“The best people”. Mind you, they defend themselves because “Mary was prepubescent” (yes, some argued that)

In another episode of “do as I say not as I do!” 🤨

David Badash at NCRM:

Republicans ground the House to a halt Wednesday afternoon after U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) objected to remarks made by Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA), during which he delivered a short overview of the 88 criminal charges Donald Trump is facing, and civil court findings including one deeming him an adjudicated rapist. “Take down his words,” Congresswoman Houchin declared, interrupting Rep. McGovern. “I demand that his words be taken down.” For more than one hour, according to Fox News’ Chad Pergram, the people’s business stopped as Republicans, angered by the Democrat’s factual remarks, had them investigated by the House Parliamentarian. “Donald Trump might want to be a king, but he is not a king,” Congressman McGovern observed. “He is not a presumptive king. he’s not even the president – he’s a presumptive nominee.”

“At some point,” McGovern told his congressional colleagues, “it’s time for this body to recognize that there is no precedent for this situation. We have a presumptive nominee for President facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it. These are not alternative facts. These are real facts. A candidate for President of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. He’s also charged with stealing classified information and a jury has already found him liable for rape and a civil court. And yet, in this Republican controlled House, it’s okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham.” The decision to strike McGovern’s “offensive” remarks appears to have come from U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL), who was presiding over the chamber. He cited House Rule XVII, which Pergram reported “says House members are prohibited from impugning the motives of fellow House members, senators or the President. And in this case, the former President.”

Earlier, before Rep. Houchin demanded his remarks be stricken, McGovern also blasted Republicans for traveling to New York in their “cult uniforms,” to show support for Donald Trump at his criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. The Massachusetts Democrat told his colleagues, “my friends over the other side of the aisle have pandered to their most extreme members over and over and over again. They let the extremists kick out their own Speaker. They let the extremists dictate the agenda on the House floor. They let the extremists take down seven rule votes since January 2023 – a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done. And speaking of indictments, Republicans are skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to New York to try to undermine Donald Trump’s criminal trial. No time to work with Democrats, but plenty of time to put on weird matching cult uniforms and stand behind President Trump with their bright red ties like pathetic props.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)’s speech on the House floor calling out criminal defendant Donald Trump was delivering truth bombs left and right, and it made Republicans upset, especially the part in which he said that Trump “might want to be a king, but he is not a king” and the fact that he was calling out his criminality.

Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) was the Republican who ordered a frivolous halt to McGovern’s speech by demanding “that his words be taken down.” Floor Presider Jerry Carl (R-AL) granted Houchin’s request, and McGovern was barred from speaking on the Floor for the rest of the day.

See Also:

NBC News: Democrat McGovern ruled 'out of order' after listing off Trump's legal woes on the House floor

Daily Kos: GOP brings House to a halt to debate whether facts are allowed

The Fix - Chapter 1

Destiel | Rated E | WIP

Castiel’s eyes scanned the file once, quickly, then again more slowly, taking in every detail, starting to sort them into mental boxes: basic, irrelevant, potentially consequential, definitely consequential, exploitable.

Basic: Kansas Representative Dean Winchester, age 32. Republican. Brown hair, green eyes. Born in Lawrence, Kansas. Resident of Gypsum, Kansas, a suburb of Salina, with an apartment in Washington, DC. Appointed to his seat after the untimely death of his father, former representative John Winchester.

Irrelevant: Graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor’s in political science. Competitive skeet shooter. Classic car aficionado. Chose classic rock songs for all of his campaign rallies.

Potentially consequential: Married to a Lisa Winchester-Braeden, age 34, with a son, Ben, who was born healthy seven months after their wedding. She owned a wellness brand that operated more-or-less as a pyramid scheme. Mother, Mary Winchester, was murdered in a home invasion in 1981, which inspired her husband’s tough-on-crime political campaign.

Definitely consequential: Younger brother, Sam Winchester<, a liberal activist lawyer working with groups such as Greenpeace, The Green Party (a picture of him shaking hands with Ralph Nader), the ACLU, and The Innocence Project. Currently involved in a massive class action lawsuit against the Kansas Department of Corrections. Dean’s previous jobs were in the orbit of their father – his campaigns, his staff, more recently on the board of The Mary Winchester Foundation.

Exploitable: A single Polaroid photograph, stored in a black plastic sleeve, of Representative Winchester, naked face-down on a bed, hands bound and a blindfold tied at the back of his head, the penis of whoever took the photograph buried in his asshole.

Cas traced his thumb along the edge of the photograph, then carefully tucked it back into the sleeve. “So what’s the plan for him?” he asked.

Zachariah held his hands wide as if this were not his devising but rather an inevitability that had fallen into his lap, leaving him helpless but to receive it. “He’s young. Conservative. Politically viable.”

“And easy to control,” Cas supposed. He could see it, the whole trajectory they had planned for Mr. Dean Winchester. Today a representative. In a few years, he could be appointed to the senate when Brownback went for the governorship. He wondered if they would dare to lift a puppet like this any higher than that. A sex scandal waiting to happen. Or maybe that was where Cas came in.

Read the rest on AO3

CW: Rape.

Early MCYTblr Interviews: georgesoot

today's interviewee is georgesoot/dreamwasfound, who, in his words, "emerged from the senior living center to tell all". under the readmore is a transcript if the questions and answers.

Q: What was, in broad terms, your experience in MCYTblr? Are there any experiences/events that stand out to you?

A: Well it was primarily an outlet to channel all my obnoxious thoughts about Minecraft at the time. I had started watching Minecraft videos during the Pandemic, and came across [they who shall not be mentioned] and noticed there wasn't really a community on Tumblr yet. I just knew that someone had to show up and make it gay. It was easy to slot myself in, start making posts that I will never understand how I thought they would be funny, and slowly built up some sort of a following due to my sense of humor but also due to my ability to soberly ~critique~ the Minecraft Men as content creators, micro-celebrities, and as people. I never really fell into niches or was much aware of what other people were doing, until I was kind of folded into this idea of Dream Lying. I don't mean to sound self obsessed but I didn't really care about anything beyond my immediate sphere of friends?

For instance, you mention with other interviewees the Elections. I did not pay attention to those for a single second. I do remember we were saying "stop the count!" because we thought Georgeeehd should have won. And I dubbed Wormweeb the Prime Minister of Mcytblr, but I don't even remember who was running? Or why this even happened?

But as for other events, if they were funny or I could wring something out of them, I do remember them. For example, the mass migration of Kpoppies to Tumblr after it was suddenly "legal" to ship content creators. That compltely shifted the "culture" if it can be called that. I remember all the fake stan accounts, but I never attempted to interact with them. Obviously I remember the Tapeworm post, all the Discourse, the Controversies, how I was able to get hundreds of notes by summarizing events of the DreamSMP, my great shame in life.

But yes, most of the time, I was not there to take things too seriously.

Q: More specifically, what was your experience being in Dream Lying/early critblr? Do you think your experience differed from “main” MCYTblr?

A: As for my experience in what has been dubbed Critblr, well I've been credited with helping to start that whole movement. I think it's funny, because truly the kind of reaction to [censored]'s warcry scandal just wouldn't play out today the way it did back then. But I think it's a function of being an adult, that I could look at [censored] not as an idol, like at all whatsoever. It's easy to swept up in the emotions of things. But as a veteran of Discourseblr, and multiple fandoms, I could see through [censored]'s lack of media training and awareness of the average center left teenage perspective on these issues like it was wet tissue paper. People were mad at for that, but I didn't care what people thought of me.

Maybe by coincidence the other members of Dream Lying also had similar worldviews to mine. Everyone could look past the stanning of it all and recognize when something "canceallable" occurred and discuss it frankly and succinctly. Well I couldn't discuss it succinctly but others could. So to answer your question, yes it was a different experience from the rest of the "community." And it got to the point that it wasn't just "holding creators to account" it became fun. It was fun being the buzzkill in an ironic sense, and also fun in an unhinged way to just create these ludicrous scenarios of [censored] the Young Republican cornering you in the hallway and asking you so how does gay sex work actually though? And again, shipping was a component of this too.

And we turned out to be right. At the risk of sounding arrogant, this will become a theme.

Q: In previous interviews with DLying members, we’ve discussed that misinformation/in-jokes were a big part of the culture, one of them being that Dream sued you for libel. Do you remember any others? Did you expect so many people to believe you?

A: As I mentioned, I didn't take things too seriously. I enjoyed doing a little light trolling, such as when I infiltrated a [censored] stan tumblr server and showed everyone his dogs, and then reveled in the drama of them acting like I killed their families. People also turned on me because I abandoned The Ship for a ship that comprises of two… perpetrators of sexual misconduct as of March 2024, though that would also be true of the Popular Ship as well.

Anyway my personal computer died sometime in early 2021, so I, as is per the usual for my personality, made it into a joke because it really was quite stressful. I mentioned to Reese Georgeeehd and Ozzie ohge0rge (sp?) that [censored] must've sent a virus to kill my harddrive. This evolved into [censored]'s legal team sending me a cease and desist letter, as I'm sure I was being extra ~critical~ on Tumblr at the time.

They asked if they could make that The Official Narrative. I cautioned against it, it leaked anyway, because their "Private Twitters" had hundreds of followers, and this enabled this joke to become a full fledged rumor. And then my "ops" as the kids call them, got wind of this too. Most didn't believe it, but some had this "If it did happen GOOD!" attitude.

But some other examples… let me think. We did try to heavily imply that Ranboo was a former member of our organization. We rarely outright lied about the creators, but we did usually distort or exaggerate things when it came to us, for comedic effect. Frequently someone will say to me "Oh so and so mentioned you again," and my go-to answer is always "Tell them I got hit by a bus," or "Tell them I'm withering away from my dementia in the nursing home."

I did not expect people to believe me, because I did not spread the rumor because I had completely disappeared from the "public" by that point. I purposefully devised a very unrealistic joke in the first place, so I really don't know who would believe that. Especially since I was known to be friends and enemies with doxxers, who could find that information out if it existed.

Like the thought of [censored] being so hurt by a single anonymous loser calling him a Trump supporter and a bad voice actor and someone who was going to hold his British friend captive in his basement and force him to go on a keto diet to the point that he starves to death, or that he had offshore bank accounts to evade Taxes, or that he paid his brother to be his body double (this turned out to be true), that he was pretending to be bisexual for clout, that he had 100% cheated on his speedrun (also turned out to be true), that he had enslaved his mother as his maid, that he and his other friend from Texas would engage in a little frottage as bros do… well the list is endless. But the thought of him being so offended that he gets his lawyer, whom he pays, to send me a cease and desist letter… well it's one of the few things I came up with that was actually funny.

Uh but no, anyone with a healthy attachment to reality would never believe that.

Q: I understand that you were also in EBblr and its surrounding communities. What was that like? 

A: I was never in ebblr… all I did was watch a few Tubbo streams, realize that he was probably gay, and I was right. Because what do you expect at this point?

I pointed out publicly that Tubbo and Ranboo were engaging in some light queerbait, except that they were obviously both queer. The point was I thought they (or at least Tubbo) were trying to engineer a New [censored], because that gets you attention which gets you money… like Kaceytron was right about everything? In these spaces, being Queer is a commodity. But I'm letting the point get away from me.

In private, I mostly reacted with bemusement, and we did have some genuine enderbabies, as I called them (mostly derisively), in our server, who took it all so literally and that it was so kawaii desu. I thought it was cringe. Like, Tubbo pretending to be coy and saying Ranboo's foot was bigger than his forearm. That took me RIGHT back to my days as a cringy 19yo baby gay trying to flirt. Oh I'm getting embarrassed thinking about it. But there were a few moments that Tubbo and Ranboo manufactured together that I thought were pretty cute and wholesome.

On the whole, I'm still confused as to why I'm included in this sub-community. I approached Enderbees as a marketing thing, or something of the sort. I never read fics, I never looked at art, I never really cared. I especially didn't care about their "characters" on the SMP, which also set me apart from the genuine unironic shippers. Some thought this was worse than shipping because I was committing that dreaded cardinal sin: speculating on CC's sexualities.

And yes, I popularized the word Truthing in this context. I explicitly modeled it after 9/11 Truthers, because the JOKE (hi remember none of this was meant to be too serious) was that we were deranged conspiracists who were probably best kept away from normal society.

Q: Is it odd to be regarded as infamous within the MCYTblr niche? 

A: No it's not odd, I at least partially strove for infamy. Any attention gratifies the ego after all, not just postitive attention. Then there was the absurdity of it all. Here I was, in the Pandemic, having multiple degrees, looking for jobs, getting a job, going to work, paying taxes, and theater kids in high school were probably drawing devil horns on my pfp and throwing knives at it. All because I said everything I said about [censored], or "speculated" that Technoblade was gay because he had drama kid energy, or called Tommy annoying that one time in 2020, or babied [censored] too much. There's really no end to the list of nonsense I was spewing.

And I'd argue that I'm not infamous. Gayminecraftmen had to tell me about your blog and your interviews. I'm doing this because my friends think it would be funny. And the Drama of Georgesoot emerging from the senior living center to tell all is the kind of stupid humor I like. But aside from this, I haven't thought about Minecraft in a while. I have to be spoonfed lore about these annoying content creators who don't even make content anymore. Anything I learn about the "community" now is against my will.

At the time, maybe I was infamous, but now? I don't care. To even dignify my "infamy" would be to admit that Minecraft Youtube is even relevant anymore. How pathetic! I just filed my taxes and got an oil change last week. Me and the homies are having Dune watch parties and writing elaborate screenplays for Timothee Chalamet to star in in our heads (shout out to Ciara). To reminisce on my Tumblr infamy for a community of mostly teenagers about Content Creators who made content for said teenagers and later preyed on those teenagers… is so opposite from the adult problems and adult interest I have. Not to be condescending but that's just how it is!

Q: What are some common creator criticisms that you remember from 2020-2021? Do you still stand by them?

A: The common criticisms have held up in my opinion. [censored] and [censored] were queerbaiting. [censored] was cultivating an audience of loyal vulnerable teenagers and he took advantage. So did [censored]. And [censored] who literally bites people? Oh… okay then.

Dream Lying was right about [censored]'s friend whom he invited into his home and whom he tried to gift a career, only to be outed as an abuser. We were right about [censored] coming from not just a conservative background, but a bigoted one, one that he refused to actually grapple with. We were right about MCC being rigged. We were right about the cheating scandal. We were right about so many things.

The only thing I was definitely wrong about was the [censored] really did hop off the plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan. I thought he for sure would just put off the [censored] team hype house meetup forever. My psychic powers don't always work I guess. That wasn't a criticism though, just my coping. Oh and I was wrong that Ranboo was an industry plant, but I was right that he's annoying and has no talent. And Dream Lying said from day one that Tubbo and Ranboo's little relationship would not last the summer and we were right! In fact during that whole thing I also speculated that Tommy would start queerbaiting and then he did! I felt like Cassandra at times.

Anyway back to the point. I mean the criticisms of [censored] were just all encompassing, and basically stemmed from the fact that he was like all these video game boys- a white man from a republican household who was not properly media trained because Streaming is not a real industry career and none of them were prepared for fame. And that has borne out over and over again. They all have shady pasts, they all abuse their fame and take advantage of fans. So I do stand by these criticisms.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to speak on or have archived?

A: Not really, I've already said far too much, so apologies to whoever edits these, I hope you enjoy the novel I wrote for you. I don't know, I have dementia, none of this is real. Karlarmy forever. Also who even knows if I'm the real Georgesoot.

The conservative “parents’ rights” group will spend more than $3 million on ads in swing states ahead of the election, according to a Wednesday report in the Associated Press.

Known for stirring the panic about pronoun usage in schools and pioneering book bans across the country, Moms for Liberty plans to target voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They hope to expand to Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania later this year, according to the AP.

Tina Descovich, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, said that their goal is to “activate” their members who do not vote. The group doesn’t endorse specific presidential candidates, but their preferences—for electing right-wing representatives—are clear: The latest ad campaign, the AP reports, will attack President Biden for his recently-enacted Title IX rules that extend safeguards to LGBTQ students.

The group refused to divulge their funding source for the new campaign to the AP, with Descovich only saying “investors” want to see the group “grow in specific states.” (As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Moms for Liberty has acknowledged that they have worked with the well-funded conservative groups the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.)

A spokesperson for the group did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.

The announcement comes as Moms for Liberty’s latest effort to soften their image and make inroads in blue and purple states. As Kiera has reported, the group has recently shifted its focus from book bans and pronoun panic to literacy issues, essentially alleging that schools are too “woke” to teach reading correctly. Earlier this year, I attended Moms for Liberty’s town hall in New York City, where they trotted out their new talking points about literacy issues, along with their go-to culture war screeds against alleged indoctrination of students by social justice-oriented teachers and mandatory masking in schools during the pandemic. Backlash to that event was swift, from both local politicians and protesters. Last year, they held their national conference—which Kiera attended—in Philadelphia, where several of the then-Republican candidates for president attended; a few hundred protesters were also present.

The Moms have recently attracted a swell of bad press, thanks to a disastrous 60 Minutes interview in which the co-founders struggled to defend their stances; a chapter leading quoting Hitler in a newsletter last year; some members’ close ties to the Proud Boys; and, perhaps most notably, the group’s national co-founder Bridget Ziegler becoming embroiled in a sex scandal after it came out that she and her husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, were involved in a three-way sexual relationship with a woman—even though Bridget Ziegler played a key role in the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbade discussion of LGBTQ issues in many school settings. (Christian Ziegler was accused of rape by the other woman in the encounter—an allegation he denied, and which authorities ultimately declined to prosecute—and was booted from his post within the state Republican party earlier this year.)

Descovich insisted to the AP that the negative press has not hurt the group: “No one reached out to me and said, ‘We’re not going to donate to you anymore because of these stories,’” she said. “Everybody understands that the work we’re doing is going to be under intense attacks and scrutiny.”

An unanswered question, though, remains: Who is the deep-pocketed donor, or donors, paying for their election-year ad buys in swing states?

As the group’s arch nemesis, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the AP, there’s likely a few reasons they’re not revealing that.

“Given the timing of their new push and given that they will not reveal their investors, they’re telling you two things,” Weingarten said. “One, they’re telling you it’s not grassroots. And two, they’re telling you that they’re operatives for somebody else.”

3-ways for Liberty.

November 17, 1922, London England

Giselle set the newspaper down and turned to her lover, who was still reading it. “Why the fuck do I find out everything about my brother’s love life from the London Daily Times?! I can’t believe it.”

“The divorce or that he didn’t tell you?”

“Oh, anyone with common sense could see the divorce coming from a mile away the moment Byron became Duke of Feldsbury. I feel for Stella, but my lord, this is not something you keep secret from your own goddamn sister!”

Without a second word, she stood and marched over to the telephone, telling the operator to connect the line to her brother’s phone and waited for someone to pick it up. After several rings, the phone finally answered, and she heard a heavy sigh.

“Yes?” Her brother’s voice asked tiredly.

“Am I going to have to find out about all of your romantic excursions through the fucking newspaper, Byron?”

He sighed again. “I’m sorry. It completely blanked my mind.”

Giselle paused, her annoyance melting away from how sad he sounded. “You sound awful.”

“I feel awful too.”

“...Look, I was going to yell at you about you being a right idiot… come to London. Stay with me and Francesca for Christmas. Mama will be here, and most of the house is finished with renovations. Being alone in a big house won’t do you any good. And I won’t take no for an answer.”

Henford-on-Bagley, England

Giselle was kinder to him than he deserved. In his wallowing self-pity, he’d ignored everyone that he didn’t have to legally speak to. He moved into Walshstone Park quickly, leaving the remains of Stella’s things in trunks in the empty ballroom, gathering dust as he had yet to hire permanent servants. Someone other than his soon-to-be ex-wife would come to pick them up so they wouldn’t have to see each other. As far as he knew, she was already back in America living in her old apartment with Toussant. He missed the cat. 

The doorbell rang loudly, shaking Byron from his thoughts. He sighed and set the bottle of wine he’d been holding on one of the trunks before walking to the foyer and opening the door. He’d expected it to be a moving company or at least an acquittance of Stella’s, but to his surprise, he saw Samson Gardenhouse standing in front of him. 

“Samson?”

“Hello, Byron.” He stepped inside. “Nice house. Heard you used to be in a castle.”

He swallowed. “It was too expensive. Stella sent you to get her shit?”

He nodded. “She thought it’d be better if Thaddeus or me did it since we’re friends. …She doesn’t want to hurt you any more than she has to.”

“She should’ve thought of that when she fucked Campbell and left me,” he answer bitterly.

Samson frowned. “I’m sorry, Byron. I really am.”

“Will there be people coming tomorrow then?”

“Yeah.”

He huffed. “...Well, want anything to drink? Lord knows I have plenty of that.”

Samson shook his head, eyeing the stairs behind the Brit. “Would you rather have sex?”

Byron was quiet for a brief moment. “Yes.”

“You’re depressed,” Samson said as they basked in post-sex haze. It wasn’t an accusation or question. It was a statement.

“Who wouldn’t be in my situation?”

“Fair enough. …How does it feel to become a duke and get divorced in the same year?”

“Feels like bloody shit. I’ve been Duke of Feldsbury for about seven months, and I’ve already been in more scandals than most peers in their whole lifetime.”

He laughed. “It’s only been seven?”

“Imagine how I feel.”

“I can guess.”

Byron sighed. “I’m 27, I’m a fucking duke, I’m divorced, and I’m known to say republican sentiments in the House of Lords. No one in the hoity-toity British aristocracy likes me.”

“You’re also a decorated army captain, you hold two master's degrees, and a doctorate, and you speak almost twenty languages.  I can barely speak English.”

He leaned on Samson’s shoulder and smiled. “God, don’t with the flattery.”

“I think the problem is, Byron, is that you don’t have friends here in Britain. You’re lonely, and instead of doing the things you enjoy, you’re sulking and shut in your house.”

“I have friends.”

“Who?”

He was quiet for a minute. “...One of my neighbors’ daughter. …But I haven’t spoken to her in a few months.”

“Of course you haven’t.”

“I’m walking scandal, Samson. It’s different here in England.”

“Then associate yourself with people who don’t care that kind of stuff.”

“...You’re much smarter than me, Samson. I may have all the degrees, but my social smarts could be greatly improved upon.”

He smirked. “And what happened to the guy who went to jazz parties, screwed a new person every week while still writing their dissertation?”

“I got married,” He answered truthfully.

Byron closed his eyes as Samson looked away. 

“Byron?”

“Hmm?”

“I think this will be the last time we will have sex.”

“Unfortunately, I’m inclined to agree. It doesn't feel right.”

Moms for Liberty, the extremist “parental rights group,” was supposed to help the Republican Party regain the White House. In July, former president Donald Trump called the anti-LGBTQ group with 300 active chapters across the county a “grassroots juggernaut.” They are credited with forcing schools to lift mask mandates, banning books featuring LGBTQ characters, and supporting anti-trans laws and policies across the country. The group was on track to be instrumental to the GOP in the 2024 election.

But, over the course of the past five months, the group has begun to unravel.

Experts have questioned the claims about the size of the group’s membership, and individual members have been exposed as sex offenders and acolytes of the Proud Boys. Then, last month, Moms for Liberty cofounder Bridget Ziegler admitted in a police interview to being in a relationship with her husband and another woman. The interview was conducted after the woman in question alleged that Ziegler’s husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, had raped her.

Ziegler’s husband has denied the allegations and refused to resign from his position as GOP chair, despite calls from Florida governor Ron DeSantis and other state Republicans to do so. Ziegler is also a member of the Sarasota County School Board, and has been instrumental in ushering in Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill, pushing a Christian agenda in public schools, and banning the teaching of critical race theory. On Tuesday night, the board voted 4–1 in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for her to resign, marking a rapid fall from grace for Ziegler and a potential fatal blow to Moms for Liberty.

“The impact of the Zeigler scandal has been enormous on the Moms for Liberty structure,” Liz Mikitarian, the founder of the activist group STOP Moms for Liberty, which closely tracks the group’s activities, tells WIRED. “We see chapters moving away or taking a break, chapter leadership questioning their roles and scrambling at the national level to save their ‘mom’ brand. The organization is trying to distance itself from the Zieglers, but this is impossible because the Zieglers are interwoven into the very fabric of Moms for Liberty.”

The group was founded in late 2020 by Ziegler, Tina Descovich, and Tiffany Justice. Ziegler’s close ties to the GOP establishment both locally and nationally helped the group get recognition, propelling their grassroots efforts quickly to the national stage. Initially founded to counter mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic, the group’s plans were straightforward: They wanted to support school board candidates who pushed their anti-LGBTQ agenda while advocating for the banning of books that feature people of color or members of the LGBTQ community. The group’s growth was extraordinary. In three years, Moms for Liberty claims to have established 300 chapters in 48 states, with a membership of 130,000 parents. While Ziegler resigned from the group in 2021, she has remained a close ally of the group, speaking at its annual conferences and pushing its agenda from her school board seat.

In a sign of just how coveted an endorsement from the group had become in GOP circles, Trump was joined at their convention this summer by GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur and great replacement conspiracy proponent Vivek Ramaswamy.

The group’s support from the GOP came despite widespread reports about the harassment and intimidation campaigns that Moms for Liberty members conducted against school board members, teachers, superintendents, and even other parents. These allegations led the Southern Poverty Law Center to label Moms for Liberty an extremist group earlier this year.

But in recent months, controversies and closer scrutiny of the group’s claims have significantly tarnished the group’s image.

Just days after the Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, Heath Brown, a professor of public policy at the City University of New York, wrote on Medium that while Moms for Liberty claims to be a national movement, the vast majority of its membership is concentrated in just four states: South Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida.

“This suggests that the political power is considerable and expanding in some states, but nearly absent and even waning in others,” Brown wrote.

Research from the Brookings Institution published in October confirmed this, and found that while Moms for Liberty was attracting members in Democratic strongholds, it was winning school board elections only in staunchly conservative regions of the country.

While its rapid growth may have suggested that Moms for Liberty would sweep school board races nationwide in November, 70 percent of its endorsed candidates lost their races, according to an analysis from the American Federation of Teachers. Weeks after the embarrassing election losses, the group was forced to remove two Kentucky chapter chairs from leadership positions after the women posed for photos with members of the Proud Boys militia. The group has a long history of associating with members of the Proud Boys, and Ziegler herself had to deny links to the group after she posed with two members at a victory party after she was elected to the Sarasota County School Board.

Then, the group removed Phillip Fisher Jr., a pastor who coordinates faith-based outreach for Philadelphia’s Moms for Liberty chapter, after it was revealed he was a registered sex offender.

Then came the revelations about the Zieglers.

Initially, the Moms for Liberty groups circled the wagons and slammed the media attention on the story, claiming in a statement on X that the sexual assault allegation made against Christian Ziegler was ​​”another attempt to ruin the reputation of a strong woman fighting for America.”

But in early December, a chapter chair in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, who was also the state legislative lead for the group, announced she and the other members were splitting from the national group to form their own organization because of the leadership’s response to the scandal.

In the weeks since, those who are closely tracking the group’s activities say chapters have gone quiet. Some, including several chapters in Maryland, have been removed from the Moms for Liberty website and their online activity has slowed to a crawl.

“Moms for Liberty has been repeatedly exposed as hypocrites over the past months, but I believe these new issues will be insurmountable to them,” Karen Svoboda, cofounder of Defense of Democracy, a group created to counter Moms for Liberty’s actions, tells WIRED. “Moms for Liberty, the powerhouse that wreaked such havoc on our communities and schools, is becoming undone by their own hubris.”

Despite the vote against her on Tuesday night, Ziegler did not resign, and said the resolution “has no teeth” given that the only person who can remove a school board member is the governor. And given that DeSantis has not asked Ziegler to resign from her position on a Disney oversight board he appointed her to, it’s unlikely he will force her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.

However, Ziegler has resigned from her position as vice president of School Board Leadership Programs at the Leadership Institute, the highly influential conservative group led by Morton Blackwell, who also cofounded the secretive Council for National Policy. The Leadership Institute has been a major funder of Moms for Liberty since its inception, and Blackwell’s apparent lack of faith in Ziegler could spell trouble for her and Moms for Liberty.

“There are a lot of signs that Blackwell holds the ultimate power over Moms for Liberty,” Maurice Cunningham, a former political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston who has tracked Moms for Liberty’s growth closely, tells WIRED. “He will decide Moms for Liberty’s future, and Moms for Liberty cannot continue if he pulls the plug.”

Moms for Liberty did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about the impact the Ziegler scandal is having on the group or on their membership numbers. Instead, a spokesperson for the group pointed WIRED to a statement issued by Descovich and Justice in the days after the Ziegler scandal broke, distancing the group from Ziegler while also praising her for “remaining an avid warrior for parental rights across the country.”

In 2016 we had But Her Emails. In 2024 we have Biden Is Too Old. The sources of these two lines haven't changed: the flailing GOP with an assist by bothsiderist news media.

Yes, it's the same old distraction technique to draw attention away from the leader of the Republican Party who is an adjudicated sex offender who just lost a gigantic lawsuit based on his past use of fraud.

It's time to push back and aggressively. And successful messaging is repetitious messaging – get used to repeating things if you wish to cut through the noise.

But the main thing is not to freak out and to play offense instead of being defensive. For example: Why are so few people on our side bringing up Trump's unhealthy lifestyle? Drinking 12 Diet Cokes® a day and copious chomping of double cheeseburgers wouldn't be recommended for somebody half his age. And what kind of drugs is he being prescribed?

[A]ll of the #BidenTooOld coverage is about as new and revelatory as #ButHerEmails. If nothing else, it proves that a scandal holding that the president forgets things is always going to go down smoother than a scandal in which a special counsel flagrantly violated a long-standing Justice Department practice and protocol not to “criticize uncharged conduct.” As Sullivan was quick to point out, CNN and the New York Times and every U.S. corporate media entity and its cousin jumped onto the bandwagon. [ ... ] Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers. Governance is not an action film. There is no minute-to-minute psychodrama involving someone in a tight black T-shirt mincing along the outdoor ledge of a skyscraper, ninja-kicking his lonely way down to the stairwell, where he karate-chops the well-armed baddies and then commando crawls his way into an empty vault with the glass chest where the nuclear reactor sits. No. Despite our fascination with the Great Man theory of American lawmaking, the presidency is an office that largely turns on superb staffing, visionary planning, deft political negotiation, and artful execution. Joe Biden doesn’t actually have to remember every single detail himself—he has to use his judgment to employ and empower a large contingent of skilled experts to execute upon their agreed-upon vision. If you are unconvinced, the best evidence that we keep falling for Great Man fantasy propaganda is the unmitigated failure of the first Donald Trump presidency. Here we had a self-described loner literally trumpeting his I-alone-can-fix-it worldview, all embodied in Great Man megalomania. He managed to accomplish virtually nothing: Almost none of his promises for single-handed economic revitalization, world domination, or intrepid urban crime-solving panned out. His great dreams were either strangled in infancy by staffers or halted by courts. And whether you believe that this happened because Donald Trump surrounded himself with incompetent yes men or steely adults in the room, both versions serve to offer proof of concept: Donald Trump accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice. Put another way, if you or anyone you know finds themselves reacting to the Biden Is Old revelations with the thought that, sure, Donald Trump is a 91-indictments-richer, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, liar, violator of national security, self-enriching, fascist-boosting insurrectionist, but it’s OK because he will surround himself with people who might check those impulses—well, doesn’t it rather intuitively make more sense to instead vote for the highly effective, internationally respected, but yes, sometimes forgetty guy who is surrounded by people with day planners?

A president is a lot closer to being a CEO than a superhero. And when it does come to being businesslike, Trump has declared bankruptcy six times – approximately six more times than Biden. Trump's business "skills" lean heavily towards fraud, deceit, and bullying.

The real reason we all keep falling for Great Man horse race stories is because they are good for fueling fantasies of all-powerful big daddy presidents who control every tiny aspect of governance in their tiny wee hands. If that is your jam, well, it would make sense to vote for the only candidate who believes in the same dream. If it’s not, the question is reducible to rather simple stakes: Do you want the Big Daddy who surrounds himself with sycophants and nutters and people with shared last names, or the one who surrounds himself with competence and expertise? This doesn’t seem, on balance, like a really tricky call. Do we prefer presidents who can backflip and ninja-kick their way to total world dominion? Perhaps. To my knowledge, nobody ever made a Tom Cruise movie about listening and learning and compromising. But if you still believe governance to be a sober and serious enterprise, vote like the alternative is chilling, because it is.

Trump flatters himself as a "stable genius". But it is Biden who brought stable governance back to the US. Being a constantly ranting gasbag is not an indicator of competence.

Very little attention is being paid to psychological age. Trump is just 42 months chronologically younger than Biden, but Trump acts like a toddler who is not yet 42 months old.

Parents with kids who were constantly having temper tantrums and being frequently disruptive would consider taking those kids to a child psychologist. Being a disruptive narcissist in his late 70s does not make Trump seem youthful but instead more like a case study for arrested development as a toddler.

The executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party has resigned after less than two weeks on the job following controversy over a series of social media posts denigrating women and Black people, reported KFYR TV on Tuesday.

"I believe the best path forward for the NDGOP is for me to take a different path," said Dave Roetman in a brief statement announcing his resignation. "I wish them all the best."

This comes after extensive reporting at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead documenting Roetman's controversial escapades on X.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

According to reporter Rob Port, Roetman made "dozens and dozens of ignorant social media posts," including comments leering at scantily clad or undressed women; jokes about women making sandwiches; and a suggestion that Black people should get out of America and move to Wakanda, the fictional East African kingdom that was the setting for Black Panther.

When the original story broke, Roetman refused to apologize, telling Port, "I am a man who stands by his words."

Generally, state party chairs are content to work behind the scenes out of sight, but are sometimes the focus of colorful scandals. In 2021, former Minnesota GOP director Jennifer Carnahan stepped down amid allegations the organization was full of sexual harassment and bullying, including one of her close associates and party donors being arrested for sex trafficking.