MILWAUKEE — Conservative organization Moms for Liberty hosted a Town Hall event Tuesday at the Republican National Convention to discuss school choice, parental rights and Title IX.
Moms for Liberty was founded in 2021 by former Florida school board members Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich to combat “woke indoctrination.” The group advocates for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and has worked to strip mentions of LGBTQ+ topics and structural racism from classrooms across the country.
Moms for Liberty members saw themselves in “a battle between good and evil,” Descovich said at the town hall Tuesday.
“The enemy wants to come between us and our children,” Descovich said, calling on the audience to fight to protect parental rights and their children.
The event featured prominent Republican figures including Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Johnson supports school choice, parental rights
Johnson advocated for school choice at the Moms for Liberty event, calling for education policy to return to state and local governments.
“I’m hoping that one result from Moms for Liberty is we start moving away from these massive, large schools, and we start moving more toward the old one-room school,” Johnson said.
From initial interviews following the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, Johnson speculated at the event the shooter “was probably in a large school, being bullied all the time.”
Johnson told reporters “there’s so much we don’t know” when asked if he was suggesting a large school could be partially to blame for the shooting. He also said the shooter was “alienated” and “bullied,” something “we’ve seen too many times in the past” in relation to gun violence perpetrators.
Johnson also told reporters he blames the shooter but that “vitriol on the left is not helpful.”
Moms for Liberty has advocated for a shift away from large schools and have been a fierce supporter of school choice and parental rights. Johnson said homeschooling grew in popularity during the pandemic when parents saw “these bureaucracies are getting completely out of control and unaccountable.”
Speakers at the event talked about the importance of having a “second generation” of school choice, noting that the first school choice movement was initiated by former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson in the 1980s and early 1990s. Thompson’s policy reforms centered on introducing private school vouchers, public charter schools and public school open enrollment.
DeSantis talks Florida’s ‘classic university experience,’ attacks DEI and CRT
At the town hall, DeSantis touted steps taken by Florida to combat what he viewed as progressive indoctrination at the state’s public universities and colleges.
In spring 2023, DeSantis signed a bill into law banning spending on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The new law also banned critical race theory, a conceptual framework that recognizes racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities, from being taught in K-12 schools and at public universities and colleges in the state.
"You have professors that are not meeting the mission, and the mission of these universities is a classical mission of education," DeSantis said.
At the event, DeSantis hinted there is more to come for higher education reform in Florida, stating “on higher ed, we’ve got more that we’re going to do.”
Florida politicians are not the only state legislators targeting DEI at public universities.
In Wisconsin, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, backed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, blocked UW System employee pay raises and funding for a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in an attempt to scale back DEI initiatives on UW campuses.
Lawmakers and the UW System reached a controversial deal late last year that led to the release of the funding in exchange for a cap on DEI positions and left universities in the state looking for ways to better protect themselves from the nationwide anti-DEI movement.
Walker condemns transgender athletes
Walker, the president of the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), called the Biden administration’s changes to Title IX regulations earlier this year “anti women” for protecting transgender students.
In May 2024, Moms for Liberty filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education along with YAF and the states of Kansas, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming, arguing the changes would make gender identity a “protected class” and would infringe on parental rights to teach their children “about gender identity as it aligns with their personal beliefs.”
“College students overwhelmingly say it’s not fair for someone born a man to compete against someone born a woman,” Walker said at the event. “Even college students get it.”
Enforcement of the federal rule was blocked by three federal courts, and the latest ruling by the U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested the Biden administration must consider if forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.”
“Gender ideology does not belong in public schools, and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights,” Descovich and Justice said in a statement on July 3, following the decision.
In Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled state Legislature has taken steps to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors and ban transgender and nonconforming youth from playing on school athletic teams that aligned with their gender identity. Both bills were vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
A total of 14 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced during the 2024 legislative session, all of which failed to pass the Legislature or were vetoed by Evers.
Anna Kleiber is the state news editor for The Daily Cardinal. She previously served as the arts editor. Anna has written in-depth on elections, legislative maps and campus news. She has interned with WisPolitics and Madison Magazine. Follow her on Twitter at @annakleiber03.
