Moms for Liberty chapter implodes after humiliating school board election defeat

The anti-LGBTQ+ “parent’s rights” group Moms for Liberty (M4L) used to have 200 members in its Lehigh County, Pennsylvania chapter. But now, after an embarrassing defeat in a school board election, it’s dead — and at least one school board member is celebrating.

The chapter’s three remaining members met at the Starbrite Diner in Allentown on Tuesday night. None of them volunteered to lead the group, so they voted to dissolve it instead. The group’s dissolution also follows high-profile electoral defeats for M4L-backed candidates in Pennslyvania’s Central Bucks County.

Related: Book banner humiliated at Florida school board meeting. She fled without saying a word.

Not a single book was banned.

“Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot,” Janine Vicalvi, who founded the chapter around 2020, told The Daily Beast. “I guess there wasn’t as much willingness to do the work that’s required to propel the movement forward.”

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The group had 200 members in 2020 when it arose in opposition to COVID-19 mask mandates and critical race theory (CRT) in schools, even though CRT wasn’t taught in the state’s schools.

Last year, the chapter endorsed Republican Laura Warmkessel for a seat on the Parkland School Board. She was one of 14 candidates running for the five available seats on the board. The Republicans received $5,000 from Back to School PA, a conservative parents’ rights group whose executive director has been accused of getting teens drunk and assaulting one in her home.

During her candidacy, Warmkessel accused schools of “pushing this gender ideology,” being “more concerned with kids’ pronouns and their feelings” than with learning, and not assigning homework because “it’s racist.” The district’s superintendent said he had no idea what her “racist” homework comment was based on.

Warmkessel opposed trans students using restrooms matching their gender identity and opposed a local high school library carrying a book on LGBTQ+ athletes, date rape, and “the Black experience in America” because “many parents and community members find these topics and subject matter inappropriate and harmful or offensive.”

Warmkessel and all of her fellow Republicans lost to Democratic candidates. Concurrently, all of the Republican and M4L-backed candidates lost their high-profile races in nearby Bucks County after M4L hijacked the school board and passed measures banning LGBTQ+ Pride flags in classrooms and library books with “sexualized content.”

The election loss reportedly lowered morale in the M4L Lehigh County chapter. Only 20 of the chapter’s members showed up to its December holiday gathering. Turnout in January and February was also low. Finally, the chapter just dissolved.

The group’s death was celebrated by Jennifer Jenkins, a Florida school board member in Brevard County who was harassed by M4L for supporting COVID-19 prevention measures. On social media, Jenkins mentioned the chapter’s closing and added, “Another one bites the dust.”

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