it operate without publicly disclosing donors. But the group’s conference sponsorships, state campaign finance disclosures, available tax records and filings from other nonprofits offer some hints about its supporters and revenue.
In 2021, according to tax records signed by Descovich, Moms for Liberty reported collecting $370,029 in total revenue. More than $250,000 of that money came from contributions and grants.
The organization also has a political action committee in Florida whose roughly $50,000 in contributions last year were almost entirely funded by a grocery store heiress linked to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Moms for Liberty’s three national political action committees have so far reported few expenditures and contributions, according to the latest available federal records.
Event sponsorships are another fundraising channel. Major sponsors of this week’s convening include the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Leadership Institute and Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based conservative wireless service provider.
The American Principles Project and Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence’s nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, are also listed as lower-tier supporters, though Pence did not attend the event. Sponsorship packages for this year’s event are priced between $1,000 and $100,000.
Descovich and Justice declined to answer questions about the amount of cash on hand currently available to its political action committees, and said the organization would comply with all reporting requirements set out in the law and had nothing else to add beyond what was available in public reports.
“We believe that our country is in trouble,” Justice said. “We will do everything we can to be involved in order to protect and safeguard the future of America for our kids.”
Jessica Piper, Andrew Atterbury and Andrew Zhang contributed to this report.
From Politico, June 30, 2023
Moms for Liberty
By: SPLC website
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moms-liberty
Moms for Liberty is an antigovernment organization founded in 2021 by former Florida school board members, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich. Current Sarasota County, Florida school board member, Bridget Ziegler, was also a co-founder. She has since left the group, leaving Justice and Descovich at the helm.
Moms for Liberty and its nationwide chapters combat what they consider the “woke indoctrination” of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group's views. They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.
In Their Own Words
“The K-12 Cartel - also known as the National Teachers Union (NEA) - met and
drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘Mother’ with ‘Birthing Person.’ This is
insane and insulting to every mom in America. But don’t worry, relief is coming
... Because as the Teachers Union pushes an agenda focused on everything BUT
educating our children, American Parents are rising up, taking back our school
districts and putting the focus back on educating our children. To be clear -
You will not be seeing ‘Moms for Liberty’ rebranded as ‘Birthing Persons for
Liberty’ anytime soon.”
— Tiffany Justice, Moms for Liberty on Fox News on July 7, 2022
“Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by
predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory
adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a
double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?’
— Tweet from Moms for Liberty on July 25, 2022, tweet regarding California SB
107 gender transition bill that got their account suspended.
“If I had any mental issues, they would have been plowed down with a gun by
now.&rdqduo;
— Melissa “Missy” Bosch (Lonoke County, AR Chapter) was indicted for
terroristic threatening towards the faculty and staff of Cabot School district.
She was recorded musing about gunning down a school librarian.
“The children are confused ... because of these insane agendas that are
being shoved down their throats … Even the shooter — what, an 18-year-old
transgender boy trying to be a girl?”
— Eulalia Jimenez (chair of Moms for Liberty, Miami Chapter) spreading disinformation about the Uvalde, Texas, shooter
“We’ve got $500 for the person that first successfully catches a public
school teacher breaking this law. Student, parents, teachers, school staff … We
want to know! We pledge anonymity if you want.”
— Tweeted by Moms for Liberty NH on November 12, 2021, regarding the law
banning the teaching of CRT and retweeted by national Moms for Liberty.
“Is this an example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy?”
— Comment and retweet by main Moms for Liberty account; Tiffany Justice Tweet
(Moms for Liberty Cofounder) re: a mother discussing her 4-year-old “exploring
his gender.”
“My line in the sand is calling a singular human ‘they/them.’ Go ahead
and call me mean names. I can take it.”
— Retweeted by main Moms for Liberty account; Tweet by Tina Descovich
(Moms for Liberty Cofounder) regarding pronouns in the workplace.
“I raise my children. The government does not. We do not co-parent with
the government. And there are certain sensitive subjects that we would like to
be directing the conversation around for our children … Parents are very
concerned about this idea about gender identity that was never discussed in our
public schools, and it is now taking a front row seat in our children’s
education. And it is affecting everything they do, including for many of our
girls, how safe they feel in the bathrooms at their school.”
— Tiffany Justice in C-SPAN2 About Books interview
“Due to threats from the left, we made the decision to move all future
Moms for Liberty meetings to DCF Guns East upstairs conf room. It is safe,
impenetrable by protestors or otherwise. Now WE have a #safespace
as the libs call it. Thank you to DCF. See you this Tues @ DCF 5:30P.”
— Tweet from Darcy Schoening, Chair of Moms for Liberty – El Paso County, CO
commenting on moving Mom of Liberty meeting to the gun range is co-owned by Joe
Oltmann.
“The kids that do have their, you know, they’re confused, or they are gay
or whatnot that the way they’re trying to go about it is to make it an open
conversation and an open thing in classrooms … But like for example children
with autism, Down Syndrome, they have to have special IP meetings with a
counselor, they have to be put into separate classrooms. I understand, because
it’s a different type of education for children with those disabilities, but I
think that for children that identify differently, there should also be like a
specialized … something for them, so that they feel that they’re important
enough that they’re being counseled…I think for the same reason why teachers
wouldn’t just bring a child with autism in front of the class and be like, hey,
he’s got autism. Embarrassment …”
— Crystal Alonso (member of Moms for Liberty, Miami-Dade County, FL) discussing the need for special classes for LGBTQ students
Background
Moms for Liberty is an anti-student inclusion group that presents itself as a modern parents’ rights organization that seeks to “unify, educate, and empower parents to defend and protect their parental rights at every level of government.” The group’s website appears to align with this mission, featuring general information about the organization and its chapters, resources for parents, and links to press skewed in the group’s favor. The social media accounts and real-world activity of the national organization and its chapters reflect views and actions that are antigovernment and conspiracy propagandist, anti-LGBTQ and anti-gender identity, and anti-inclusive curriculum.
According to Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, when COVID-19 swept the nation and public-school children were homeschooled for an extensive period of time, “the country got to see behind the education curtain and were not pleased.” However, when parents went to their school boards to voice concerns, they were “shut down and silenced.”
Moms for Liberty was originally established to combat what it considered controversial COVID-19 safety measures in schools, mostly centered around masking. From there, it quickly expanded its focus to include an extreme stance on what it considers the indoctrination and sexualization of children through gender identity, the acknowledgement and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, as well as inclusive school pedagogy and curricula, including critical race theory, social emotional learning, and books that the organization deems inappropriate.
Spreading Like Hellfire
In January 2021, Moms for Liberty made its national debut on the Rush Limbaugh show. By the end of the next month, the organization had five chapters in Florida and had garnered attention from Breitbart and Tucker Carlson Tonight.
According to Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, the organization was established with the intention to remain within Florida. However, two weeks after launching the initial chapters, a mother from Nassau County, New York reached out interested in starting a chapter where she lived. Descovich recalls co-founder Tiffany Justice saying to her, “Tina, this movement doesn’t belong to us. We can’t control it. We can’t contain it. All we can do is help.”
The chapters, which are structured by county, have since grown rapidly nationwide. Within two years of the organization's founding, it self-reports a membership of approximately 110,000 in over 250 chapters in 42 states.
Between June 2021 and January 2022, Moms for Liberty hosted high-priced fundraisers that featured former FOX News anchor Megyn Kelly and musicians Larry Gatlin and John Rich.
In July 2022, Moms for Liberty held its first national summit in Tampa, Florida. Speakers included Dr. Ben Carson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife and Betsy DeVos, former US Secretary of Education.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Dr. James Lindsay , and KrisAnne Hall, among many others. Marriott International, which openly supports the LGBTQ community and its causes, received criticism for hosting the summit because of Moms for Liberty’s openly anti-LGBTQ stance, as well as those of the speakers included on the program, including Ron DeSantis, who had recently signed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, which the group publicly lobbied in favor of.
Although ticket prices for the fundraisers ranged from $50 to $20,000 and the highest sponsorship package of the sold-out summit was $50,000, when asked about how the organization is funded, the group claimed that t-shirt sales were its "biggest source of funding."
Since its inception, the group has encouraged its chapters and members to become watchdogs and gain positions in local school districts, usually by seeking open school board seats, in order to stop what it describes as school districts disregarding the opinions of parents and “abdicating their authority to bureaucrats, to medical committees, to Departments of Health to other people where the decision making really did lie with the school board local control.”
To aid in this goal, the group has hosted online and in-person school board trainings in partnership with the Leadership Institute. Additionally, during the national summit in 2022, a special session was offered on how to build and run a school board campaign.
In December 2021, Moms for Liberty created a political action committee, which received a contribution of $50,000 from Julie Fancelli, heiress to the Publix grocery stores. This donation contributed significantly to the organization's ability to help fund 2022 school board campaigns, according to a co-founder who spoke to Politico.
In 2022, Moms for Liberty endorsed over 500 school board candidates across the country. Of this, 76% were first-time candidates. This activity was part was the organization’s stated goal to have a foothold in all 13,000 school districts in the United States.
Fighting Indoctrination with Indoctrination
In its efforts to combat anything that it considers “woke ideology,” Moms for Liberty commonly propagates conspiracy theories about public schools attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children with a progressive Marxist curriculum.
As self-anointed “joyful warriors,” Moms for Liberty has adopted the slogan, “we do not co-parent with the government,” which adorns their lawn signs and merchandise sold on the website.
Despite the background of its founding members serving on various boards of education, Moms for Liberty has taken a stance that is firmly anti-public school.
Tiffany Justice explained in an interview that because public schools are funded by the government, they are government schools. “So, if you don't go to private school, you’re going to a government school. And then you have these employees who have to have a state certificate working at these government schools or government employees.”
Throughout its existence, Moms for Liberty has also waged war on teachers’ unions, referring to them as a terrorist organization and criticizing their stances and influence in public schools. In the past, a number of Moms for Liberty chapters saw their Facebook pages flagged for “community violation,” which prohibit accounts from “posting basic information about local government operations such as school board meetings, or questions about student textbooks.” The group subsequently appealed with an open letter to Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerburg, asking him not to side with the National Education Association who were seeking to label concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.”
Perhaps most importantly of note in their war against public schools and those who support them is Moms for Liberty’s fight to have the Department of Education eliminated. Advocacy for abolishing the Department of Education has been a common cause of antigovernment organizations, from the John Birch Society to the Constitution Party. Former U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsey DeVos was a featured speaker at the first Moms for Liberty Summit, where she stated, “I personally think that the Department of Education should not exist.” A still of this was posted to the organization’s website as a teaser to invite followers to view further content from the Summit.
Speaking at the Family Research Council’s 2021 Pray Vote Stand Summit, Moms for Liberty spokesperson, Quisha King, called for a "mass exodus” from public schools. The sentiments came during a panel discussion entitled "Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale."
Attacks on the LGBTQ Community
Moms for Liberty’s attack on the LGBTQ community and their rights has been particularly focused on gender identity and the use of pronouns in schools, the transgender community and gender affirming care, and the proposed changes to Title IX, which would expand rights to the LGBTQ community.
As close followers and promoters of speaker Dr. James Lindsay, the group also elevates the term “groomer,” referring to a person who builds a relationship with a child to sexualize them. A critical race theory-critic and favorite of the organization, Lindsay has appeared at events and is often shared by the group’s members and officials. Lindsay also pushes theories regarding the ways that Marxists indoctrinate children. Lindsay, an admitted Christian nationalist, was made famous for coining the term “ok groomer,” which subsequently led to a lifetime Twitter ban in August 2022. Moms for Liberty adopted the term “groomer,” employing it in Twitter posts. However, once the social media platform outlawed the use of term in July 2022, the group expressed its displeasure, posting a video of “Relatable” with Allie Beth Stuckey on the group’s national website. In the video, entitled “The Left’s ‘Don’t Say Groomer’ Policy,” the host says, “Twitter and Reddit are censoring the word groomer to describe adults who talk to children about gender switching and sexuality. What else are we supposed to call them?”
Moms for Liberty Miami-Dade County member, Crystal Alonso also suggested moving LGBTQ students to separate classrooms, comparing them to students with special needs, saying, “for example children with autism, Down Syndrome, they have to have special IP meetings with a counselor, they have to be put into separate classrooms. I understand, because it’s a different type of education for children with those disabilities, but I think that for children that identify differently, there should also be like a specialized… something for them, so that they feel that they’re important enough that they’re being counseled.”
Moms for Liberty’s stance against gender identity and LGBTQ rights has continuously increased and begun to expand outside of its original public-school focus. The organization has posted resources and done numerous interviews discussing its extreme aversion to gender identity. Its social media pages feature an increasing number of posts surrounding this topic. In July 2022, the organization’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended for violating the social media platform’s rule against hateful conduct. The post about California’s gender transition bill read:
“Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”
The organization has openly expressed opposition to the current administration's proposed changes to Title IX, which would provide more rights and accessibilities to the LGBTQ community. Specific grievances include biological males being allowed to play in girls’ sports, restrooms not being based on biological sex, and students and teachers being punished for sexual harassment if they use the incorrect pronoun. Moms for Liberty has encouraged members and social media followers to submit public comments to the government page.
Moms for Liberty has also set its sights on the community at large, waging war on companies that are LGBTQ-friendly and supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation. In Florida, for instance, where Disney spoke out publicly against the governor’s “Don't Say Gay” bill, Moms for Liberty co-founder, Tiffany Justice said that stated that she would boycott the company, saying, “it seems Disney is OK with sexualizing our children.”
Moms for Liberty Yellowstone County chapter, along with MassResistance and other anti-LGBTQ groups, supported Montana House Bill 359, also known as “Prohibit minors from attending drag shows”.
In July 2022, Moms for Liberty was temporarily banned from Twitter for speaking out against California SB107, focusing on gender-affirming health care. The group expressed that gender dysphoria was a mental health disorder and gender transition was being normalized by predators. Moms for Liberty went on to join groups such as in writing to California governor, Gavin Newsome, indicating their concerns with the bill, stating that it violated parental rights and made “California akin to the Pied Piper, enticing minor children nationwide to leave their families and run away in pursuit of harmful drugs and sterilizing surgeries.”
Anti-Inclusive Curriculum
In addition to fighting mask and COVID mandates, opposition to inclusive curriculum is at the core of Moms for Liberty's infrastructure. Their attack on critical race theory and social emotion learning has put them in the spotlight at school board meetings across the country.
Moms for Liberty has been a strong proponent in the push to keep new equity and inclusion from entering public schools and remove any existing opportunities. The group has also been strong supporters of the wave of anti-CRT bills sweeping the country and key actors in the sharp increase in book bans occurring in schools and libraries.
Moms for Liberty leaders and members often share and quote some of the most controversial figures in the fight against critical race theory, including the Manhattan Institute's Chris Rufo, who is often credited with inciting the right's panic over CRT.
Moms for Liberty's firm stance on what it deems critical race theory in school curriculum, has led many of its chapters to file complaints against anti-CRT bills and also ban books that they believe sexualize children and contain CRT material.
In 2021, a Tennessee chapter of Moms for Liberty was the first to file a complaint under the state’s new anti-CRT bill. The chapter took issue with a book by Ruby Bridges on her experiences integrating a school and also one on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which they called, “Anti-American, Anti-White, and Anti-Mexican.” In their opinion, these books focused too much on the negatives of history and would prefer that their children’s schools have books that focus on heroes like Clarence Thomas, Morgan Freeman, and Condoleezza Rice. The chapter specifically took issue with Bridges recollections of a White mob yelling at her on her way to school and pictures of firemen hosing Black children in the MLK March on Washington.
Instead, Moms for Liberty recommended using The Making of America to teach history. This 1985 book by conspiracy theorist and John Birch Society supporter W. Cleon Skousen portrays slave owners as the "worst victims of slavery" and claims that although the Founders wanted to free slaves, most slaves were unprepared for lives of freedom.
When an anti-CRT bill went into place in New Hampshire, the Moms for Liberty chapter there announced a reward of $500 if someone could catch a teacher breaking the law. The Tweet announcing this was retweeted by the national organization.
Moms for Liberty has been at the forefront of the battle for book bans, which often includes labeling teachers and librarians who have books deemed inappropriate as groomers and also reading excerpts of books aloud without context at school board meetings to raise alarm in other parents.
In an extreme case, a Lonoke County, an AR chapter Moms for Liberty member was recorded during a meeting saying about a local school library, “I’m telling you, if I had any mental issues, they would all be plowed down by a freaking gun right now.” She was subsequently banned from school grounds.
Dangerous Liaisons
In addition to falling in line with James Lindsay’s groomer rhetoric and Chris Rufo's CRT attacks, Moms for Liberty has not only developed but leveraged its close political alliances and ties to extremist groups to broaden its reach and spread its messages of anti-inclusion and hate.
This has been done in tandem with an effort to publicly rebrand the organization and appeal to a less radical audience. Although the group got its start on some of the most right-wing media outlets, it has since removed these press releases and appearances from its website, including the Glenn Beck Program, Breitbart, and the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Within Moms for Liberty's web of political allies are a number of connections to antigovernment groups, White nationalists, election deniers, and participants in January 6th events.
Moms for Liberty has been publicly supported by several conservative groups and politicians, including FL Gov. Ron DeSantis, who officially endorsed several of the organization’s members running for school board positions in Florida — unprecedented in the state's non-partisan school board elections. He also publicly commented on the group’s suspension from PayPal, stating that he planned to crack down on “woke banking.”
The political action committee that allowed Moms for Liberty to support so many candidates during the 2022 midterm election cycle was mostly funded by a $50,000 gift from Publix grocery store heiress, Julie Fancelli, who also financed one of the rallies leading up to the January 6th storming of the Capitol Complex.
Alexis Speigelman, Moms for Liberty’s legislative chair and chair of the Sarasota County chapter, was among “Stop the Steal’ organizer, Roger Stone's allies who planned a caravan to Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott’s house with the goal of demanding that he challenge President Biden’s presidential victory.
An even deeper connection is Bridget Ziegler and her husband, Christian, vice-chair of the Florida Republican party. Christian was at January 6th events but claimed that he was so far away that he only saw people waving flags. He never saw “anyone entering the Capitol or breaking stuff.”
In 2021, Christian told the Washington Post that he felt an alliance with Moms for Liberty would be crucial to Gov. DeSantis’ re-election campaign, 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.” Although Bridget Ziegler has officially left Moms for Liberty, she also still has ties to the group, having been a featured speaker at their national summit. She also helped develop DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Moms for Liberty publicly advocated in favor of.
The national organization and individual chapters have ties with groups that SPLC has designated as hate or extremist.
One of the most notable connections is the association with several chapters with the Proud Boys, a White nationalist group. Pictures have circulated across social media of Moms for Liberty leaders and members posing with Proud Boys in their full regalia.
Bridget Ziegler was recently elected to the Sarasota County school board – a victory due in part to local Proud Boys, who she was pictured celebrating with afterwards. She later attempted to downplay the connection.
Moms for Liberty also teamed up with the controversial group, Gays Against Groomers, to host an anti-LGBTQ “Protect the Children” rally in Florida, which also included Proud Boys flashing White power signs.
Some areas of Illinois have exhibited an intersectionality with hate groups. Shannon Adcock, chair of Moms for Liberty DuPage County also leads Awake Illinois, a group that shares many of Moms for Liberty’s views on anti-LGBTQ. Under her guidance, the two groups have collaborated on a number of efforts, including a “Pro-Child Stand Up” rally against gender ideology and gender affirming care that featured James Lindsay, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. The two groups have also teamed up with local Proud Boys to host anti- LGBTQ programs.
Some Moms for Liberty members have turned to law enforcement for support, specifically members of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Some Moms for Liberty member have called on the sheriffs, claiming “sex crimes,” further feeding their narrative of children being sexualized and also pushing into the area of QAnon conspiracies of children being groomed by progressives.
When Jennifer Pippin, chair of the Indian River County, Florida chapter of Moms for Liberty, discovered that books flagged as inappropriate their group members were still in the local school’s library, she filed a criminal complaint with the local sheriff, who began an investigation. Sheriffs in other Florida counties have started similar investigations as well, with Gov. DeSantis' blessing.
As members of CSPOA and Moms for Liberty find themselves aligning on issues such as mask and vaccine mandates and election fraud conspiracies, they further develop alliances to help one another. As sheriffs begin to launch criminal investigations on behalf of Moms for Liberty, many sheriffs running for office are asking Moms for Liberty chapters to campaign for them.
Moms for Liberty witnessed virtual overnight success due in part to its affiliations with right-wing media, politicians, and extremist groups alike. Now pegged as the sweethearts of the parental rights movement, the group's dangerous reach into education and politics can be seen across the country in its 250+ chapters. According to co-founder, Tiffany Justice, “there are a little over 3,000 counties in the United States and we hope to have a chapter in every county.”
The Indian River County chapter furthered its antigovernment interests, supporting county officials’ decision to make it a “second amendment sanctuary,” citing the Constitution as justification. By adopting this designation, Indian River County prohibits gun control measures, mostly on the rationale that they would infringe on second amendment rights.
From The Southern Poverty Law Center website, no date listed
Moms for Liberty among conservative groups named 'extremist' by civil rights watchdog
By: Odette Yousef
More than two years into a conservative push against teaching about Black history, literature and gender identity in public schools, the Southern Poverty Law Center has concluded that a dozen so-called "parental rights" groups behind the movement are extremist.
The civil rights organization particularly focuses on the largest of these, the nonprofit Moms for Liberty, in its annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022, saying that it advances an anti-student inclusion agenda.
The SPLC has put it and similar organizations on its list of anti-government extremist entities, drawing comparisons between them and parent groups that attempted to re-segregate public schools during the civil rights movement.
"They really are seeking to undermine public education holistically and to divide communities," said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the SPLC. Carroll Rivas said her organization has received numerous calls from parents and educators who are concerned about the sudden appearance and tactics of Moms for Liberty activists in their schools.
Moms for Liberty, founded in early 2021 by conservative women in Florida, has quickly expanded its presence across the country. It has landed national media attention for its efforts — sometimes successful — to fight COVID safety measures in schools, ban books, limit discussion about race and LGBTQ identities and populate local school boards with conservatives. Two of its co-founders, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, provided NPR with a written statement in lieu of an interview to respond to the SPLC designation.
"Two-thirds of Americans think the public education system is on the wrong track today. That is why our organization is devoted to empowering parents to be a part of their child's public school education," the statement read.
Recent NPR/Ipsos polling finds, however, that most Americans, including nearly half of Republicans, oppose banning certain books in schools — a central campaign for Moms for Liberty.
Referring to the SPLC, Descovich and Justice further state: "We believe that parental rights do not stop at the classroom door and no amount of hate from groups like this is going to stop that."
But Carroll Rivas said she believes the the "parental rights" banner that Moms for Liberty flies does not extend to all parents.
"We're thinking about the kinds of parents — parents of LGBTQ students, parents of Black students who want to hear the full story of the history of the U.S., parents of all kinds — who just want to make sure that their kids are getting treated fairly and equitably and that they have a really good, thriving education," she said.
The SPLC compares the group to pro-segregationist parent groups
The SPLC report compares Moms for Liberty and similar organizations of today to pro-segregationist parent groups that flourished in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. That decision forced schools across the U.S. to integrate, but it also gave fire to a movement to undermine public education. The report names, as examples, the Mothers' League of Central High School and the "Cheerleaders" of New Orleans, which were established to resist inclusiveness at schools during that earlier era.
"That was hateful then, and it's hateful now," said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University.
Hiller said BDI, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks political violence, has had Moms for Liberty on its radar.
"What we've been watching really closely around this particular group... [are] times when they show up with other groups that have explicitly advocated or committed intimidations and violence," Hiller said. "There are cases at school boards in North Carolina, for example, where Moms for Liberty showed up together with Proud Boys and were part of intimidating the school board." Carroll Rivas echoed this observation.
"Their organizing is quite concerning for how it harms communities, but also because of the associations with other hard right groups that they've really had since their inception," she said.
Some members of Moms for Liberty chapters have also been accused -- and in at least one case, convicted — of harassment.
Carroll Rivas said she hopes that adding Moms for Liberty and similar groups to its extremist list will help inform communities, reporters and politicians who are just learning about them. And, perhaps, that it might tarnish association with those organizations. But in a time of deepening polarization in American politics, she acknowledges that it may not.
Later this month, in Philadelphia, Moms for Liberty will hold its annual conference. And in a sign of its growing political clout, among its slated speakers are three leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination: former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
From NPR, June 7, 2023
Moms for Liberty chapter apologizes for quoting Hitler in its newsletter
By: Ali Swenson
An Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit that advocates for “ parental rights ” in education and was recently labeled as “extremist” by an anti-hate watchdog, is apologizing and condemning Adolf Hitler after using a quote attributed to the Nazi leader in its inaugural newsletter.
The group’s Hamilton County chapter on Thursday posted a revised version of its newly launched newsletter, “The Parent Brigade,” on Facebook after it had previously shared a version that featured the Hitler quote on its front cover.
“We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,” read a statement from chapter chair Paige Miller on the cover of the revised newsletter. “We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.”
The first version of the newsletter included the quote, “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,” and cited Hitler. While the origin of the quote is not entirely clear, it has been attributed in numerous historical texts to a 1935 rally speech by the Nazi leader.
Late Wednesday, after The Indianapolis Star reported on the quote, the local Moms for Liberty chapter updated the newsletter to add a “context” section.
“The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert,” the updated version read. “If the government has control over our children today, they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.”
By Thursday morning, the chapter had removed those versions and posted its new copy of the newsletter, replacing the Hitler quote with the chair’s apology.
The quote has frequently been used by conservative Christian groups as a warning of “what they experience as liberal or left-wing attempts to indoctrinate children,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
In 2014, for example, a church group in Alabama removed a billboard after using the quote next to images of children. And last year, a Colorado school board member faced calls to resign after posting the quote on Facebook.
“They use it as a way to get people’s attention,” Pitcavage said. “Regardless, you should never use Adolf Hitler quotes to get your point across.”
Some who encountered the newsletter interpreted Moms for Liberty’s use of the quote as a tacit endorsement for Hitler and his beliefs. Moms for Liberty has faced criticism for its activism against school inclusion, including trying to remove books related to race and gender identity from school libraries.
“It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the largest anti-student inclusion movement organization has allegedly used a quote from one of the appalling figureheads in history,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research, reporting and analysis for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center labeled Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist” group in its 2022 annual report.
Moms for Liberty has come under increasing national scrutiny as it has become a power player in Republican politics. Five presidential candidates plan to speak —- and several grassroots groups plan to protest —- at the group’s annual summit in Philadelphia next week.
The national Moms for Liberty chapter took to Twitter to call the Star’s reporting “intentional dishonesty,” even while issuing a statement that condemned the chapter’s decision to quote Hitler.
“They should not have quoted Hitler. Period,” read the statement from co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice. “Parents are passionate about protecting future generations from tyranny, but Hitler did not need to be quoted to make that point.”
From AP, June 22, 3023