CHICAGO — Local Democratic leaders from coast to coast have largely been left to fend for themselves in combating Moms for Liberty, as the far-right group continues its book-banning march into school districts small and large alike nationwide.
As Raw Story first reported last summer, some powerful Democratic leaders in Washington were — and, as we found out covering this year’s Democratic National Convention, continue to be — ignorant of the group that’s been labeled an “extremist” organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center Center.
“The group Mom's for Liberty — how much are they on your radar these days?” Raw Story asked outside the hall floor of the DNC.
“I’m not familiar with them,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told Raw Story here in Chicago last week.
That means local leaders in Peters’ home state — like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) who complained to Raw Story last June about the group’s successful outreach in mosques in her district — are left cut off from the clout and resources only a U.S. senator controls.
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But it’s not just Michigan. This election cycle, just as during the 2022 midterms, Peters’ is chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (or DSCC), which means the tens of millions of dollars the powerful senator ultimately dispenses — along with the most expensive PR firms, targeted polling and voter databases controlled by the DSCC — are also cut off from Democrats combatting the far-right group on the front lines.
While local Democrats have recently beaten back school board challenges from Moms for Liberty in places like Florida—where the group was founded in 2021—in just over a year since Raw Story first reported on the group flying under the radar of national Democratic leaders, it expanded from having chapters in 44 states to now claiming a presence in 48 states, sans only libertarian Vermont and religiously conservative Utah.
“Here's what I've learned from my experience in life, no freedom is safe. You always have to be vigilant with these folks that want to take us backwards,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) — the former two-term mayor of West Palm Beach — told Raw Story at the DNC. “We're keeping our eyes open.”
“Democratic Party leaders — because they're more on the local, local level — it kind of feels like it's off their radar,” Raw Story pressed. “Talked to Sen. Peters and he said he didn't even know who they are, and he’s running the DSCC.”
“I think we learn a lesson: every level of government's important. You can do a lot of damage with the school boards,” Frankel said.
While that seems to be news to Democratic leaders, it’s also common knowledge in the GOP.
Moms for Liberty is hosting its “Joyful Warriors” summit in the nation’s capital from last Thursday through this Sunday. On cue, former President Donald Trump headlined the now-annual affair.
Last year, at the group’s Philadelphia summit, Trump vowed, if given a second term as president, to eliminate the Department of Education and endorsed the direct election of public school principals by parents.
“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 told attendees at last year’s summit. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to America.”
Trump isn’t alone. It seems the Supreme Court’s also sympathetic to Moms for Liberty’s argument of late.
Earlier in August, the nation’s high court handed Moms for Liberty and other conservative organizations a major win when, by a 5-4 vote, justices shot down an emergency request from the Biden administration to keep some of its new Title IX protections for LGBTQ students in place.
Historically, Title IX protects against sex discrimination. Still, for the first time President Joe Biden extended it to gender identity and sexual orientation, which Moms for Liberty, many Republican attorneys general and the group’s far-right allies have challenged in court.
While Moms for Liberty and their GOP friends keep marching forward in the courts, school boards and in local libraries nationwide, they seem to continue flying off the radar of many Democratic Party leaders in Washington.
“I’ll have more to say about them later on after the convention’s over,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told Raw Story as he and his entourage made their way to the DNC stage ahead of his speech last Wednesday evening.
Jeffries may not have a talking point handy on the group, but the top female in House Democratic leadership knows Moms for Liberty and says her party’s broader strategy to combat the formerly fringe right encompasses the likes of them too.
“They have a very bleak view and a very restrictive view of the First Amendment and our constitutional rights,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) — the House minority whip — told Raw Story at Chicago’s United Center during the DNC. “I think we're going to be successful against them like we are going to be defeating extremism in November.”
But how does a political party defeat an entity many party leaders hardly know exists? The party’s rank-and-file has some ideas.
“I have legislation on book bans, so obviously I'm very concerned about these bans on our bodies, bans on our hair and bans on our books. It’s an assault on our intellectual freedom,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — a member of the so-called Squad — told Raw Story.
“Are you worried that Democratic leaders in Washington feel a little insulated from what's really happening at the local level?” Raw Story asked.
“Well, all I know is that book bans sit at that intersection of the most marginalized communities that are targeted by Republicans. They attack women authors, anti-Black authors, LGBTQ representation in our books,” Pressley said. “That's why I'm focused on it, and I do think it's a resonant issue with people. It's one of the things, when I raise it, that gets one of the biggest reactions in the room.”
That message may resonate in left-leaning Massachusetts, but Moms for Liberty itself is resonating in red and battleground states alike, especially because of the attention they get from Trump and other top GOP officials coast to coast.
“Yes, they're very active, particularly in some of the districts outside of Austin. They've run some really disgusting campaigns,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) told Raw Story at the DNC.
While national Democrats hope to flip Texas blue in coming years, Moms for Liberty and its ideology is taking root locally in the Lonestar State.
“In Texas, we have them attacking our school boards, and then we have our governor determined to destroy public education by giving all the money to private religious academies and recently added that we have to teach the Bible in school,” Doggett said. “It really is coming in all directions from people that don't believe in public schools.”
Doggett says the hyper-local focus of Moms for Liberty is what makes it such a danger.
“It is a resurgence of right-wing criticism of public education, and the only thing we can do is turn out better,” Doggett said. “Some of these right-wing foundations are spending tens of thousands of dollars in what are normally minimal campaign budgets. So I’m very concerned about it.”
“Do you think the grassroots can combat that?” Raw Story asked.
“I do, but I think, you know, it's much more glamorous to focus on Congress, the Senate, the presidency,” Doggett said. “And what's happening to our public schools is being determined by those trustees, and so it's vital to have more people involved there.”
Still, Democratic powerbrokers along the nation’s coasts are banking on their party’s overall messaging, beating back the slow creep of book bans and school board packing schemes from the right.
“People feel like this book-banning agenda is part of what's weird and creepy about the Republican Party,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Raw Story just off the floor of the DNC. “I mean, [Gov.] Ron DeSantis never even got a second look nationally because the Moms for Liberty agenda in Florida was a non-starter even in the Republican Party.”
While Trump and other top Republican leaders continue rewarding, emboldening and, ultimately, building Moms for Liberty into a formidable national — if hyper-local — organization, Democrats continue to doubt the creep of Moms for Liberty, no matter how ‘creepy’ they are to the likes of the left.
“It's a real loser of a fight for them if they're trying to build a 50% plus one coalition nationally,” Murphy told Raw Story. “People, you know, want safe schools. They want schools with good teachers. They don't want schools where the focus is on bullying gay kids and banning books.”
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