Trump will speak at Moms for Liberty convention as the group’s power at the ballot box is in question

(CNN) — Donald Trump, in his third White House bid, has sought to reignite the cultural battles over education that erupted throughout the country in recent years, and on Friday, he will appear before the conservative parents group that helped spark the fight.

Trump’s visit to Moms for Liberty’s annual convention in Washington is the latest sign of the organization’s clout in the Republican Party just three years into its formation. The former president’s K-12 agenda closely adheres to Moms for Liberty’s intense efforts to ban the teaching and discussion of certain topics related to sexuality, gender and race.

But as Moms for Liberty’s influence in the GOP has expanded, several high-profile controversies and the group’s recent mixed record at the ballot box have raised doubts about the organization’s effectiveness, if not the palatability of its platform.

The latest setback came last week in Florida, home of the group’s first chapter. The Sunshine State is where the group racked up several early wins, pulling school boards to the right. It teamed up with Gov. Ron DeSantis to expand parental rights and embolden districts to remove more books from school libraries, especially those with LGBTQ characters and themes, sparking both national backlash and copycat legislation in other states.

But in local elections there Tuesday, of the 14 candidates backed by the organization, just three won outright. Five lost, and six are headed to runoff elections later this fall. Several of the defeats came in deeply red parts of the state and in counties where Moms for Liberty founding leaders hailed from.

Those who defeated Moms for Liberty-approved candidates said their victories represented a rejection of the politicalization of schools that burst out Florida.

“My message to voters was community over chaos,” said Liz Barker, who defeated an incumbent conservative for a local school board seat in Sarasota County who was close to Bridget Ziegler, one of the group’s founders. “There has been sort of this mythical conversation around Moms for Liberty and it would be wise to not underestimate them because we saw how quickly they wreaked havoc on a nation of school boards, but I don’t think we should live in fear of them either.”

Ziegler, who has led an anti-LGBTQ push in schools, became a focal point of criticism when it came out that she and her husband, then-Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler, allegedly engaged in a consensual three-way sexual encounter with another woman. At the time, Christian Ziegler was under investigation after the woman accused him of later raping her. The Sarasota Police Department did not charge him, concluding that the sex was “likely consensual,” though the state party did censure him and remove this authority.

Moms for Liberty’s electoral losses are not just in Florida. An analysis of the 2023 elections by the left-leaning Brookings Institution found fewer than one-third of school board candidates endorsed by the organization won their races, a drop-off from 2022, when Moms for Liberty had a higher success rate.

Jon Valant, who has studied the organization’s political influence as director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, said the organization’s brand has seemingly become “more toxic” as the public grew more aware of its partisan politics and the culture wars it helped inflame.

Asked about Trump’s decision to address Moms for Liberty, his spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CNN, “No one has done more to make America strong and secure for our mothers and families than President Donald J. Trump.”

“As a new mom myself, I know how dangerous a Kamala Harris presidency would be for our children,” she added.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice strongly pushed back against assertions that the organization’s influence is waning. The organization says it now has more than 130,000 members in 300 chapters across 48 states and it takes credit for helping pass 43 new laws in 12 states.

“The critics critique. It’s what they do,” Justice told CNN. “But our growth has been exponential.”

Evan Power, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said its candidates won’t change how they talk about education issues, calling it “a fight for our next generation.”

“We’re going to full speed ahead,” Power said.

A veer into national politics

Heading into the 2024 election, the group is planning to spend more than $3 million in key presidential battlegrounds with advertising criticizing the Biden administration’s education policies.

The shift in focus from school board races to national politics comes as the organization becomes increasingly entwined with the GOP and its vast network of aligned conservative groups.

Last year’s summit in Philadelphia drew most of the Republican presidential field, including Trump, who avoided many other party cattle calls. There, Trump shared his promise to give favorable treatment to public schools that elect their principals (a proposal that Justice said Moms for Liberty does not back).

Moms for Liberty had a noticeable presence in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention, including a panel near the convention site featuring DeSantis and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

It has also deepened its ties to the Heritage Foundation, a DC-based conservative think tank. Heritage has donated to the organization and is a sponsor of this weekend’s summit. Its leaders have appeared at Moms for Liberty events and vice versa.

Moms for Liberty was also among the 100-plus organizations involved in Project 2025, a Heritage-led plan for a second Trump term that includes a 900-page playbook. Trump and his campaign have fought aggressively to distance themselves from Project 2025 — despite the former president’s deep ties to many of its authors — as Democrats have warned voters against the groups more provocative and controversial proposals.

Several individuals with ties to Project 2025 will speak at the summit in DC that Trump will keynote Friday evening, including the Heritage fellow who authored the section on education.

While Trump has tried to put Project 2025 at arm’s length, his K-12 agenda is aligned with its plans to eliminate the US Department of Education, a proposal that Moms for Liberty supports as well. One of the panels Friday at the conference is titled: “What does it mean to Abolish the Department of Education?”

Culture battles

Other panels will focus on the cultural battles that helped launch Moms for Liberty from a group of Florida women in 2021 worried about pandemic school closures and protocols to a national operation at the forefront of the fight over education politics.

“Protecting Kids from Secret Gender Transitions in Schools,” and “History of Marxism” are on the agenda, as is a panel focused on Title IX, the landmark education law barring sex-based discrimination that the Biden administration has used to expand protections for LGBTQ children in schools.

Trump has leaned into these battles as he seeks a second term. On his campaign website, Trump has vowed to use executive power to target schools where teachers “suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body” and bar transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ athletics. He has vowed to get “left-wing indoctrination out of schools” — echoing a regular talking point of Moms for Liberty candidates.

Leavitt, in her statement to CNN, accused Harris of wanting to “allow boys to play in girls’ sports” and supporting transgender surgeries for minors.

Jennifer Jenkins, who in 2020 defeated a school board member in Brevard County, Florida, who went on to co-found Moms for Liberty, has helped organize the pushback against the group’s priorities in the Sunshine State. While she said she believes rhetoric like Trump’s isn’t moving most parents anymore, she said that in many respects, “the damage has been done.”

She spoke to CNN shortly after a school board meeting where members voted to remove two books from schools. A school board member objected to one of the books — an English translation of a Japanese book about a high school gay couple — in part because the book was read right to left, just as it would be in Japanese.

“Even if Moms for Liberty disappear tomorrow, these horrible backwards laws won’t go away over night,” Jenkins said.

Justice made clear Moms for Liberty isn’t disappearing any time soon.

“We are just scratching the surface of the changes we’re going to make,” she said. “American parents are hungry for reform and change.”

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