The parents group Republicans are banking on to win the White House

PHILADELPHIA — Republicans sharpening a schoolhouse-centered campaign are betting on a fast-growing ally to make a play for the suburbs.

Moms for Liberty kicked off its second-ever “Joyful Warriors” national summit in the urban heart of this critical swing state on Thursday, and the roster of special guests says plenty about a group that didn’t even exist three years ago. Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and three other GOP White House hopefuls are paying their respects to America’s newest culture warriors — as police and steel barricades block protestors from entering.

“When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that's what I am,’” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told the crowd Friday morning, after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled her hosts as an anti-government extremist group this month.

Moms for Liberty was incorporated in January 2021 by three Florida women: School board members Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, and Bridget Ziegler, the DeSantis-endorsed chair of the Sarasota County School Board and wife of Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler. But during its brief existence, the group has funneled right-wing politics and millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity into a massive national campaign for parents’ votes that Republicans hope will boost the party’s fortunes ahead of the 2024 election.

"You have proven beyond all doubt that there is no earthly force more powerful than the love of a mother for her children — that's true. 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 said on Friday. "The radical left is even slandering Moms for Liberty as a so-called 'hate group.'"

"You're not the threat to America," Trump added. "You're the best thing that has ever happened to America."

Moms for Liberty claims 285 chapters in 45 states and a membership that exceeds 115,000 people. It cultivated an early, formative relationship with Florida's governor while its supporters mounted fierce opposition to library books and classroom curriculum that address race, gender and sexuality. The group has also reported raising a small fortune from a murky network of donors.

And Moms for Liberty’s rise in the conservative education movement — reinvigorated by pandemic-driven school closures and state fights over gender-affirming care — has left liberals scrambling to defend school board seats in battleground regions where they risk losing to an organization that skyrocketed to Republican stardom.

That includes Philadelphia, and the city’s surrounding communities.

“When we started Moms for Liberty, there were people that told us ‘You need to just focus on the red states,’” Justice, one of the co-founders, said in an interview. “Unless we're ready to start taking stars off of the flag, we better start fighting for every state in this country.”

A 'powerful force'

Trump was Friday’s keynote speaker. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are also on the weekend schedule. They’re all here to tap into the energy surrounding conservative women, after the Supreme Court rescinded federal abortion rights last year and Republican-led legislatures overhauled laws surrounding children and public education.

“What we've seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in this country: mama bears,” DeSantis told a crowd of hundreds of supporters on Friday. “The time to act is now. And I believe if we do it right, 2024 is going to be the year when the parents across this country finally fight back.”

Moms for Liberty will not endorse a presidential candidate, its founders have said. But Florida’s Republican Party chairman thinks the organization has enough influence to make that decision unnecessary.

“By these guys showing up at their conference, it shows what they’ve already accomplished,” Ziegler said of the weekend’s candidate appearances. “They can go and have a meeting with President Trump whenever they want. They can have a meeting with DeSantis, Haley, any of these guys. ... If you already have influence and you already have access, and you can make change, what’s the point.”

All of this has drawn plenty of detractors.

In early June, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning civil rights watchdog that sued DeSantis over flying dozens of migrants across the country, labeled Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist group.” A Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana apologized later in the month after quoting Hitler in a newsletter.

This week, the American Historical Association urged Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution to cancel a Moms for Liberty gathering, saying the group “has crossed a boundary in its attempts to silence and harass teachers, rather than participate in legitimate controversy.”

Moms for Liberty’s opponents say the group’s reach is limited and enables liberals to campaign against book bans, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and education’s newly divisive politics during low-turnout school board elections the organization brought to new prominence in 2022 and early this year.

“Moms for Liberty is more of a ‘grass tops’ organization in terms of being a highly-funded vocal minority of moms in America. The majority of moms, and people, in America, do not support book bans, exclusion and hate,” said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of the progressive MomsRising advocacy group, in an interview. “It's not okay to use our schoolchildren and our schools and our families as political footballs,” she said.

A new “Save Our School Boards” initiative from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is also intended to serve as a liberal attempt to create a national school board slate.

“Our targets are largely battleground states,” the PCCC’s director of candidate services, Hannah Riddle, told POLITICO. “In 2023, Pennsylvania is going to be a huge focus for us,” she added. “These issues are going to drive people to the polls.”

Moms' big cash flow

Moms for Liberty’s growth dovetailed with a rise in combative school board meetings during the pandemic.

In September 2021, the National School Boards Association asked President Joe Biden to have federal agencies stop “threats and acts of violence” on school officials during meetings consumed by public protests against mask mandates, critical race theory, and transgender student policies.

Attorney General Merrick Garland then ordered federal law enforcement authorities to huddle with local leaders to address what the nation’s top prosecutor called a “disturbing spike” in intimidation and violent threats against educators and board members. Two weeks after Garland’s directive, Moms for Liberty registered a trio of political action committees with the Federal Elections Commission.

When it comes to money, Moms for Liberty’s national hub uses a tax structure that lets it operate without publicly disclosing donors. But the group’s conference sponsorships, state campaign finance disclosures, available tax records and filings from other nonprofits offer some hints about its supporters and revenue.

In 2021, according to tax records signed by Descovich, Moms for Liberty reported collecting $370,029 in total revenue. More than $250,000 of that money came from contributions and grants.

The organization also has a political action committee in Florida whose roughly $50,000 in contributions last year were almost entirely funded by a grocery store heiress linked to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Moms for Liberty’s three national political action committees have so far reported few expenditures and contributions, according to the latest available federal records.

Event sponsorships are another fundraising channel. Major sponsors of this week’s convening include the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Leadership Institute and Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based conservative wireless service provider.

The American Principles Project and Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence’s nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, are also listed as lower-tier supporters, though Pence did not attend the event. Sponsorship packages for this year’s event are priced between $1,000 and $100,000.

Descovich and Justice declined to answer questions about the amount of cash on hand currently available to its political action committees, and said the organization would comply with all reporting requirements set out in the law and had nothing else to add beyond what was available in public reports.

“We believe that our country is in trouble,” Justice said. “We will do everything we can to be involved in order to protect and safeguard the future of America for our kids.”

Jessica Piper, Andrew Atterbury and Andrew Zhang contributed to this report.