This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Have you heard of Bridget Ziegler?

She is a co-founder of the far-right group Moms for Liberty,

whose mission in life is to purge schools of LGBTQ content

and other heresies the group hates.

Ziegler is also embroiled in a three-way sex scandal involving her husband,

former Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler.

He was accused of sexual assault and cleared, but both Zieglers have acknowledged a group

encounter with the victim.

Now some Florida parents are running ads attacking moms for liberty and pushing for her

ouster from the Sarasota School Board.

We think this battle captures something essential

about a much bigger story that's underway and will only get more prominent in 2024.

That story is this, the right are the ones now on the defensive in the school wars.

Here to discuss this today is Jennifer Berkshire, an excellent education journalist and author of several books

about the history of right-wing campaigns against public education. Welcome, Jennifer. Thanks so

much for having me. So let's back up. Moms for Liberty was formed in 2021, and its premise was that

its culture warring was giving voice to a genuine groundswell of parents fed up with wokeness in schools that had politically transformative potential.

That led to all the reactionary red state madness we've seen since.

The book bans, the laws cracking down on classroom speech, the persecution of teachers who dare read the wrong book, and so forth.

Can you recap that story for us? What was Moms for Liberty formed to oppose?

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