Former president and current 2024 presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, headed a list of prominent speakers at the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” National Summit held June 29 through July 2 in Philadelphia. Trump thanked the group’s leaders Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich, and Marie Rogerson, and commended them for “the amazing job they’ve done building the organization into a grassroots juggernaut with 120,000 members in 45 states and growing every single day.” Trump observed that “people are inspired [by your work] and you have a lot of people who are very much in support.” He praised the crowd “of activists and citizen leaders” for attending the summit, saying: “You have to be an activist nowadays because we are dealing with crazy people.”

Of moms in general, Trump said, “you have proven there is no earthly force more powerful than the love of a mother for her children; so true. In school board races, PTA meetings, and town halls across the nation, you have taught the radical Marxists and communists a lesson they will never forget — don’t mess with America’s moms.” He added: “As we gather today, our beloved nation is teetering on the edge of tyranny; our enemies are waging war on freedom and faith, on science and religion, on history and tradition, on law, on our children, on the family, on America itself.” But, he contended, “the people in this room” and fellow lovers of liberty will never let that happen “because we love our nation, we love our children, and we love our freedom.”

The four-day summit drew hundreds of attendees from 40 states, including organization chapter leaders. It attracted a number of influential speakers, among them Republican presidential hopefuls Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds (R-District 19), and Dennis Prager, speaker, writer, talk radio host, and co-founder of PragerU.

But the conference wasn’t limited to stump speeches by politicians and positive reinforcement from other speakers. As reported by the Washington Examiner, the summit also featured “training sessions to give parents the tools they need to advocate their rights as parents against local school boards.” These sessions covered topics such as “how to spot classroom materials that ‘sexualize’ children,” how to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, how to deal with a hostile media and political adversity, and more.

“It's one more tool in my peaceful arsenal,” the Moms for Liberty chapter chairwoman for Pierce County, Washington told the Examiner. “I can use that knowledge to then help disrupt some of these lies that are being told to us.” Another chapter leader from Maryland said: “They're providing us with the information and the resources for how to go about those types of everyday battles within our school system.”

Targeted by the Left

The remarkable growth and success of Moms for Liberty has landed the organization squarely in the Left’s crosshairs. The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently labeled the Moms “an extremist hate group” along with several other parents’ rights organizations, including the successful Parents Defending Education.

Tiffany Justice called out the SPLC for “painting a target on the backs of parents” and for adding her group to its “hate map.” She told the Washington Examiner that inclusion in the SPLC’s map and its 2022 Hate and Extremism report is “insulting” and “absurd” and could have “safety implications for the organization’s thousands of members.”

Addressing the charge in a separate interview with Fox News personality Harris Faulkner, Justice vowed that the SPLC’s label “wouldn’t deter the organization.” She explained that Moms for Liberty is “a group of moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles, community members that are very concerned about the direction of the country.” She continued:

• We’re going to keep doing the work that we do across the country. [I]f you talk to the moms and dads on the ground, they're concerned about some of the things that they're seeing taught in schools. They're concerned about the fact that not every American child is learning to read.... So we're going to keep focused on our mission of getting liberty-minded individuals elected to school board[s] and ensuring that parental rights are protected at every level of government.

Efforts to silence parents

Moms for Liberty believes “there is an ongoing effort to silence and suppress parents’ voices,” and mounting evidence supports this contention. For example, a growing effort by teachers, school administrators, and mental health support personnel is quietly helping gender dysphoric kids “transition” without telling their parents.

Last month, the Daily Mail Online reported on a virtual workshop where “dozens” of teachers “traded tips on helping trans students change gender at school without their parents’ knowledge, while criticizing a raft of new Republican laws on sex and identity.” The sponsoring organization, the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), is funded by the Department of Education.

In another example, Fox News reported on June 13 that the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recommends that “states discard literacy standards and incorporate teachings of ‘race, antiracism, anti-Blackness, and LGBTQIA+’ in K-12 classrooms.” The group claims there has been bias in literacy instruction “since the 1600s,” ignoring diversity.

But parents’ rights observers say it’s actually the wishes of parents that are ignored in such one-sided recommendations and advocacy.

‘Joyful Warriors’ stand their ground

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich explained that the city of Philadelphia was chosen as the site of their event because “the Liberty Bell inscription says it all: Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof.” She continued: “It was a call to all of Pennsylvania when the bell was first installed in 1753 and it’s a call to all Americans today.” She explained that the very first part of her organization’s Mission Statement reads: “Moms for Liberty is dedicated to fighting for the survival of America,” and added: “Philadelphia is the birthplace of our country. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all written here.”

She might have mentioned that Pennsylvania is also home to the second-largest chapter of Moms for Liberty, second only to the organization’s home base of Florida.

Outside the downtown Marriott Hotel where the conference was held, the “massive protests” that were allegedly planned against the Moms largely fizzled out, and those that occurred were essentially peaceful. According to the Washington Examiner: “Several organizations, including ACT UP Philadelphia, Defense of Democracy, National Parents Union, and the Young Communist League, scheduled rallies and ‘dance party protests...’ The organizations handed out [so called] banned books, blared music, and heckled conference attendees.”

Inside the Marriott, hotel staff members “spoke of positive experiences” they had with the attendees. At the close of the conference on July 2^nd, “staff lined the convention center to give the mothers a round of applause for their cordiality and respectfulness.”

As for Moms for Liberty’s future, Justice and Descovich say their organization is not backing down. “The media and others have tried to paint us as a far-right-wing organization, and it's just not true, and it's unfortunate because it’s the silencing and suppressing of the voices of the American people ... We're going to stand our ground. We're not doing anything wrong.”

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