Before Moms for Liberty Co-Founder and CEO Tina Descovich ever knew Bucks County existed, she knew the Bucks County Beacon existed. That’s the reach our reporting has. Here’s what Descovich said at a Harrisburg-area event last week while introducing Bucks County Chapter Chair Jamie Tromba:
“And so I am very familiar with Bucks County. Bucks County Beacon, give you a shout out, has been after Moms for Liberty since we started. So, Bucks County, before I even knew it existed, I knew the Beacon existed because they were writing trash pieces about us. Straight up lies, I’ll say from the very beginning.”
First, I couldn’t be prouder that our media outlet was attacked by an “extremist” organization showcased in the Sourthern Poverty Law Center’s annual Year in Hate & Extremism report and who GLAAD correctly noted has been “waging war on LGBTQ and race-inclusive books.” I’d be worried if they were actually praising us.
Part of the Bucks County Beacon’s journalistic mission is to shine a light on “the growing threat of right-wing extremism to our schools, government, and democracy.” Moms for Liberty just happened to fit the bill. This national organization has a very active chapter in Bucks County and they had successfully infiltrated school boards and used their nenewfound to rewrite policies in order to make it easier to ban books and make LGBTQ students feel ostracized and unwelcome, among other abominations.
The first thing we did was blow up their fairy tale origin story (too often regurgitated early on by corporate media) that Moms for Liberty was just a grassroots group of plucky moms wanting to exercise “parental rights.”
We called bullshit.
Maurice Cunningham, author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, wrote two articles dispelling that myth: “The Right-Wing Money and Influence Behind Moms for Liberty” and ”Pulling Back The Curtain On The Leadership Institute’s Dominion Over Moms For Liberty.” Locally, Doylestown writer Diana Leygerman wrote “Astroturfing in Central Bucks School District: Moms for Liberty and Book Bans,” while I wrote “It Takes a Village: Expelling Right-Wing Extremism from Bucks County School Districts.” Then as Moms for Liberty prepared for their 2023 National Summit in Philadelphia, our state education reporter Peter Greene wrote “As Moms For Liberty Meets In Philadelphia, Don’t Underestimate Their Extremism And The Threat They Pose.” Next, we sent our reporter Pat LaMarche (who received credentials from Moms for Liberty) to attend their summit. She got kicked out after a few days because we were reporting in real time what was actually going on, like “At The Moms For Liberty Summit, Comprehensive Sexual Education Is ‘Critical Race Theory’ And Sexualization Of Children.” Then after the Summit we invited onto our podcast Media Matters’ Olivia Little who went undercover at the event – which was a good thing because journalists had limited access – to discuss what she heard and saw. And she was joined by Leygerman to contextualize it for our Bucks County audience in our most downloaded episode.
Now, circling back to Descovich’s diatribe slandering the Beacon to her audience and welcoming Moms for Liberty Bucks County Chapter Chair Tromba, Tromba followed by saying the “Beacon loved to do a piece on me too.”
“Loved” is maybe too strong a word, but I did enjoy writing it because I felt it offered local readers crucial insight into who she is and what her group stands for.
Did I lie? Of course not.
I reported word-for-word excerpts of an interview she gave to the Christian Nationalist Face the Culture podcast. Here’s what she said, and what I reported in the column “Moms for Liberty Bucks County Leaders Think Public Schools Are Trying to Bring Pedophilia Into the Classrooms”:
- “We’re definitely in a battle of good and evil at this point.”
- “These books and things that we’re seeing, I mean, it’s grooming. It’s nothing more than grooming.”
- “They’re now making it where pedophilia is OK. That’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to make it like pedophilia is OK. They’re inviting it into the schools. They’re with your child more than you during the day. What’s going on in that classroom? You have to be aware.”
- “I have no hate for any child that has any kind of, you know, whatever is going on with them [being LGBTQ]. Okay. It’s just not, it does not belong in public schools.”
As Tromba’s podcast interview, and Moms for Liberty’s long, bigoted, and book-banning history shows, it’s them who do not belong in public schools.
Our honest reporting and writing are not “lies,” as Descovich claimed. It’s truth, just the inconvenient truth that even they don’t like to admit, at least publicly, because it casts them in a negative light to most people. As I like to explain to folks about our editorial position, “our facts are right, but our analysis is left.”
Let me be clear: Moms for Liberty and their allies in the GOP are fighting “guerrilla warfare” against public education. Again, those aren’t my words, they’re theirs.
“And I will tell you, once you start fighting this fight and you get into the guerrilla warfare with us, it becomes infectious where that’s all you think about,” said Luzerne County Republican State Rep. Jamie Walsh, a panelist at last week’s Susquehanna Township “town hall.”
As they wage this war on public education, the Bucks County Beacon will continue to report the truth from the front lines. If you value independent media reporting on what other outlets ignore, misreport, or “both sides,” please become a monthly sustainer. It’s an investment in your community and democracy’s future.
