In the fall of 2020, a group of mothers gathered around a kitchen table. They were concerned that public school administrators were making decisions about their children's health and education that overstepped their bounds. It felt like they were losing control over their kids. So they decided to band together and fight for their parental rights. Pretty compelling, right? It's hard to argue with moms. The GOP knows that. And that's why they've weaponized our reverence for motherhood by propping up Moms for Liberty — the “grassroots” organization that’s leading the charge in the culture wars in American public schools.
In the fall of 2020, a group of mothers gathered around a kitchen table. They were concerned that public school administrators were making decisions about their children's health and education that overstepped their bounds. It felt like they were losing control over their kids. So they decided to band together and fight for their parental rights. Pretty compelling, right? It's hard to argue with moms. The GOP knows that. And that's why they've weaponized our reverence for motherhood by propping up Moms for Liberty — the “grassroots” organization that’s leading the charge in the culture wars in American public schools.
This season's cover art features a photograph by Jonathan Wilkins.
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News reporter:
Who is Moms for Liberty?
News Clips Tina Descovich:
Moms for Liberty is a united group of parents across the country that are working to defend our parental rights at all levels of government. We very much saw a need for parents to reclaim their children's education.
News Clips Tiffany Justice:
I like to tell people I unpacked a lot of backpacks. I have four kids, 17, 14, 12, and 10. So, uh, really had a good sense about what was happening in America's public schools.
News Clips Tina Descovich:
We are seeing our children divided in America's public school classrooms. We want our children to be united together. We wanna unfold the full potential of every child in that classroom.
News Clips Tiffany Justice:
We really want parents to have a seat at the table, and if they don't wanna give us a seat, we're gonna bring our own.
Julie:
If you're a mom like I am, or even if you're not, what you just heard may sound… pretty reasonable. School is where our kids spend most of their time where they learn to read and do math, where they build friendships and figure out how to navigate in the world without us. We parents put a huge amount of trust in our public schools, so it's not surprising that moms wanna make sure that schools are doing what they're supposed to do. It's also easy to understand how parents can sometimes feel powerless like they lack the ability to make change or that they're being locked out of critical decisions that are affecting their kids. Some might go so far to say that it's natural for moms to come together and organize on behalf of their children.
Maurice Cunningham:
We've always looked in this country to mothers as the special protectors of children and the special protectors of the upbringing of children, and that includes in the education area. You know, women have had a hard long fight to political equality in this country, but one place women first gained purchase in public life was becoming school committee members.
Julie:
The women and moms for Liberty are tapping into powerful cultural narratives about mothers and deep traditions of women's activism. But what if the change they're advocating for is this:
School Board Speaker:
Parents beware of terms like social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion,
School Board Speaker:
Because you have become so open-minded on these issues that your brains have fallen out.
School Board Speaker:
They don't care about your children. As a matter of fact, they hate them. They hate your kids. They hate my kids. They hate your kids. They hate my kids. Get it?
Julie:
Yep. That's also Moms for Liberty, an organization whose founders you heard at the top of the show. In just a few years, Moms for Liberty has disrupted school board meetings, enacted book bans, challenged the rights of LGBTQ Kids, and fueled a national moral panic around critical race theory, Something that's not even taught in K through 12 schools. And they've done it it all in the name of protecting kids and asserting their parental rights. To many of us, these angry moms came outta nowhere, but when you dig a little deeper, it's clear that there's something else going on behind the scenes.
Jennifer Jenkins:
I believe wholeheartedly that this was developed not at the kitchen table as they like to tell. I don't believe that grassroots narrative whatsoever. I call them the quintessential political pyramid scheme and instead of selling comfy yoga pants, they're selling comfort within our classrooms, and our curriculum and our libraries.
Julie :
I'm Julie Kohler and this is White Picket Fence. In just two years, our politics have taken a dramatic turn. In late 2021, it seemed like the time had finally come for action. The pandemic had uprooted school and work and heaped a ton on moms who were already carrying too much. President Biden and congressional Democrats were fighting for policies that could have lightened that load. Like a once in a generation investment in childcare, pay leave, and an expanded child tax credit.
But it didn't happen. Yes, legislation passed, but all of the care policies just got… stripped out. At the same time. Much of the political energy shifted back to the suburbs where new fights for waging over schools, race, LGBTQ rights, and the very stories we tell ourselves about our nation and our history. And moms were at the center of it all. Or at least that's what it looked like on the surface. But while moms may have been the ones agitating at school board meetings, what we're experiencing is a much deeper fight for power with far-reaching implications for our freedoms, families and democracy. As I watched it all happen, I realized that there was a lot to unpack about why in 2023, the identity of “mother” remains so central to our political debate.
This season on white picket Fence, we're looking at moms as a political force. How images of mothers are used to advance political agendas, the benefits – and risks – of grounding so much of women's activism in their identities as mothers. Who is included? And who gets left out? Mothers are not a monolith and their activism has taken very different forms throughout history and today. But right now, a certain type of mother driven activism is having a resurgence. It's conservative, largely white, and it's already made a huge impact. There are lots of organizations in this space, but there's one that seems to dominate the news: Moms for Liberty. For this episode, we'll explore the image Moms for Liberty presents, who they really are, and why what they're doing matters.
To tell that story, we need to go back to 2020 to a small Beachside community in East Central Florida where a local educator decided to run for school board.
Jennifer Jenkins:
My name's Jennifer Jenkins. I am a school board member in Brevard County, Florida, and I represent our District 3.
Julie:
Jennifer didn't know very much about local politics when she decided to enter the race, but she knew a lot about public schools. She works as a speech language pathologist and she's married to a middle school teacher. She really cared about issues like equity and adequate pay for teachers. When Covid hit, Jennifer supported masking, vaccines, and regular testing. When she spoke with community members, they'd ask what her plans were for keeping kids safe. Jennifer thought her message was getting through. Still, as election day got closer, she didn't know what her chances would be. That was – in part – because of her opponent.
Jennifer Jenkins:
She was a well-known Republican elected official here in Brevard County. I'm in a very red county, but I also live in a very red district, so the chances of me winning statistically were pretty slim.
Julie:
Yet Jennifer did win by a lot. Her 10 point victory may have signaled a high level of community support, but not everyone was happy. A month into Jennifer's term, new people started showing up to school board meetings. They were mad and Jennifer was their prime target.
Jennifer Jenkins:
I do joke though, and say they were really moms against Jennifer Jenkins. They were focusing on me, everything I said, everything I did, and stood for even ridiculous things of what I'm wearing. They would come up to me after meetings and record me without me knowing with their cell phones and post it on their Facebook page mocking what I'm saying or doing. It was really just a campaign against me.
Julie:
One of the ringleaders was Jennifer's former opponent, Tina Deskovich. Jennifer noticed that many of the people Tina was rallying, weren't even public school parents. They were moms who sent their kids to private schools or homeschooled their kids, or they were older with grown children. But the group kept growing and getting louder. By December, 2020, they had a name: Moms For Liberty.
Jennifer Jenkins:
I like to apologize to America. My opponent is what eventually came to be one of the founding members of Moms for Liberty.
Julie:
We heard the voices of Tina Deskovich and her Mom's for Liberty, co-founder Tiffany Justice. At the beginning of the show. In those news clips, they made themselves sound like a couple of regular moms who just wanted to see it at the table. But what were they so concerned about?
Jennifer Jenkins:
Their topics were kind of all over the place. I refer to it as throwing spaghetti at the wall, just kind of seeing what would stick and kind of gather them some more support.
Julie:
At first, the Moms for Liberty protestors were angry about masks. Then they turned their attention to the district's LGBTQ guidelines, for school sports and gendered bathrooms. As Jennifer describes it, the guidelines are pretty standard. Although the district had been working on them for months, Moms for Liberty claimed that they'd been cooked up in secret without parents' knowledge or consent. At the school board meetings, things went from bad to worse.
Jennifer Jenkins:
What we had in March of 2021 on our school board and outside of our school board, is what I always refer to as our own mini insurrection. We had people banging on the glass windows to get inside because we were at max capacity. Screaming in sheriff officer's faces. Borderline spitting on them signs with hateful words, screaming at children with megaphones, telling them that they're pedophiles, that they're going to hell, they deserve what they're getting. They created this insane gauntlet for these children to walk through to come inside and access our public meeting. The things that they said inside, it was absolutely disturbing and disgusting. It is a day I will never forget. Never forget
Julie:
Brevard County may have been ground zero for this kind of organizing. But the tactics quickly spread. Suddenly women in Moms for Liberty shirts were popping up all across the country. It was the kind of exponential growth that struck some people as… odd.
Maurice Cunningham:
So I began looking into Moms for Liberty and, uh, all these organizations were, you know, brand new, a few months old if that, and yet they were already networked. They were claiming affiliations…
Julie:
Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at UMass Boston
Maurice Cunningham:
… and I found something interesting. They didn't have many members, 1, 2, 7, you know, 33 or something, but they were small numbers, uh, big claims in small reality. And so that piqued my interest a great deal.
Julie:
There's a reason why Maurice was so intrigued by Moms for Liberty. As the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, he knows a thing or two about the conservative movement and its anti-public school agenda. From the outset, he recognized Moms for Liberty as a real threat, and he’s been tracking them ever since.
Maurice Cunningham:
I followed 'em on it with Google and Alert every day and every day. My mailbox fills up with 3, 4, 5, sometimes 6, 7, 8 media stories, uh, about moms for Liberty, often directly to Breitbart, Daily Caller, Steve Bannon's, uh, uh, podcast
Julie:
Moms for Liberty quickly got some pretty loud right wing media megaphones. How did a handful of everyday moms from Florida manage that? To Maurice, something didn't sit right.
Maurice Cunningham:
I mean, imagine a, a group like, you know, try and form a small parents, uh, not a small necessarily. Maybe you have ambitions… form a parents group, and then in a month you're on Rush Limbaugh’s program, and then you're on Fox, and then you're with Tucker and you're in Breitbart. Really meteoric rise. Before you know it, you're hosting a fundraiser featuring Megyn Kelly who happens to, according to her website, get a a speaker's fee between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars. All this in a matter of months.
Julie:
If you view Moms for Liberty as a grassroots activist group, their trajectory seems kind of implausible. There's something else going on here.
Maurice Cunningham:
As one of the moms for Liberty anonymously told the New Yorker recently, essentially we're a communications operation, and that's true.
Julie:
Here's the thing about Tina Deskovich and Tiffany Justice. They weren't just suburban moms who suddenly felt moved to action. They were conservative activists with well-honed communication and PR skills. In fact, Tina ran her own communications consulting business and she brought that expertise to the fight. In the early days of the pandemic, after her school board defeat, she and Tiffany sensed an opportunity to capitalize on the frustration that parents were feeling, to seed new fears about what was being taught and who was teaching it, and to drive powerful anti-government narratives by declaring war on public schools, and they had support from some powerful allies.
Maurice Cunningham:
Well, it just speaks to the fact that there's an existing edifice there already. In this case, it seems to lead back to Leadership Institute.
Julie:
The Leadership Institute may not be a household name, but its political influence is legendary. They've basically served as the talent scouts of the conservative movement for more than 40 years. With an annual budget approaching 30 million, they have a huge reach. Among their 200,000 alumni are some of the most prominent names in Republican politics: Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Jim Jordan. The Leadership Institute provided Moms for Liberty with trainings, connections to high ranking Republican officials and more tangibly financial support. Last July, moms for Liberty held its first National Summit. According to their website, the Leadership Institute was the biggest sponsor.
Thanks to that investment – the trainings, the connections, the money – Moms for Liberty grew quickly. They claim to have developed almost 200 chapters across more than 30 states. They're featured regularly in major media outlets. I mean, we're devoting an entire episode to them. All of this sounds impressive, but not everyone believes the hype.
Jennifer Jenkins:
There's this really strong part of me that just doesn't believe that they are as big and as powerful as we believe that they are. I find it very difficult to believe. And so when they say numbers of their membership, quite frankly, I think they're talking about Facebook likes
Julie Interview:
So basically what you're saying and what your research has shown is that their oversized media presence makes them look larger than they actually are.
Maurice Cunningham:
I think that's the case.
Julie:
More after the break.
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Julie:
Back in Brevard County in 2021, the chaos that Moms for Liberty had sparked was escalating quickly. In late August, the school board in a three to two vote issued a district-wide mask mandate. Jennifer was part of the three vote majority. At the time, the covid situation in the county was pretty dire.
Jennifer Jenkins:
We had already closed an entire elementary school. We were struggling to get testing at this time, vaccines weren't available, I don't believe, to children yet. We had lost 10 staff members. We had multiple staff members in ICU.
Julie:
Days later, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came to Brevard County and held a press conference. Flanked by local Republican officials, he denounced mask mandates and the school boards that enacted them. Jennifer, who had shown up to hear what the governor had to say, was asked to leave. And later that evening, the chaos arrived on her doorstep.
Jennifer Jenkins:
About 25 people stood outside of my house. I was home with my daughter and my husband. The hate that was being spewed. It lasted for a really long time, probably about three hours until dark. I just couldn't take it anymore. And I, I went outside and I followed them around the corner because I wanted to see them leave. They swung a “don't tread on me” flag in my face. It was like an inch from, from knocking me in the face. They ran into my face and started coughing saying they were gonna give me covid, recording me again and mocking me. And they ended up putting that somewhere on the internet. And then I had eventually went back inside of my house and my neighbors had stayed and said that they were brandishing their weapons in the parking lot just to kind of intimidate the neighbors before they had left. I had, the next morning, woken up to my property being vandalized, my plants being chopped down, my trees being poisoned. They had burned F U in my grass with fertilizer.
Julie:
The attacks didn't stop there. In the afternoon, she got a call from a detective.
Jennifer Jenkins:
They had gotten a visit from the Department of Children and Family Services that there was a claim made that I was abusing my daughter, that I was burning her with cigarettes, that I was selling drugs out of my home, that I was beating her in the front yard. And I had to invite this person into my house. I had to answer questions as if this was happening. And I had to take them to a play date where my daughter was with someone that I don't know very well, and they had to, you know, check underneath her clothes to see if I was abusing her. To be quite frank, I was living in hell for a year of people harassing me and victim-shaming me and saying that I was seeking attention.
Julie:
Jennifer decided she had had enough at the next school board meeting. She spoke publicly about the harassment and abuse.
Jennifer Jenkins School Board Video:
I don't reject people coming here and speaking their voice. They, they do it all the time. We, we don't, we don't stop them from doing that. I don't reject them standing outside my home. Um, I reject them following me around in a car, following my car around. I reject them saying that they're coming from me, that they're, that I need to beg for mercy. I reject that when they are using their First Amendment rights on public property. They're also going behind my home and brandishing their weapons to my neighbors, that they're making false DCF claims against me to my daughter, that I have to take a DCF investigator to her play date to go underneath her clothing and check for burn marks. That's what I'm against.
Julie:
Her statement went viral and things did begin to change. The worst of the harassment subsided. But Moms for Liberty's influence, it only grew stronger.
Jennifer Jenkins:
Where they have taken control is the narrative at the state level. Quite frankly, I think that it was intentional. I think they've always been there. They have justified their involvement at the state level in our Department of Education and in Ron DeSantis administration to be quite frank. And that's the scary part because they're making decisions right now as we speak
Julie:
Moms for Liberty moved beyond just getting attention and making school board meetings chaotic. Now there's a focus on getting actual state policy passed in Florida – with a powerful ally. Today, many people may think of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a rising star in the Republican party and potentially as Donald Trump's most formidable challenger in the next presidential race. But back in 2020, he was just gaining his political footing. He had eked out his 2018 victory by fewer than 30,000 votes. During his first two years in office. He governed as something of a moderate. But by March:
Rep. Michele Rayner:
It was literally like that switched flipped. I remember it clear as day that switch flipped with Governor DeSantis.
Julie :
The Florida Democratic Party was in a state of disarray and DeSantis saw an opportunity
Rep. Michele Rayner:
And so then he said, I could do what I wanna do because there's no one that is still nipping at my heels that I have to worry about that cannot only come back, but maybe get those 30,000 votes and more.
Julie:
That's Representative Michele Rayner. She's a civil rights attorney and a member of the Florida State legislature. She was first elected to office in 2020 and had a front row seat to how DeSantis latched on to the narratives that Moms for Liberty was driving locally.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
But I was just so blown away that we were seeing that cruelty play out in real time in a way that I don't think that we had really ever seen before. We have seen, you know, anti-abortion bills. We've seen anti lgbtq bills, we've seen anti Black and and racist bills, but it was in a way that we had not really seen in modern history, like probably within the last 15 to 20 years. And then you had the, the sports ban and the anti protest bill, which was in direct response to George Floyd's murder.
Julie:
There's also the Stop Woke Act, which essentially makes it impossible to teach things like structural racism and important elements of our history and the don't say gay bill, which bans talking about sexual orientation and gender identity for kids K-3. Even though at that age kids don't take sex ed. And of course there's a reason for this political maneuvering. All of these bills were leading up to 2022, a midterm election year.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
You gin up your base, you say these gays, the groomers are coming for your children. You make up stories that aren't true. You say that little white kids are being told that they are responsible for slavery not happening. I asked for receipts. There are no receipts. My mom always says a lie moves quicker than the truth.
Julie:
What had initially felt like angry moms throwing spaghetti at the wall in chaotic school board meetings morphed into a comprehensive conservative agenda. At its core was a story about schools as sites of indoctrination and politicization and parents, moms, especially as the frontline defense against it.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
When you have someone that says, I am the only one that cares about your kids. Here I am the only one that's gonna fight for you. I need you and then I'm going to empower you to do this. And it becomes this like sick, evil, like tsunami of power that happens.
Gov. DeSantis Speech Clips:
The purpose of our school system is to educate kids, not to indoctrinate our kids.
Gender affirming care. They're actually giving very young girls double mastectomies. They want to castrate these young boys. That's wrong. [applause]
We're not gonna be teaching some six year old kid that they may have been born in the wrong body. That's not gonna happen.
Uh, they need to focus on on traditional education. And parents should have the right to send their kid knowing that that's gonna be the focus.
Julie:
I'm sure for many of us, this language is disturbing. I mean, how many parents actually believe that their kids are being sexually groomed by teachers. Or are being taught hatred against white people by reading classic books like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And yet DeSantis turned the issues that moms were agitating about into some pretty extreme state legislation. Moms for Liberty played a powerful role behind the scenes. For Representative Rayner, the cozy relationship between Moms for Liberty, Governor DeSantis and her Republican colleagues was on full display.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
He was able to elevate, I think a voice that had felt a little bit silenced and he gave them a platform. I will tell you that my first term in the house, there was times that the Moms of Liberty groups would have free reign of the Capitol, whereas any other progressive group, you would have to go through all the checks and balances, you would have to go through all of the security measures, you couldn't go in certain places. I would pop up and there is a, a Mom for Liberty member in a part of the members only area.
Julie:
Politically, Moms for Liberty also help shore up support among DeSantis, weakest demographic: younger women. Christian Ziegler, the vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party has said openly that after years of trying and failing Moms for Liberty has succeeded in bringing more 20 and 30 year old women into the party fold. His statement is particularly noteworthy when you consider that Christian Ziegler's wife is Bridget Ziegler, the third co-founder of Moms for Liberty. She's stepped away from the group, but just so happens to now serve as the Leadership Institute's director of school board programs. Just as important, Moms for Liberty projects an image that's valuable to DeSantis and other conservatives. One that Maurice told me helps soften their extremism.
Maurice Cunningham:
Oh, they're moms and their mama bears. You know, it evokes the image of, of caring mothers doing all to protect their children from some threat. It's nicer to see, you know, pleasant looking suburban moms rather than the guy who runs the Leadership Institute, who happens to be an 82 year old veteran, right-winger named Morton Blackwell. There's a heavy emphasis on moms cuz I mean, gosh, mom and apple pie, who doesn't like Mom
Julie:
Make no mistake, where DeSantis and his conservative colleagues are headed is extreme. Representative Rainer anticipates an even more contentious legislative session, which has only just begun.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
What I'm hearing is there's going to be a tax on LGBTQ people…Transgender youth… Medication abortion … folks in the process of ivf … an abortion ban… bills that are going to attempt a criminalize parents for trying to give their children gender affirming care.
Julie:
Of course, all this matters outside of Florida. DeSantis, as we know, is pondering a presidential run and conservatives across the nation are watching and doubling down on what they see as his success. Moms for Liberty's success. We heard it just last month from governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her response to the State of the Union.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, SOTU Response:
Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools, eliminate the use of derogatory term Latinx in our government, repealed covid orders, and said never again to authoritarian mandates and shutdowns.
Julie:
Right now we're at a crossroads. Follow the breadcrumbs that Moms for Liberty and Ron DeSantis are dropping and we're headed toward a very different country. One that goes to great lengths, including dismantling democracy in order to enshrine a very particular vision of family into law. It's a vision that, as Representative Rayner says:
Rep. Michele Rayner:
Taps into that really white supremacist belief of this is what family looks like and this is what family should be, and that's just not real.
Julie:
More on that in a couple of episodes. But in order to effectively combat the right's retro vision of family, and the motherhood activism that supports it, we on the Left are gonna have to grapple with motherhood ourselves. My own identity as a mom – and frankly as a single mom – was part of the impetus for this season of the show. I want people to have a clear eye view of what's happening, to see how motherhood is being used to advance a dangerous agenda. And to provide encouragement and support to the millions of moms who say, Moms for Liberty does not speak for me.
Rep. Michele Rayner:
I think that we have to fight and push through the fatigue. I get it. Like I get it. I'm a Black queer woman that serves in Ronald Deon DeSantis’ legislature. But I also tell people, if I don't give up, no one else has the right to give up. And so yes, take your time, do your deep breathing, do all those things that you need to do. But we have a fight on our hands and it's a winnable fight. But I think to me it comes down to the people. It has always been power in people. It has always been power in movements, and those movements are not necessarily political. Those movements are just people who love their community, love their families, and love other people. And that is how we've seen change and that is what we need to get back to.
Julie:
But I'm also searching for some answers. As someone who was political long before I became a mom, I wanna know: Do I have to rely upon my motherhood identity in order to have my voice heard? Is it possible to build a different type of motherhood politics? To demonstrate politically what many of us already know? That motherhood looks and sounds all kinds of ways, and there's power in that diversity Over the next several episodes, we'll get into all of those questions and more, but to begin, we need to figure out just how we got here. Tune in next week as we travel back to the birthplace of the conservative movement: Southern California … and the suburban mothers at the center of it all.
Michelle Nickerson:
Where they once called themselves, Patriots or patriotic women, you know, they really didn't have a way of describing their importance other than they were fighting communism, as they saw it. Now, they were conservatives
Julie:
White Picket Fence is a Wonder Media Network production. Our producers are Maddy Foley and Taylor Williamson with production support from Abbey Delk. Our editor is Lindsey Kratochwill, executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Original music by Sean Petell.
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