Moms for Liberty recently reported on documents from The Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC), revealing the group has the conservative group Moms for Liberty listed as a hate group in its training materials. The MPTC is responsible for training 20,000 police officers throughout Massachusetts. Moms for Liberty obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The materials stated the group targets “books that reference race and gender identity” and accused the group of using “parents’ rights as a vehicle to attack public education and make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled the group as “antigovernment.” The group appears in the training materials alongside groups like Antifa. A PBS link in the training materials refers to the group as a “well-connected extremist group that attacks inclusion in schools.”

Moms for Liberty started after concerns arose of sexually explicit materials, usually under the guise of LGBTQ+ education, being accessible in elementary and middle school libraries. It has sought to remove such materials from schools, leaving the group open to accusations of book banning. Since its inception in Florida, the group has grown to over 300 chapters in 48 states.

Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, disputed the training material’s characterization of the group. “Moms for Liberty is here to show up at school board meetings, speak out against curriculum, failing schools, inappropriate books maybe in your public school library. Antifa is burning down whole cities and parts of cities and rioting in the streets. These two are not equivalent,” she told The Daily Wire. “We want parents to have the ability to opt out of sexualized books or curriculum, things that don’t align with their religious beliefs as the Supreme Court just affirmed in their most recent ruling in the Montgomery County, Maryland case,” she added.

Descovich stated she wasn’t sure why the MPTC would include Moms for Liberty in its trainings, given that members of Maryland police departments have reached out to it Maryland chapter. “As a matter of fact, our chapter chair there in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who is the one that brought all this to my attention, said she has local members of their police force come up to her all the time and say, ‘Please keep going. We can’t talk about it publicly, but I have kids. I appreciate you guys speaking out. So thank you for your courage and your bravery.’”