Moms for Liberty didn’t exist 3 years ago. Now it’s a GOP kingmaker.

Five GOP presidential candidates plan to attend the group’s Philadelphia convention this weekend.

A month ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center declared Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” devoted to spreading “messages of anti-inclusion and hate.”

This weekend, five Republican presidential candidates — including front-runner Donald Trump and his leading rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — plan to take the stage at a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, highlighting their conviction that educational issues will mobilize their base in the 2024 election. It also signals how polarized education politics have become — and spotlights the veneration with which conservatives now regard Moms for Liberty, a group that didn’t exist three years ago but which today boasts more than 100,000 members across 44 states.

Liberals revile the group, which wants more parental input over what schools teach and less teaching about hot-button issues including race, gender and sexuality. They see Moms for Liberty as a threat to free speech, public schools and the esteem they say teachers deserve. But, to a generation of conservative parents first exasperated by masking, vaccine mandates and covid-driven school closures, Moms for Liberty has become the champion for a burgeoning parents’ rights movement — one that Republicans say is combating indoctrination around diversity and inclusion.

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