Moms for Liberty takes center stage again in 2024 Republican presidential race

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley teams up on Wednesday with Moms for Liberty at a town hall in the crucial early nominating state of New Hampshire.

It is the latest example of the increasing influence of the parental rights organization has in the GOP's 2024 White House race.

"I’m so grateful that Tiffany and Moms for Liberty for the fight that they’re doing to bring this back to the parents because parents have one job and that’s to get this right for their kids. And we have to fight for them to make sure that they get that," Haley said Wednesday in a "Fox and Friends" joint interview with Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.

Justice, responding, highlighted that "this is why so many moms love Nikki Haley. Because she’s standing up as a mom fighting for kids."

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Haley, a former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as ambassador to the United Nations in former President Trump's administration, is the only mother among the major Republican contenders for the GOP presidential nomination.

"We’re excited to partner with Tiffany Justice and Moms for Liberty. This is a group that many have said are extreme. And I’ve said if this is extreme, count me in because this is about parents getting control of their children again," Haley emphasized in a Fox News Digital interview on Wednesday.

She highlighted that "we don’t want to give custody of our kids to the teachers’ unions. We deserve to know what’s happening in schools and we should get complete transparency in the classroom. No parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom, and that’s the case right now. And you look at Tiffany and what’s she’s done with Moms for Liberty. She’s given the voices back to parents. Parents are fighting back."

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Haley and Trump, along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur and political commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, in late June all spoke in person at the second annual Moms for Liberty summit, which was held in Philadelphia.

The appearances at the confab by the five Republican White House contenders was another sign of the growing clout for the conservative-leaning group, which says it has 285 chapters across 45 states.

"I think it says that parents are a very important part of the future of America and that the candidates care about the issues that parents care about, and they want to make sure that we know that," Justice told Fox News Digital at the summit.

Moms for Liberty was founded two years ago amid the coronavirus pandemic as a "social-welfare" nonprofit group, which means it can engage in political and policy activity without disclosing its donors. The group says its mission is to protect parental rights in education, which they describe as "God-given and fundamental."

According to its website, the mission of the group is to "unify, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government." It has fought against mask mandates in schools and has targeted critical race theory. 

Longtime Republican consultant Ryan Williams said that Moms for Liberty "has attracted so much attention and is influential given the focus on public school education and cultural issues that are dominating discussion in the Republican Party today."

"There’s a real fear that schools are forcing an agenda on kids," Williams said.

The group, which says that it is non-partisan, does have an aligned super PAC that Justice says makes endorsements in school board races, state board of education races and state elected superintendent contests. However, Justice said the PAC had no plans to endorse GOP presidential nomination showdown.

Moms for Liberty was in the headlines this spring when it was designated as an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Moms for Liberty and 11 other groups were labeled by the SPLC as "anti-government extremist groups" in its annual 2022 Year In Hate and Extremism report. The report wrote that Moms for Liberty can be "spotted at school board meetings across the country wearing shirts and carrying signs that declare, ‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.’"

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Justice told Fox News at the time that the SPLC’s "extremist" label was "absolutely absurd."

The Democratic National Committee has argued that Moms for Liberty is "one of the nation’s most notorious anti-freedom, history-erasing, book-banning groups."

And hours before the town hall in Manchester, the New Hampshire Democratic Party took aim at both Haley and Moms for Liberty.

"It comes as no surprise that Nikki Haley is debuting her extreme education agenda standing shoulder to shoulder with an anti-freedom group hellbent on erasing history and banning books across the country. Haley has been all for attacking public education and pushing toxic culture wars throughout her career, even railing against providing more education funding for South Carolina schools as governor," NHDP spokesperson Aida Ross charged.

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