At a recent forum hosted by the MAGA-allied Heritage Foundation, Tiffany Justice recalled how Moms for Liberty, the rightwing political organization she co-leads, was founded out of a concern for kids, but then, she claimed, it came under attack from the Department of Justice and the FBI.
What really happened is that as threats to school board members mounted across the nation in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys to assess the threats made against school officials and work with local authorities to address them. Moms for Liberty had established itself as a catalyst of menacing conduct at school board meetings. The right fictionalized the federal investigation in order to claim that Garland was attacking parents, a narrative that The Washington Post “Fact Checker” awarded with four Pinocchios.
In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named Moms for Liberty an anti-government extremist group. Justice recounted to the Heritage audience how, at the time, she called her eighteen-year-old daughter and told her, “We were just put on this hate list.” She said her daughter immediately searched the Internet for the claim and responded, “ ‘Mom, you’re like next to the KKK.’ ”
“I said, ‘I know, go tell your friends, all the eighteen-year-olds.’ ”
But the SPLC’s report does not compare M4L, as the organization is abbreviated, to the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC publishes a map of hate and anti-government groups across the United States, but differentiates hate and extremist groups. M4L is found in the anti-government extremist list.
Justice’s bizarre story (during which she encourages her teenager to brag about mom being named to a hate group) serves two purposes: It allows M4L to feign victimization, as in the Garland example, and it signals to extremists (like the Proud Boys, who have partnered with M4L) that the group has its fanatic bona fides in order.
“The education system is very important to the left,” Justice told the crowd. “They need it for a lot of different reasons. They need it to indoctrinate the children . . . . They just want your kids. And they’re not having their own children, so they need your kids. That’s just the truth.”
That is not only not the truth, but it’s also weird.
You may not recognize your child’s public school through M4L’s lens, because you do not understand the way Justice sees it: “So for anyone who doesn’t know what community schools are,” she continued, “community schools equals communism.”
During her one term on the Indian River County, Florida, school board, Justice acted to “intimidate” the African American Achievement committee, according to the board’s vice-chair. Vero News also reported that “Justice regularly provoked conflict and stirred controversy” and “proved she was ill-equipped” for serving on the board.
Justice’s toxicity continued after her term ended. Following a calamitous visit to her child’s school, a teacher complained of Justice’s “constant threatening and bullying tactics.” The school district investigated and, as Vero News reported, “School Superintendent David Moore warned she could be barred from the campus.”
During an interview with 60 Minutes, interviewer Scott Pelley repeatedly asked Justice and M4L co-founder Tina Descovich what they meant when they called educators “groomers.” They had no answer.
In February 2024, after non-binary Oklahoma teenager Nex Benedict died by suicide following a year of bullying at school and a fight with other students, eight Republican state representatives issued a statement urging distressed students to contact The Trevor Project, which works with LGBTQ+ teens to prevent suicide. Justice amplified a tweet by the county M4L chapter slurring the representatives as recommending a “pedophile page” to children. Then Justice accused a member of Free Mom Hugs, which also works with at-risk LGBTQ+ children, of being a “groomer.”
Justice doesn’t shy away from taking a stand in support of extremists rhetoric. In a statement she delivered at the 2023 M4L national summit, Justice said, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler. I stand with that mom.”
If you think public schools are communist, call your child’s teacher a “groomer” but cannot say what that means, or suggest Hitler is a useful source to quote, you have a friend in Moms for Liberty and Tiffany Justice. If not, you will have to fight to defend your child’s school.
Moms for Liberty does not represent parents. It represents an extreme rightwing worldview that campaigns each day to take away your child’s freedom to enjoy safe and enriching public schools. Do not let them.