• About a week before Moms for Liberty’s 2023 summit, an Indiana chapter quoted Adolf Hitler in its newsletter. The chapter apologized, but co-founder Tiffany Justice doubled down at the summit, saying, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler. I stand with that mom.” 

• According to police records, co-founder Bridget Ziegler was “on prowl” with husband Christian Ziegler (who spoke at last year’s summit) to find women for a three-way sexual relationship. This information was released after Christian was accused of rape. (Police decided against recommending rape charges after reviewing video of the encounter.) He was then ousted from his position as chair of the Florida GOP. Bridget Ziegler refused to resign from her Sarasota school board position, despite the board voting 4-1 to ask for her resignation.

• Descovich and Justice appeared on a humiliating 60 Minutes segment and visibly fumbled softball questions. The interview was so bad that Moms for Liberty and its right-wing media allies scrambled to do damage control and condemn 60 Minutes. 

• It’s losing elections. According to Brookings, only a small and declining share of Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates won in 2023.

Much of the conference was spent attempting to terrify parents into believing that schools are secretly grooming, manipulating, and transitioning students. The bag handed to us at registration included an illustrated flyer laying out the ridiculous “school to clinic pipeline,” which, according to the flyer, begins at “pronouns” and ends in a hospital.

Almost every speaker we listened to incorporated transgender panic into their speech. One panel was even titled “Protecting Kids from Secret Gender Transitions in Schools.” 

In a panel condemning Title IX’s protection of students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, attorneys encouraged parents to file complaints with the Department of Education to put “sand in the regulatory gears for this administration” because each report has to be investigated and filing more will create a backlog.

Each year, members of Moms for Liberty from across the country are nominated for the group’s Founders Awards. These awards, named after notable women, are presented at their annual summit. Ironically, one of this year’s awards was named after Deborah Sampson, a woman “so invested in the cause of liberty that she disguised herself as a man and fought in the Revolutionary War.”

“This is spiritual warfare,” said far-right political commentator Sebastian Gorka at Friday’s lunch session, “and they are on the side of the devil.”

Speakers repeated vague accusations of “spiritual warfare” throughout the weekend. Even comedian-turned-conservative-activist Rob Schneider accused the pharmaceutical industry of engaging in spiritual warfare. 

Religious scholar Brad Onishi describes the concept of spiritual warfare as the idea that Christians are called to fight a “cosmic battle between good and evil.” It’s a belief that Christians face a constant war against Satan and his minions.

In recent years, right-wing figures have increasingly invoked the phrase to describe and condemn anyone or anything they disagree with. Trump’s indictment, Democrats, transgender identities, the Olympics opening ceremony — all “spiritual warfare.”

The summit’s itinerary included the March for Kids, an event promoting parental rights with coalition partners such as Gays Against Groomers and PragerU. (It’s worth noting that the March for Kids wasn’t actually a march, but a largely empty assembly at DAR Constitution Hall.)

March for Kids speaker Naomi Van Wyk used the rhetoric of spiritual warfare to describe homosexuality and encouraged intervention to alter same-sex attraction, promoting a form of conversion therapy. 

Van Wyk testified that Jesus set her “free from same-sex attraction,” describing it as “a demonic spiritual attack.” Again and again, she described homosexuality as “demonic” and advocated for parents to convert their LGBTQ children.

The Heritage Foundation was one of the earliest supporters of Moms for Liberty and, in turn, the group fell in line with Heritage’s policy priorities and shepherded members toward the think tank’s “resources for parents.” In 2022, Moms for Liberty was the recipient of Heritage’s Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship and Heritage President Kevin Roberts spoke at the group’s 2023 summit. In a breakout session last year, anti-trans activist “Billboard Chris” Elston revealed that The Heritage Foundation had identified and brought together 40 people, including him, in March 2022 to “fight gender ideology.” 

This year’s summit was saturated with an array of Heritage employees, alumni, and partners. Notably, Lindsey Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation and author of Project 2025’s extreme right-wing education policy plan, led a panel advocating for the abolition of the Department of Education.

Project 2025 is a right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican administration. Moms for Liberty is a partner with Project 2025, and The Heritage Foundation recruited members to participate in Project 2025 at last year’s summit.

Despite massive right-wing support, Moms for Liberty is clearly floundering. This year’s summit was disorganized, small, and weird. 

Sebastian Gorka haunted the convention hall all weekend, occasionally appearing on stage to theorize about whether the assassination attempt on Trump was an inside job, yell about spiritual warfare, or lament about “political prisoner” Steve Bannon. Far-right author James Lindsay won “The Liberty Sword” and was introduced as “Moms for Liberty’s favorite lady killer” when presented with the award. Even Trump’s appearance was odd. Instead of a traditional speech, he sat down with Justice and spoke at length about varying topics, including The Apprentice and Scotland.

I was one of the first to write about Moms for Liberty when the group launched in 2021 and have spent the last several years documenting the group’s meteoric rise. But Moms for Liberty seems to be in danger of burning out just as quickly.