Downplaying Their Bigotry, The New York Times Describes Book-Banning, Hitler-Quoting Group as "Conservative Moms"

Moms for Liberty was designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Check out this lede in the New York Times, published Saturday, August 31st:

It didn’t look like a typical Trump rally.

There were trays of mini-cupcakes and macarons. There were squadrons of helicopter moms buzzed off white wine. The excited women were wandering around the basement of a Marriott in downtown Washington, waiting for former President Donald J. Trump to show.

It was the Joyful Warriors summit thrown by a bunch of agitated parents known as the Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group that was founded during the Covid pandemic. The group, which has more than 130,000 members across the country, has become quite influential in Republican politics.

The article, “Conservative Moms, Charmed by Trump, Would Rather Avoid His Misogyny,” frames the group as just your average, run-of-the-mill conservative group of moms — the “suburban women” Trump needs to appeal to if he hopes to win in November — some of whom would like to see Trump lay off the overt misogyny in his social media posts.

But that portrayal doesn’t do justice for the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated extremist group, which has led the charge to implement sweeping bans targeting LGBTQ and race-inclusive books, fought against diversity initiatives, and terrorized teachers and school board members nationwide.

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To get a sense of who this group is and what they do, here are just a handful of headlines about the group, published at Media Matters for America: