I Watched the Moms for Liberty Conference

...so you don't have to.

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Nikki Haley (right) and Moms for Liberty’s Tiffany Justice (left) laugh about the idea that Moms for Liberty is “a terrorist organization”.

I told myself I wouldn’t. That it was bad for my mental health. But I watched the morning/ lunch sessions of Day 2 of the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors: Rocking the Cradle of Liberty” conference in Philadelphia.

While moderators and guests at the event tried hard to present positivity and confidence, there was an undercurrent of defensiveness that seemed to be a reaction to recent national criticism of the group and its local chapters for quoting Hitler, for promoting extremist ideologies, and for connections to the Proud Boys.

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My former governor takes the stage.

The Kershaw County, South Carolina, Moms for Liberty chair introduced Nikki Haley just after 11:30 AM. Given that the Kershaw chapter Facebook group has about 65 members, this is a pretty good indication of one reason local and national political operatives have gravitated towards the group: it now commands the kind of outsized influence that has drawn virtually every serious GOP presidential candidate to a conference that is ostensibly about niche issues like school policy.

Early in her remarks (which you can see in full here), Haley made a joke about realizing in college that doing the books at her parents' business as an adolescent was a form of “child labor". That got a chuckle from the audience, but the right has seen significant success this year at rolling back longstanding restrictions on child labor. As John A. Fliter, Kansas State Associate Professor of Political Science, and Betsy Wood, Bard College Assistant Professor of American History wrote, “We find it puzzling that supporters touted the bill [loosening child labor restrictions] as enhancing parental rights because the law removes any formal role for parents in balancing their kids' education and employment.” Though the conference is— again, ostensibly— a forum for “moms” to discuss “parent’s rights,” Haley spent little time on children, students, or schools in her remarks.

Unsurprisingly, the former SC governor seemed far more interested in stumping for herself than in addressing Moms for Liberty’s platform or priorities. One of her only concessions to the topic of “parent’s rights” or children was when she bragged about “holding them [students] back” as part of South Carolina's divisive Read to Succeed legislation. Among researchers, grade retention is a controversial strategy for addressing literacy, and South Carolina’s version was extremely costly and didn’t show signs of addressing the problems it was meant to address.

The sales pitch Haley gave for her candidacy was odd, focusing heavily on her tenure as governor. For example, Haley listed off a bunch of rankings for SC (like "friendliest state"). She didn't mention our abysmal educational¹, infant mortality (ranked among the worst in the country by CDC), and firearm mortality (twelfth in the nation according to CDC) rankings. Haley often played defense against critics, saying, for example, that South Carolina Voter ID laws aren't "disenfranchising" because "minorities can go to the DMV; we always have". The law was actually blocked in federal court for a year when it was introduced in 2012, and research suggests that Voter ID laws do, indeed, hurt minority voter participation (which is often the goal of the laws).²

Addressing her time as UN Ambassador under Trump, she said when she was given the job (an appointment Trump made, in his own words, to elevate his political ally Henry McMaster to the SC governor’s mansion), “I didn't really know what the United Nations did, I just knew no one liked it”. That general approach to governance played out through the day, as former and current elected officials tried to blame everything on government while presenting their own use of government as the primary solution (with occasional concessions to the power of the “grassroots” organizing Moms for Liberty was supposedly doing).

But what Haley really wanted to talk about the border and immigration, jumping on every chance to help viewers fill out their 2023 GOP talking points BINGO card. She occasionally dropped a sentence or two about "CRT" or "curriculum transparency" as a surface-level nod to the public obsessions of Moms For Liberty, only as segues back into how China is taking over the country or how the border patrol isn't arresting enough asylum seekers.

One area where Haley’s current campaign narrative does dovetail with the mission of Moms for Liberty is in her cheerful denial that systemic racism exists, though for Haley this is a difficult rhetorical tightrope, given that a larger part of her appeal to many voters is that she has, herself, overcome systemic discrimination as a child of immigrants coming of age in rural South Carolina (where, I can assure you, racism does actually still exist). “I was elected the first female minority governor in history,” Haley beamed, before continuing, “America's not racist, we're blessed."

For context, Haley was elected governor of South Carolina twelve years ago. The idea that this was a historic first for a minority woman and yet somehow disproves the assertion that the US still has progress to make on systemic discrimination would be hilarious if so many people didn’t greedily lap it up.

Haley then moved into a Q&A session with Mom’s for Liberty’s Tiffany Justice. Interestingly, the Q&A started with a conversation about the public being mean to “moms” engaging in public policy. The irony, of course, is that Moms for Liberty's brand is built on the harassment of educators, who are overwhelmingly women (and very frequently moms, themselves).

Haley encouraged the audience: "Keep it up. Because women are 51% of the electorate"

This selective binary between “moms” and “women” is a large part of the “parent’s rights” narrative, which seems to count as parents only those who are a particular brand of cultural conservative. For example, “the teachers unions” were presented as the bogeymen throughout the day, because they're opposed to “women” and/ or “moms,” despite the obvious fact that teachers unions are composed mainly of women/ moms, because a large majority of teachers in the US (about 77%) are women. While speakers got in a few transphobic digs about the supposed destruction of female identity by “the Left,” the word “moms” in “Moms for Liberty” doesn’t mean people who are mothers, but people (who may or may not be mothers) who support the narrow vision of an anti- “woke,” politically right, nationalism.

Several speakers took a similar approach to “free speech” throughout the day, hailing the First Amendment’s protection of speech before throwing out caveats: Justice got in a quick “Well, I’m opposed to sexualizing children” as she and Haley acknowledged the constitutional rights of the protesters outside, and another speaker bemoaned the fact that Marxists also had “parental rights”.

In the “parent’s rights” crusade, anything (even a book about seahorses) that addresses— even tangentially— gender or sexuality can be quickly defined as pornography or “sexualizing children” when it becomes convenient. (As I’ve written before, this dangerous misuse of the idea of grooming harms the ability of teachers and other concerned adults to actually address grooming and sexual abuse of children.)

Haley acknowledged the protesters outside and said she supported the First Amendment. "Stop demonizing people because they have a different opinion.” This comment received a smattering of applause that was frankly hilarious at a conference centered around censorship and demonizing of transgender people, “the Left,” “Marxists,” “Democrats,” and “labor unions,”.

Justice quipped, pointing at herself, “This is the face of domestic terrorism, apparently.” Haley: “Well then count me as a Moms for Liberty, because that’s what I am too, then.” The thing is, while Moms for Liberty actually hasn’t been accused of being a domestic terrorist group itself— the accusation Justice is trying to fundraise on actually comes from the SPLC, which labeled the group as “antigovernment” based on exactly the kinds of things participants repeatedly said at the conference— members of the organization do have documented ties to groups like the the antigovernment militia group Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters.

Justice ended the Q&A on a similarly ridiculous note, arguing that Moms for Liberty is “nonpartisan,” but the list of sponsors that started playing in a loop on the screen only seconds later consisted purely of groups like the Heritage Foundation, Leadership Institute ("training conservatives since 1979”), and Parents Defending Education. (Parents Defending Education, like M4L, is also on the SPLC "hate watch" list.)

The bureaucrats rail against the status quo.

After a few minutes, Justice came out again to introduce South Carolina Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters, Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, and Jacob Oliva, former interim Commissioner of Education in Florida/ current Secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education.

Ryan Walters, addressing the Moms for Liberty audience: “You are the most patriotic group in the country”. Walters got some of the few legitimate pre-Trump cheers of the day with lines about "radical teacher unions,” and said, with an absolutely straight face, “This is the most important conference to happen in Philadelphia since 1776.” (Walters liked this line so much that he retweeted it the next day.)

Walters’ most consistent talking point was that public educators are “forcing socialism and Marxism” in the classroom, and this made him, predictably, the most enthusiastically Moms for Liberty person on the panel, and the most blatant adherent of the “cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory.

Ellen Weaver, not to be outdone, said, “I truly believe that saving our country starts with saving our schools... That is what the radical, woke Left is after.” (She was still outdone: this group was definitely much more into Walters’ brand of open extremism and Christian nationalism than it was in Weaver’s political-operative-cosplaying-as-church-lady schtick. )

In terms of reading the actual room, Weaver didn’t really understand the assignment, trying to score points with the more extreme elements while also addressing home-turf criticisms that no one in Moms for Liberty is likely to care much about. She told the crowd, “My path to this job was not through a conventional education pathway." That's an understatement: Weaver has zero educational experience, was appointed to an oversight committee by a now-disgraced state legislator convicted in a corruption scandal, and was handed a "think tank" leadership role by former SC Senator Jim “gay people shouldn’t be teachers” DeMint.

“So many people told me, you're not qualified for this job,” Weaver continued, as if that were proof that she had overcome something, instead of proof that the powerful and well-connected will generally find support from the powerful and well-connected.

Later in the conversation, Weaver would smugly ask the crowd, “I just have a question for you. Do you know what a woman is?” as if suddenly realizing that the crowd needed its Two Minutes Hate.

But nothing suggested the need for educational leaders to have nut-and-bolts educational experience more than Weaver's and Walters' repeated appeal to the fantasy that public schools are spending so much time on “woke” content that we aren't focusing on literacy. The second part of the panel discussion consisted mostly of all four panelists competing to see who could say “science of reading” and/ or “phonics” the most.

This, in terms of rhetoric that falls apart under scrutiny but captivates people who passionately don’t understand what they’re talking about, hit the spot between “woke indoctrination” the talking point that their backers really wanted them to address: learning interventions you can buy. Like “holding back” students, “science of reading” certainly has its proponents, but its meaning is often, as here, left vague enough that it isn’t clear what interventions proponents are actually suggesting. It is also frequently presented (as here) as if it is the only model of literacy instruction that includes “phonics” (which seems pretty ridiculous on its face).

Weaver: "Instead of woke nonsense, we have got to get back to basics. We have got to teach phonics." (Teachers never stopped “teaching phonics,” though models like “balanced literacy” hold that phonics has to be balanced with other ways of making meaning in reading.)

Ryan Walters, a bit later: "Remember Hooked on Phonics? It was one of the best-selling infomercials on TV. We know what works.” That was the entirety of his argument. Who needs research?

(Oliva also kept talking about the “science of reading.”)

Diaz later bemoaned a "monopoly" by "the elites" on how to teach, but then transitioned into why LETRS and “the science of reading” must be required in schools. (I'm not necessarily against these programs if teachers and other experts want to use them, though we are far from a consensus among the people who are actually experts in teaching literacy, but the panel seemed united in creating a literal monopoly for them.)

Here and elsewhere, it was hilarious to hear Diaz and Oliva, both Florida education officials, complain about “the system”. The “system" in Florida probably has the most years of any state to demonstrate the effectiveness of the "school choice" model these folks want. If it's still "failing," maybe that undermines your point! (Weaver’s campaign for Superintendent of Education— an elected position in South Carolina— had a similarly surreal approach. She had been Chair of the state Education Oversight Commission for years, giving her significant power to shape legislative policies, choose state tests, and shape the narrative around educational research, but she adopted the same anti- “status quo” talking points as her mentor, Mick Zais, and other right wing candidates. Turns out, it’s tough to be David when you’re Goliath.)

In terms of policy, the narrative from the panel boiled down to this: schools don't have time to teach “the science of reading” (I was unconvinced that any of them, particularly Waters, had any kind of technical understanding of what, if anything, this phrase means in this context) because we spend too much time on “woke indoctrination”. That's it. That's the platform.

It was fascinating to hear Walters complain that the “federal government gives you some money” (and then attaches requirements to those funds) as part of a conversation about the evils of the federal Department of Education (Walters would like to abolish it; Weaver has also floated the idea of rejecting federal education funds, something that would cost South Carolina roughly $900 million a year). Walters has been accused of losing $18 million in funds and just days before the conference was implicated in alleged mismanagement of state school voucher funds.

The solution to all of this federal overreach? As it was for participants in the 1960s backlash to Civil Rights, it’s states rights, of course. Throughout the sessions, a major theme was giving back power to the “local” level. Haley vowed to meet more frequently with governors if she became president. Justice compared this to what Moms for Liberty’s members were doing at the local level. Walters promised, “We are gonna make school board elections great again.” (During his mini-rally later in the day, Trump would try to one-up all of this by saying, absurdly, “I will fight for the direct election of school principals by parents.”)

And what is preventing local governments from being responsive to the needs of parents, now (aside from the evil federal government and its civil rights protections)? Why, the labor unions and entrenched “status quo” of government bureaucracy, of course! (And who better to fix it than a panel of government bureaucrats?)

Justice tapped into a real concern of parents that has been often weaponized by the school choice and parent’s rights movements: “The education system likes to make things complicated. Lots of acronyms...” On the one hand, this is true— processes like Individualized Education Plans and Title IX protections can be consuming and opaque— and should be addressed. On the other, lots of those “acronyms” relate to federal protections for marginalized groups and special education students. One of the biggest issues with vouchers— other than the danger that unregulated money will flow into the wrong places, as it evidently has done in Oklahoma under Walters’ supervision— is that there is no guarantee, once those tyrannical “strings” the government attaches to the money are gone, that students who most need protection from “the system” will get it.

Weaver’s contribution to this discussion: “One of the greatest powers of the state education agency is communication.” But, as a South Carolina citizen, I’ve found Weaver to be virtually invisible since the campaign ended. She popped up last week at a meeting of school administrators, and she’s made a few public comments about “school choice,” but that’s it.

As the panel started to wind down, the participants gave the crowd the McCarthy-style red meat they had apparently come to feast upon.

Walters: "These far [Left] groups have declared war on your classrooms." You'd think if this were true there would be even a single example of which "groups" he's talking about. On the other hand, this conference has document connections to Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Weaver: "As Ryan says, we are in a fight... They're going to say you are just culture warriors... You are reality warriors. Don't ever let them shame you for asking questions." (What is a reality warrior? We may never know, though Walters’ extremely transphobic ad from this week might provide a clue.)

You could have cut the disingenuous victim mentality with a knife. Moms for Liberty, never a “grassroots” organization in the first place, has quickly become— at least at the national level— a group of some of the most powerful political operatives in the country, with multiple GOP presidential candidates jockeying for their approval. This transparently fake underdog persona reminded me deeply of Weaver's faux-"grassroots" campaign for superintendent last year, where, as the sitting Chair of the Education Oversight Committee, flush with unprecedented campaign contributions and $750,000 in dark money from Jeff Yass, she was still railing against the “education status quo”.

But then again, it worked. The thing I have to give Moms for Liberty, Haley, Weaver, et al, credit for is that they are great at presenting a smiling, friendly "mom" persona that masks what's going on underneath the organization.

But who is Moms for Liberty fighting? Who is the other side in the “joyful war” waged by this “nonpartisan” organization of “moms”?

Justice gave a strong hint when she closed the panel with, "Next up: President Trump,” before reminding participants they wouldn’t be able to bring bags into the Trump rally portion of the afternoon.

“Please go visit our vendors,” she said.

This piece updated slightly 8/24 to clarify language.

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Here’s my version of a teacher supply list:

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1. It’s noteworthy that ALEC, the shady rightwing bill mill behind the Read to Succeed law, as well as many of the pro-corporate, anti-public education positions espoused by the panelists and by Haley, ranks SC 12th in the nation. How is this possible? ALEC excludes a measure many other rankings (rightly or wrongly) use: NAEP scores. It also includes metrics like “School Choice” and “Homeschool Burden” because it is a score of policy preferences, and not outcomes.

2. For a good rundown of the mark Haley left on South Carolina as governor, I highly recommend Paul Bower’s piece, “A South Carolinian’s Guide to Nikki Haley”.