Ron DeSantis & Sarah Huckabee Sanders appear on extremist group Moms for Liberty’s panel

On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated extremist group Moms for Liberty (M4L) held a town hall at the Republican National Convention that featured major Republican elected officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R).

The co-founder of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, said in her opening remarks, “We are fighting for our country and the future of our children. There are some people that told us, ‘Oh, don’t use that word fight, Tiffany, you don’t wanna be too volatile.’ Well, they’re coming after our kids.”

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“We always talk about at Mom’s for Liberty, we’re fighting with a smile on our face. We call ourselves joyful warriors. They’re coming after our kids. Radical Marxists are trying to steal our children’s future. We are going to fight like hell with a smile on our faces because our children are watching us, and it is a privilege to fight for our country.”

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The town hall, entitled “Giving Americans a Voice,” took place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Warner Theater in the Bradley Symphony Center. It featured Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Reps. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Harriett Hageman (R-WY), several Republican attorneys general including Liz Murrill of Louisiana, Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, and Andrew Bailey of Missouri, alongside the president of the Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and anti-abortion activist Ed Martin.

At the start of the event, a song celebrating America was playing alongside various stock footage clips of the United States. This was in addition to screenshots showcasing plans from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping plan for Donald Trump to enact far-right policies in his possible second term, and advertisements for anti-abortion groups and the Young America Foundation.

The introduction continued with a series of clips showing political pundits and governmental figures endorsing Moms for Liberty, including Trump, who addressed the group, saying, “You’re not a threat, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to America.”

Martin took the stage, where he revealed that Trump had asked him to help develop the Republican Party’s platform. Justice reached out to him, with the group influencing the development of the Republican platform for the 2024 elections.

Another M4L co-founder, Tina Descovich, claimed that political polarization in America is tied to “spiritual warfare.” 

“There’s something going on in our country right now,” she said. “And you can’t see it with your eyes, but we all know what it is: It’s the battle between good and evil. It’s a battle for the soul of our country. It’s a battle for the souls of men and women in our country. And bigger and more focused, it’s a battle for the soul of our children.”

“Our focus is to protect children and to protect our rights to raise our children as God intended us to raise them. The enemy wants to come between us and our children. And once that happens, as you saw in the opening video, our families are done, our communities are done, and our country is lost.”

She cited the M4L members on school boards, as well as multiple state laws backed by the group, as evidence of them “winning,” in spite of the fact that the group is reported to be falling apart.

The rest of the event featured panel discussions separated into three blocks – one for members of Congress, one for the attorneys general, and one for the two governors. Additionally, there was a trailer for a new Republican film, Trump’s Rescue Mission: Saving America, which features numerous prominent conservative voices, including Roberts.

The Congressional panel featured Hageman denouncing the left’s “venom” towards conservatives and Johnson saying, “You have the left that wants to control people’s lives and consolidate power. We’re the party of freedom; I can’t get inside the mind of a leftist; it makes no sense to me.”

The attorneys general, meanwhile, featured Bailey saying, “The left wants to groom children” and “sexualize children.” Murrill claimed that it is “an attack on faith” for librarians to give children access to books that their parents may not approve of.

At the governors’ panel, Huckabee Sanders said, “But like all of you, I know how to tough it out. No nasty comment is going to stop us from protecting women’s sports or banning offensive nonsense words like ‘birthing person’ and ‘pregnant people.’”

DeSantis, meanwhile, kept up his trademark attacks on trans people: “We’re not letting the inmates run the asylum. We’re not gonna use your tax dollars for indoctrination and political activism. With everything we do, we get blowback from the media, but every time we do that, it tells me we’re over the target.”

The event concluded with failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said, “2024 is our generation’s 1776.… It will be moms across the country who sign our new Declaration of Independence in 2024.” According to The Nation, no reporters were interested in speaking with him as he sat alone afterward, eating a small salad.

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