The term “obedient franchise” is a phrase from Anne Nelson’s essential book on the Council for National Policy (CNP), Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. The CNP is made up of leaders of far-right operations like Heritage Foundation, Leadership Institute, National Rifle Association, and Christian Nationalists that set the direction of extremist attacks on public goods. And as Nelson describes, the CNP is a hub in the wheel of an array of spokes-organizations that amplify and advocate for the policy prescriptions of the extremist rightwing. Yet, when it comes to reporting on groups posing as grassroots “parents” organizations that attack public schools, even competent reporters seem unwilling or unable — often because of their editors — to alert readers that these operations are really obedient franchises launched by the institutional right.
An example of how this fallacy persists is a June 2026 article in The New York Times reported by Michael Bender on Defending Education, one of these supposedly parent-centered pressure groups. The group was originally known as Parents Defending Education.
This error has persisted since many journalists missed the reality of “parents” and “moms” groups at their inception. One example occurred in 2021 when The Columbus Dispatch quoted founding Parents Defending Education president and spokesmodel Nicole Neily on the organization’s origins, “We just all work from home . . . We’re all working moms.”
Regardless of who committed the original journalistic sin, Bender of The Times carries on with the illusion by describing the now named Defending Education as a “conservative parents’ rights group.” A more thorough examination of the group reveals that Defending Education has nothing to do with parents or their rights, and, instead, very much serves as an “obedient franchise” in a highly networked effort to destroy public education and replace it with for-profit schools, religious schools, and homeschooling.
Bender reports, “the group was intended to harness the energy of a parents’ rights movement that grew out of the backlash to school shutdowns and other restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.” That is incorrect.
Defending Education, for the first year of its existence throughout 2021 — as vaccines were being made available, school re-openings were stuttering forward, and masking was required — had almost nothing to say about Covid and school shutdowns. A Lexis-Nexis search for “Parents Defending Education” and “Covid or Coronavirus” shows no real substantive advocacy by the organization on the pandemic.
Parents Defending Education incorporated in 2021 and its initial Form 990 tax return, filed in November 2022, said nothing about Covid. Rather it was set up to combat “activists promoting harmful agendas” and “fighting indoctrination in the classroom.” The preoccupation was apparent on the organization’s webpage which showed no interest in Covid early on.
Rather, Defending Education spent most of 2021 roiling race politics with occasional diversions into LGBTQ+ issues (especially transgender), a manufactured issue used to split the National School Boards Association, and attacking teachers unions.
Parents Defending Education’s first available “Featured Content” on May 22, 2021, highlighted “Illinois School District Pays Speaker $175 a Minute to Criticize White People.” When I spotted the group, in April 2021, I wrote, “It combines white supremacy with a vicious plan to launch personal attacks.”
Setting this straight is important because Defending Education presents, and mainstream media often repeats, the canards about its inception. Further, lifting the veil on what’s really behind the group can lead to discoveries on similar “parent groups” that also are obedient franchises. The organization Moms for Liberty, for instance, started about the same time, with similar funding sources and professional operations and with the same goals of decimating unions and destroying public education.
Bender reports that Defending Education’s board includes Ken Marcus, who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration. His article should have gone further to report that Karol Markowicz, who also serves on the board, is a columnist at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. Also, board member Ian Lindquist has been a fellow at the far-right Claremont Institute, a hub of January 6 conspiracists. Another member, Edward Blum, has made a career out of attacking affirmative action and equity programs at schools. It would be rare for moms working from home to put together a board like that.
To be fair Bender does a good job on the money trail and shows that Defending Education is not, as it claims, grassroots. The report notes that only about 1.5 percent of 2024 revenues came from membership dues. The rest of the $5.4 million came from right wing foundations. Donors Trust, the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement” kicked in $21 million from 2021-2024, and major donations have come in from Bradley Impact Fund and Searle Freedom Trust, both known contributors to right-wing politics.
Bender could have gone further to point out that Donors Trust operates as a part of the network associated with Charles and the late David Koch. Searle Freedom Trust is also in the Koch network and has donated to Donors Trust. Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has donated to Donors Trust. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, closely aligned with the Bradley Impact Fund, has also given to Donors Trust.
And there’s Nicole Neily. She has a long history as an operative in Koch network franchises. In the same year Parents Defending Education burst onto the scene, Neily was still working for a Koch operation called Speech First, an organization that also has received money from Donors Trust and is tied to the State Policy Network. As Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola show in Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War, Speech First is just one of many organizations using Koch funds to pump up phony free-speech controversies on campuses.
Another clue that Defending Education is wired into the Republican establishment is the millions of dollars it has lavished on the law firm Consovoy McCarthy, a litigant of far-right causes.
The firm was active in litigation for Parents Defending Education as of at least March 22, 2021. From 2021-2024, the last year Form 990s are available, DE paid Consovoy McCarthy $4,000,000.
It was William Consovoy who while arguing before an appeals court in Trump’s first term, told the court that Trump could indeed shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and escape prosecution while serving as president. That position was derided as pure constitutional fantasy, until the Supreme Court decided in Trump v. United States that the president does indeed have extensive immunity.
When thinking about the origins of Defending Education, it’s instructive to refer to how Moms for Liberty’s Tiffany Justice once described the founding of her organization. Speaking on a panel at Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Weaponization of Government Symposium, she thanked Heritage and its president Kevin Roberts for being “amazing partners since we started Moms for Liberty.” Later, while working for Heritage, she disclosed the goal of working under CNP’s direction: to abolish public schooling in America. The CNP itself set forth what should arise in the place of public schools: for-profit schools, religious (Christian) schools, and home schools.
So don’t look at Defending Education as moms rallying to assert parents’ rights and protect children. Instead regard them as cogs in a wheel, functionaries carrying out policies set from above — in other words, an “obedient franchise.”
