Some of the Republican Party’s leading 2024 presidential hopefuls are scheduled to speak this week at this week’s “Joyful Warriors” summit in Philadelphia, hosted by Moms for Liberty, an organization designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-government extremist group. Scheduled speakers include Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Moms for Liberty is a far-right organization that engages in anti-student inclusion activities and self-identifies as part of the modern parental rights movement. The group grew out of opposition to public health regulations for COVID-19, opposes LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive school curriculum, and has advocated books bans,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana recently was forced to apologize, after first explaining and defending its decision to prominently include a quote from Adolf Hitler in its newsletter.
Nikki Haley, the former Trump Ambassador to the United Nations, is a strong supporter of the group.
READ MORE: Moms for Liberty Leader Says Biden Behind High-Level, Coordinated Effort to Make Kids LGBTQ (Video)
Earlier this month she tweeted, “If @Moms4Liberty is a ‘hate group,’ add me to the list.”
“I’m speaking at their Joyful Warrior summit,” Haley told Fox News in early June. “Does that sound like a hateful group to you? I’m speaking to them in July, and the idea. This is, we are parents. We are parents that care about our kids. We are parents that worry about government overreach. We are parents that want transparency in the classroom. We are parents that are saying, ‘Look, we have one job. One job, and that’s to get it right.'”
“That’s what Moms for Liberty is saying.”
On MSNBC’s “The Reidout Blog” Ja’han Jones notes members of Moms for Liberty “have been linked to incidents of harassment and threats as well as to the Proud Boys, another far-right extremist group. And Moms’ members have led some of the most fervent efforts to ban nonwhite (particularly Black) authors from schools.”
READ MORE: Extremist Group Targets Florida High School’s Yearbook Over Inclusion of LGBTQ Students Section
The SPLC says it has “documented 1,255 active hate and antigovernment groups in the United States last year.” Moms for Liberty appears on its “Antigovernment General” extremist groups list.
“Moms for Liberty and its nationwide chapters combat what they consider the ‘woke indoctrination’ of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group’s views,” SPLC states. “They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”
The SPLC includes ten statements made by the group or its members, including one made by a member of a Florida Moms for Liberty chapter, who appears to call for segregating LGBTQ students into “separate classrooms.”
This is how that quote appears on the SPLC’s website:
“The kids that do have their, you know, they’re confused, or they are gay or whatnot that the way they’re trying to go about it is to make it an open conversation and an open thing in classrooms … But like for example children with autism, Down Syndrome, they have to have special IP meetings with a counselor, they have to be put into separate classrooms. I understand, because it’s a different type of education for children with those disabilities, but I think that for children that identify differently, there should also be like a specialized … something for them, so that they feel that they’re important enough that they’re being counseled…I think for the same reason why teachers wouldn’t just bring a child with autism in front of the class and be like, hey, he’s got autism. Embarrassment …”
Watch video of Nikki Haley above, and MSNBC’s report on last year’s Moms for Liberty summit below, or both at this link.