Moms for America declared Wednesday that the state of the union is in crisis over issues such as education, drugs and crime. But don’t worry, the group says: The mothers have entered the building.
The conservative organization dedicated to “empowering moms, promoting liberty, raising patriots” held a State of the Union round-up featuring speeches from a dozen mothers — and one dad — as they advocated for “commonsense solutions” to woes linked to leftist policies.
“We are the hope of America,” said Kimberly Fletcher, the group’s president at the event live-streamed from McKinney, Texas. “We are rising up to unite with you across this country, to stand up and say the state of the union may be in peril, but the moms have just stepped in to get it back in shape.”
At the top of the list was education, starting with the growing influence of critical-race theory and comprehensive sex education in public schools, as well as the Justice Department’s Oct. 4 directive in response to complaints about rowdy parents at school board meetings.
Moms for Liberty’s Quisha King, a foe of critical-race theory, drew laughter for joking that “I am officially I guess now a domestic terrorist,” a reference to the National School Boards Association’s letter comparing the backlash against woke schools to domestic terrorism.
She recounted her eighth-grade daughter’s experience in Florida with a teacher who asked the students how much discrimination they had experienced, which turned into “a big oppression Olympics,” even though the children carry $1,000 cell phones and are “quite privileged, if you ask me.”
“For those who claim to be for CRT, let me remind you of this: You do not get to tell my child that because they are born Black that they are automatically in a permanent status of oppression. It is insulting and flat-out not true,” said Ms. King. “We must put an end to the division, get CRT out of our public schools, and know exactly what our children are being taught.”
Aly Marie Legge, a school-board candidate in Hillsborough County, Florida, blasted CRT as “segregation at its core.”
“As a woman of color and most importantly, as an American, we do not need anyone telling us or our children how oppressed they think we are,” said Ms. Legge. “Racism is not ingrained in every aspect of American culture. CRT breeds hatred and division.”
Tamra Farah, executive director of Moms for America’s MomForce, said schools are on track to produce “not citizens with academic competency, but rather sexually-addicted, gender-manipulated, divided-by-skin-color adults who have learned critical race and yet nothing about critical thinking.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the lone male speaker, called the DOJ memo bringing in the FBI “kind of the epitome of the Biden administration and their view on America.”
“I never thought I would hear anything like that from any administration, Republican or Democrat,” Mr. Paxton said, adding that it was “the scariest thing I think I’ve ever heard.”
Mr. Garland has said the Oct. 4 directive was aimed at countering violent threats, not squelching free speech. So far he has refused so far to withdraw the memo despite Republican pleas.
.@TXAG Ken Paxton on the U.S. Attorney General using the FBI to investigate parents: “I never thought I would hear anything like that from any administration. Republican or Democrat.” @momsforamerica
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) January 26, 2022
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Also spurring concerns were the fentanyl epidemic and crime wave. Babette Holder, president of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of Illinois, dinged progressive Cook County District Attorney Kim Foxx, whose campaign was bankrolled by Democratic megadonor George Soros’s political-action committee.
“Almost 800 people were murdered [last year] in Chicago alone, and that’s spreading throughout our state,” said Ms. Holder. “And the mama bears are going to be the ones that say, not on my on my turf, not in my community.”
Florida nurse practitioner Nikki Murphy took issue with COVID-19 vaccine mandates, accusing public-health officials of ignoring natural immunity, adding that “unvaccinated does not mean infected and vaccinated does not mean uninfected.”
Brandy Klingman, a clinical psychotherapist and CEO of an outpatient addiction center in Baton Rouge, had a sobering message about high-potency marijuana and the flood of fentanyl coming through the southern border.
“I know a kid who died not long ago of a fentanyl overdose because he thought he was taking a Percocet,” she said. “Can you imagine not being able to make a mistake as a kid without dying? This is a very big problem for us as moms and the solution is also with us as moms.”
She urged mothers to drug-test their children, saying today’s street drugs are no longer safe for youthful experimentation. Fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death for those ages 18-45, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speakers also discussed how they have become more involved in community organizing and politics as they seek to push back on the woke agenda.
“I just want to say to any school board, to any school administrator, to any city council, to any county commissioner: Don’t make us come down there, OK, because we will,” said Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, who’s married to Mr. Paxton.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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