“This suggests that the political power is considerable and expanding in some states, but nearly absent and even waning in others,” Brown wrote.
Research from the Brookings Institution published in October confirmed this, and found that while Moms for Liberty was attracting members in Democratic strongholds, it was winning school board elections only in staunchly conservative regions of the country.
While its rapid growth may have suggested that Moms for Liberty would sweep school board races nationwide in November, 70 percent of its endorsed candidates lost their races, according to an analysis from the American Federation of Teachers. Weeks after the embarrassing election losses, the group was forced to remove two Kentucky chapter chairs from leadership positions after the women posed for photos with members of the Proud Boys militia. The group has a long history of associating with members of the Proud Boys, and Ziegler herself had to deny links to the group after she posed with two members at a victory party after she was elected to the Sarasota County School Board.
Then, the group removed Phillip Fisher Jr., a pastor who coordinates faith-based outreach for Philadelphia’s Moms for Liberty chapter, after it was revealed he was a registered sex offender.
Then came the revelations about the Zieglers.
Initially, the Moms for Liberty groups circled the wagons and slammed the media attention on the story, claiming in a statement on X that the sexual assault allegation made against Christian Ziegler was ”another attempt to ruin the reputation of a strong woman fighting for America.”
But in early December, a chapter chair in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, who was also the state legislative lead for the group, announced she and the other members were splitting from the national group to form their own organization because of the leadership’s response to the scandal.
In the weeks since, those who are closely tracking the group’s activities say chapters have gone quiet. Some, including several chapters in Maryland, have been removed from the Moms for Liberty website and their online activity has slowed to a crawl.
“Moms for Liberty has been repeatedly exposed as hypocrites over the past months, but I believe these new issues will be insurmountable to them,” Karen Svoboda, cofounder of Defense of Democracy, a group created to counter Moms for Liberty’s actions, tells WIRED. “Moms for Liberty, the powerhouse that wreaked such havoc on our communities and schools, is becoming undone by their own hubris.”
