Speaking on June 30 to a hall full of Moms For Liberty at their convention in Philadelphia, Ron DeSantis leaned into the parts of his platform and his record that appeal to so-called “Mama Bears.”
He talked about the work he’s done as Florida’s governor on education, and parental rights, and to reverse the woke agenda pervading school systems. He spoke of restoring civics education in the state’s schools and colleges. He talked about helping single mothers get off welfare.
“I see events like they had in New York City, where they’re chanting—some drag queen—‘we are coming for your kids.’ Let me tell you something, you start messing with our kids, we’ve got problems,” he told the cheering crowd at the sold-out Joyful Warriors National Summit.
Moms For Liberty, a nonprofit group founded in 2021 by three current or former Florida school board members, has grown rapidly to 285 chapters in 45 states with 120,000 members. This is their second annual convention.
They have been subjected to intense criticism lately. The nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center designated them a “hate group” and an “anti-government extremist group.”
Six Democratic state legislators in Pennsylvania called for the Museum of the American Revolution to rescind its allowing the group to hold its convention there.
“What we’ve seen across this country,” DeSantis said, “in recent years is awakening the most powerful political force in this country, Mama Bears, and they’re ready to roll.”
“I see the issue. Not just through the lens of a governor or presidential candidate. I see these issues through the lens of a dad of a 6, a 5, and a 3-year-old.
“My wife and I really believe that parents in this country should be able to send their kids to school, to be able to let them watch cartoons, or just be kids, without having some agenda shoved down their throat.”
“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children and that means being involved in what is being taught in their school.”
DeSantis has talked about Florida’s strong record on education under his leadership. The state’s schools rank near the top nationally on standardized 4th-grade reading and math tests.
It has 363,000 students in charter schools. This year it greatly expanded school choice, allowing “the money to follow the child” to private, charter, other-district, or home schools for most families.
Florida has provided money for teacher pay rises that can’t go to administrators, and banned automatic payroll deduction for teacher union dues.
The state has pushed back against sexually explicit or age-inappropriate books in school libraries, often misrepresented as a “book ban,” he said.
DeSantis recounted a press conference he gave on the subject in Tampa.
“We actually played on the screen, a three-minute video that showed what the parents had objected to,” DeSantis said.
“The news stations covering the press conference cut their feed because they said it was too graphic to air. Well, if it’s too graphic for the six o'clock news, how is it appropriate for a 10-year-old school child?”
Teaching ‘True History’
“So we raise the objection, send them back, and guess what happens? Because we’re an 800-pound gorilla they make the appropriate changes to the textbook. So we’re winning on that issue.”DeSantis alluded to his highly publicized decision to reject the College Board’s proposed Advanced Placement African-American Studies curriculum for high schools.
In January, the state Department of Education rejected the curriculum as one “inexplicably contrary to Florida law [which] significantly lacks educational value.”
The College Board later revised it, and the state accepted that. DeSantis has noted that the state requires that African-American history be taught and that “African-American history is American history.”
“We’re not teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other with your tax dollars,” DeSantis told the Moms For Liberty. “No, we’re going to teach true history and we’re going to teach it very, very accurately.”
“We’ve also leaned in on—and it’s sad that we even have to discuss this—but the idea that you would instruct a 2nd-grade student that their gender is a choice or that they were born in the wrong body is wrong.
Battle With Disney
DeSantis recounted his battle with the Disney corporation, which opposed his signature Parental Rights in Education bill mandating age-appropriate policies regarding sexuality in the schools.“And a lot of people said, ‘Well, the fact that they’re coming out against this legislation, that means that the governor is not going to be able to sign it into law. There’s just no way you can go against Disney and come out on the other side of that.’
“Well, I don’t know if that were true in the past, but it isn’t true with this governor. We don’t subcontract our leadership out to woke corporations.”
After his speech, DeSantis sat down to answer questions from the group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice.
He said he found common ground with the group as they had taken the same intense criticism for supporting his reopening policies during the COVID-19 lockdown that he had in promulgating them.
When he called for schools to reopen, he told Justice, “I was pilloried. I mean, I was attacked. We were accused of wanting everybody to die.”
“And so when the Moms were stepping out, anybody that was stepping out at that time, you were really doing that at your peril. You were cutting totally against the grain.”
“I appreciated seeing that because I can tell you a lot of what I was doing, I didn’t have a lot of air cover for.” He was attacked from every quarter, he said— the Left, the corporate media, “the Fauci bureaucracy,” the White House Task Force, and even some Republicans.
Kids and Campaigning
Justice asked DeSantis about his and Casey raising their children while governing and campaigning.DeSantis observed that the children had been too small during his gubernatorial races to really be aware of them, so the current one, “in that sense it’s good.”
And they’re not exposed to the negative side, he said.
“A few weeks ago the Oklahoma governor [Kevin Stitt] ... said, ‘You got to come to the rodeo with us after our event.’
“So we brought our three kids to the rodeo. The problem was we had to catch a flight back to Florida and we weren’t able to stay for the bulls.
“Well, my kids were very upset that they didn’t get to watch the bulls.
“The next week, it just so happens we’re in Reno, Nevada, at their rodeo and we were staying the night.”
DeSantis was scheduled to speak the next day at the Basque Fry outside Reno.
There was a big time change, meaning it felt much later for the children, he said.
“I told the kids, ‘If you guys stay up for the bulls I’ll be here as long as you want. You can make it.' Two of the three stayed up for the bulls. They were able to see the bulls and they were very happy that they were able to do it.”
The DeSantises will take the children to Fourth of July parades next week, he said. He’s scheduled to speak at parades in Wolfeboro and Merrimack, New Hampshire.
