A conservative group known as “Moms for Liberty” is triggering a minor earthquake in Florida school board elections, hoping the tremors will ripple across the entire United States.
The group demands that often-sleepy school boards wake up and yank “problematic” books from schools, and empower parents to have more say in public education.
“I am on the right side of history,” said Jacqueline Rosario, who is seeking re-election to a school board in Indian River County on Florida’s east coast.
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Rosario warmly welcomed guests to a lounge in this charming seaside resort, speaking to them about a subject that distresses her: the “insane” education that young Americans get in public schools.
“Moms for Liberty,” founded only last year in Florida but now claiming 100,000 members in 42 states, offers wholehearted endorsements of school board candidates like Rosario.
That support has turned school boards, historically apolitical elected bodies, into real powder kegs dealing with subjects such as gender, sexuality and racism in schools.
These days, hot-button culture and social issues ignite passions at the local level, not just the state and national levels.
Some heavyweight Republicans, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a possible presidential candidate in 2024, have gotten involved in the humble school board battles.
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Moms for Liberty publicly endorsed DeSantis, and he in turn endorsed candidates like Jacqueline Rosario.
‘Pornographic’
Rosario has made a personal battle out of one of Moms for Liberty’s obsessions — “inappropriate” books.
As she explained the reasons for her anger, Rosario interrupted the interview.
“Can I read you a couple of excerpts?” she asked, warning that she might feel “weird” because some material “is so explicit.”
The candidate recites a sex scene from Margaret Atwood’s famous novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which also became a hit television series.
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“That’s disgusting,” Rosario, a former English teacher, said of the work, her voice suddenly stern.
She read an excerpt from another book, “Push”, which recounts in graphic detail the rape of a child by her father.
“There is absolutely no literary, scientific, political or any other value to this kind of reading, not for children,” Rosario said, adding that she would like such “obscene… pornographic” books to be replaced by others of “higher quality,” including ones offering vocational training.
“You’re opening up Pandora’s box for children who are supposed to preserve their innocence,” Rosario said.
She stated that she does not want to “ban or burn” such books, but only to get them out of the classroom — a message hammered home by Moms for Liberty.
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Flags and popcorn
Later in the afternoon, Rosario campaigned at a small church in Vero Beach.
The audience seemed to be behind her. Between a tray of cheese and a bowl of popcorn, Terri Privett, a 53-year-old who loves former president Donald Trump’s rallies, worries that “the left is indoctrinating our children with things that are just not American.”
During the reception, the song “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood played on a loop — interrupted, however, when all attendees stood to pledge allegiance to the flag.
Though he is not present, DeSantis’ influence is palpable. At the entrance, a lighted sign calls for people to vote for him to “save Florida.”
“Our governor is a champion for parental rights,” said Jennifer Pippin, head of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, convinced that he will win re-election.
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For this crowd, DeSantis’ military background and his image as a family man are strong reasons to like him.
On a table festooned with small US flags is a list of candidates running in various local elections who espouse anti-abortion rights views. Flyers call on the citizenry to pull children from public schools.
Organizers have also brought two piles of books — around 150 they deem problematic — that Jennifer Pippin said contain scenes of “rape, incest” or even “oral sex.” Colorful post-it notes indicate the pages of the books with the material deemed questionable.
Love for DeSantis
Moms for Liberty has had a meteoric rise, a sign of the simmering culture wars across the United States.
“I think you’re going to see that American politics are going to be changing a lot because of this parent revolution,” said Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders.
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She predicts a bright political future for politicians like DeSantis who join up with groups seeking to empower parents over educators.
DeSantis won hearts at the first Moms for Liberty national conference, where he gave a speech.
Moms for Liberty members “wished Ron DeSantis was their governor,” Justice said. “You could hear them say we can’t wait to vote for him for president of the United States.”
The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source
The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.
A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.
This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.
On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.
The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”
Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.
Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.
“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.
The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.
The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.
The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.
Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.
Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.
The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.
The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.
This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.
Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza
Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.
Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”
The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.
“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.
Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”
But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”
On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.
