Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, is interested in serving as former President Donald Trump’s education secretary—or in another key position—should he win a second term.
“I would be honored to serve,” Justice said in an interview with Education Week. “I’m open to serving in whatever capacity the president wants me to serve, whether that’s more broadly domestic policy, or if it’s focused on education.”
She added, “I think there’s a cultural revolution happening in America, and I think our schools are being used as one of the major battlefields. And so, I’m willing to serve in the next administration, however I need to, because we have got a country to save.”
The organization Justice co-leads, Moms for Liberty, began in Florida in 2021 as a “parents’ rights” group protesting schools’ COVID-19 precautions. Since then, it has grown to more than 130,000 members and 300 chapters nationwide.
Before heading up the group, Justice, a mother of four, served on Florida’s Indian River County school board for four years.
Members of Moms for Liberty are focused on fighting what they often characterize as “woke” indoctrination in public schools. They have advocated for the removal of books from classrooms and school libraries, including many featuring people of color and LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
They have opposed policies that allow transgender and nonbinary students to play sports and use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. They have supported restrictions on instruction about race and gender. And the group joined a so-far successful challenge to President Joe Biden’s new Title IX regulation that has thwarted its enforcement at any school attended by a member’s child.
Justice demurred when asked if she’d been in direct talks with the Trump team about the education secretary gig. In response to a question about who else she’d like to see in the position if she isn’t chosen, she named Cade Brumley, the Louisiana state superintendent of education.
Justice’s name—along with Brumley’s—surfaces in inside-the-beltway speculation on who might get the education secretary post, given her national profile and relationship with Trump. Justice interviewed the former president onstage at Moms for Liberty’s Joyful Warriors summit in Washington last month.
“She’s as much in the mix as anyone, to the extent that this is even being discussed right now,” said one former Republican congressional staffer who spoke anonymously to be candid about Justice’s chances. While formal vetting hasn’t started, Justice certainly “fits the bill on the education agenda,” the former staffer said.
That’s particularly true when it comes to the “culture war” pieces of the GOP platform, such as yanking federal funding from schools that teach “critical race theory” or enact policies that support transgender and nonbinary students.
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communicators director, noted that the campaign has formed a transition team but said, “formal discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Administration is premature.
“President Trump will choose the best people for his Cabinet to undo all the damage dangerously liberal Kamala Harris has done to our country,” Cheung said in a statement.
Justice would be an effective messenger for Trump and for parents’ rights, said Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and a member of Moms for Liberty’s advisory board.
“Tiffany is a phenomenal political talent,” Eden said. “She’s gone from being a stay-at-home mom and school board member to, last year, every Republican candidate who wants to be president has to make an appearance at her national summit. To get from nowhere on the map to there in two-and-a-half years is remarkable. From a communications and messaging standpoint, she is the most skilled communicator that you can find in the education space.”
Ultimately, Justice’s chances may come down to whether Trump is looking for a secretary who has direct experience governing on education—in which case Brumley or someone like him may be the one to watch—or a flashy culture warrior, in which case Justice is a good bet, the former GOP congressional staffer added.
Democrats would likely push back hard on her nomination.
“One would hope even Donald Trump would not want a repeat of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation for Teachers, said in an email. “If we want to out-educate and out-innovate and out-compete the world, we need a builder as the Education secretary—one who deeply cares about all God’s children and their families, educators and communities, and knows how to help them have safe and supportive classrooms so they can thrive. Tiffany Justice has proven she is the opposite.”
For DeVos’ part, Trump’s former education secretary told the Detroit News in August she was willing to serve in a second Trump administration, though she said she didn’t think the former president would ask her.
Justice would have to answer questions about Moms for Liberty’s record
Nominating Justice could be a risky move for Trump.
Even if he wins the White House, the U.S. Senate, which confirms cabinet nominees, may still be narrowly divided. DeVos needed then-Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie in the chamber to take the post.
Justice, who doesn’t have DeVos’ long record as a GOP donor and operative, may have an even tougher time securing support.
And she’d face plenty of tough questions at a confirmation hearing.
Moms for Liberty and its local chapters have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist, antigovernment group. An Indiana chapter used a quote from Adolf Hitler in a newsletter, prompting a quick apology from its chair. The national group removed two of its Kentucky chairs when they posed for pictures with members of the far-right Proud Boys.
News stories have also traced ties between Moms for Liberty activists, and the Proud Boys. A Moms for Liberty spokeswoman said that any suggestion of a link between the two organizations is “absolutely not true.”
What’s more, Mom for Liberty has been in the news for a recent sex scandal involving Christian Ziegler, the former chair of the Florida Republican Party, who is married to Bridget Ziegler, one of the group’s original co-founders. Bridget Ziegler resigned from her role in Moms for Liberty within a month of its January 2021 launch, the spokeswoman said.
Justice and fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said in a statement following the reports that they were “truly shaken to read of the serious, criminal allegations against Christian Ziegler.”
What Justice would prioritize as education secretary
So, if Justice were to become Ed. Sec. in a second Trump term, what would be her priorities?
Big picture: She said she’d like schools to stop focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion and start paying attention to academics.
“Only about a third of kids in American public schools in 4th grade are reading on grade level,” said Justice, an apparent reference to 4th grade reading performance on the National Assessment for Educational Progress in 2022. “That is atrocious. This should be a flashing-red-light fire alarm for Americans. We are in such a horrible place when it comes to education.”
And she doesn’t think it’s legally feasible or realistic to swiftly “abolish” the U.S. Department of Education, which Trump favors.
“I don’t want to say things flippantly,” Justice said. “The truth is that it’s going to take work, and it’s going to take time to really understand what needs to still remain, what needs to go, what needs to go somewhere else” within the federal government.
She’d like to dramatically expand school choice and give parents more of a voice in schools. She’d rescind the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulation, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation under the nation’s landmark law banning sex discrimination.
And Justice would seek to pull federal funding from schools that teach critical race theory. (There’s no evidence that teaching critical race theory, an academic framework taught at the university level, is widely prevalent in K-12 schools.)
“I don’t think our children should be taught to hate America, or that America’s systemically racist, or that somehow the color of their skin is some determining factor in their success in life,” Justice said.
She’d also look to withhold funds from schools that teach about nonbinary and transgender identities.
“No money if you’re teaching gender ideology,” Justice said. “If you’re teaching children that they’ve been born in the wrong body, that somehow God made a mistake, and their parents were wrong, that they might have a penis, but they might be a girl? If you’re teaching that to children, no money.”
But she’s also got some policy ideas that rank-and-file educators who don’t see eye to eye with her on cultural issues may be able to get behind.
Case in point: Justice contends there should be at least two teachers in every classroom, especially in early elementary school. She argues that teacher salaries are often far too low. She sees Trump’s idea of electing school principals as unworkable, believing that school boards are where voters should have their say.
But, like Trump, who proposed deep cuts to the education department’s budget during his presidential term, she wouldn’t push to increase funding for K-12.
Instead, she’d seek to refocus it.
“Schools need to get back to the basics,” Justice said. “There’s only so much money to use, and we need to use it well. And we need to cut out all this other nonsense, all this other DEI baloney nonsense, all of the ideology, get it all out of the classroom. We don’t have a funding problem in American education. We have a priorities problem.”
2024-09-25 22:35:53
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