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After the Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit is the most fascinating court in the land. The Fifth Circuit gets lots of bad publicity for its conservative bent, but as I explained my address, the conservatives are not monolithically conservative. Case in point Stephen Douglass (no, not that Stephen Douglas)v. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaishai. This dispute arose from a collision in foreign waters. A foreign corporation was sued for violating federal law in federal court. The question presented is whether the same rules that govern personal jurisdiction under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment apply to personal jurisdiction under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The en banc court split 12-5. The majority opinion was written by Judge Jones, and was joined by Chief Judge Richman and Judges Smith, Stewart, Dennis, Southwick, Haynes, Costa, Ho, Duncan, Engelhardt, and Wilson. In dissent were Judges Elrod, Graves, Higginson, Willett, and Oldham. This case does not fall along ideological lines. Not at all. At least on the Fifth Circuit, the views on personal jurisdiction are heterodox. But beyond these right-left divides, the court's prominent originalists disagreed over how to interpret the Fifth Amendment.

The majority opinion by Judge Jones states the issue:

The Fifth Amendment due process standard governs the personal jurisdiction inquiry in this lawsuit raising federal claims in federal court. The en banc dispute centers on whether the Fifth Amendment standard mirrors the "minimum contacts" and "fair play and substantial justice" principles underlying the Fourteenth Amendment personal jurisdiction inquiry.

The majority opinion by Judge Jones followed precedent governing the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and held that the foreign corporation was not "at home" in the United States. Specifically, the majority held that the same test applies for both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments:

We reject the plaintiffs' theory and hold that the Fifth Amendment due process test for personal jurisdiction requires the same "minimum contacts" with the United States as the Fourteenth Amendment requires with a state. Both Due Process Clauses use the same language and serve the same purpose, protecting individual liberty by guaranteeing limits on personal jurisdiction. Every court that has considered this point agrees that the standards mirror each other. The plaintiffs' rule-centric argument, that importing the Fourteenth Amendment standards into the Fifth Amendment context renders Rule 4(k)(2) a nullity, is unpersuasive and wrong.

Judge Elrod wrote the principal dissent, which was joined by Judges Graves and Willet in full, and by Judges Higginson and Oldham in part (starting at p. 39). Judge Elrod writes that the Supreme Court has "reserved" the question of whether the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment may have a different meaning that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to personal jurisdiction.

Elrod posits that the meaning of "due process of law" is different in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. That is, there was "linguistic drift" between 1791 and 1868. Here, she cites citing recent scholarship from Max Crema and Larry Solum, Steve Sachs, and others.

The relationship between the amendments' Due Process Clauses and the limits of federal courts' personal jurisdiction clearly merits "considerable elaboration." Ante at 27. Far from frivolous, this thorny topic has launched more than a few law review articles.2 Indeed, the latest originalist scholarship strongly suggests that "'due process of law' has undergone linguistic drift." Max Crema & Lawrence B. Solum, The Original Meaning of "Due Process of Law" in the Fifth Amendment, 108 Va. L. Rev. 447, 453 (2022). That is, "its meaning has changed since the First Congress proposed [the Fifth Amendment] for ratification" in 1789, and before the 39th Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866. Id. at 453, 461524 (examining a wide array of primary sources and conducting rigorous historical and corpus-linguistics analysis). Thus, it is quite reasonable to think that the original public meaning of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause diverges from the Fourteenth Amendment's as it bears upon personal jurisdictionparticularly given the interstate-federalism principles baked into the Fourteenth Amendment.3

FN2: For just a small sampling, see generally, e.g., Stephen E. Sachs, The Unlimited Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, 106 Va. L. Rev. 1703 (2020); Jonathan Remy Nash, National Personal Jurisdiction, 68 Emory L.J. 509 (2019); Wendy Perdue, Aliens, the Internet, and "Purposeful Availment": A Reassessment of Fifth Amendment Limits on Personal Jurisdiction, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 455 (2004); see also Stephen E. Sachs, Pennoyer Was Right, 95 Tex. L. Rev. 1249 (2017).

Elrod thought it proper for the lower courts to percolate this question, on which the Supreme Court has not yet brewed:

In my view, it is precisely our duty as an inferior court to percolate the arguments raised by this novel constitutional issue for eventual Supreme Court review. Cf. Dep't of Homeland Sec. v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599, 600 (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in grant of stay) (noting that the percolation "process that permits the airing of competing views . . . aids this Court's own decisionmaking process"); Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. & Ky., Inc., 139 S. Ct. 1780, 1784 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) ("[F]urther percolation may assist our review of [an] issue of first impression . . . ."). We are asked in this case to interpret the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause with respect to federal court personal jurisdictiona question of first impression that the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to answer. And when we are called to interpret a constitutional provision without on-point Supreme Court guidance, we should look first to the Constitution's text, history, and structure before we borrow freely from adjacent Supreme Court jurisprudence.

The opinion addresses the dissent, briefly, in a footnote:

This majority opinion addresses the exact arguments raised by the plaintiffs consistently throughout the litigation. But for one point, we will not address the dissents' wholly novel arguments, which pointedly divorce themselves from the parties' theory of the case. Post at 47 n.5 ("I disagree with both approaches because both start not with the Fifth Amendment but with inapplicable Fourteenth Amendment case law."). By standing up for the law as it has been accepted unanimously among the circuit courts, we decline to consider adversarially untested propositions. Moreover, the principal dissent's criticism that NYK bore some burdento anticipate and analyze personal jurisdiction without any reference to well-settled case lawis simply wrong. At the very least, it is the plaintiffs' burden to establish the court's jurisdiction in response to a Rule 12(b)(2) personal jurisdiction challenge by a defendant. Johnson v. Multidata Sys. Int'l Corp., 523 F.3d 602, 609 (5th Cir. 2008). If we were to address the merits of the principal dissent's theory, however, we would note its repeated insistence that, consistent with the Fifth Amendment, Congress could pass a law to subject foreign defendants to American federal court jurisdiction for any injuries inflicted on American citizens or claims arising abroad. Whether this is correct or not, we do not assay. Moreover, we cannot analyze this theory because the dissent posits no rule or limits flowing from the Fifth Amendment. And finally, no court has adopted the dissent's view that Rule 4(k)(2) alone suffices to extend substantive personal jurisdiction to the constitutional limit, and the Rule's language alone suggests otherwise.

Judge Elrod addresses Judge Jones's footnote with another footnote that stretches more than a page. It begins:

The majority opinion's footnoted response to this dissent is unresponsive on this score: Lacking Supreme Court case law restricting federal courts' exercise of personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment, NYK must convince us, as a matter of text, history, and structure, that the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause merely mimes the Fourteenth's as to personal jurisdiction. But NYK has made no such argument, and nor has the majority opinion.

In fact, the majority opinion expressly refuses to engage with the contrary arguments presented in this dissent, declining to address anything but "the exact arguments raised by the plaintiffs." Id. (emphasis added). Respectfully, I do not think our approach should be so blinkered. Of course we take cases as they are presented to us, but that does not mean that we must parrot parties' "exact" views in our opinions. Our duty is to resolve the appeal correctly and offer our independent explanation of the bases for our decision.

I can't do justice to Judge Elrod's extensive dissent here. It engages with all of the leading scholarship on the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Read Part II. And in Part III, Elrod concludes that the Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment allows the district court to exercise jurisdiction:

What does the original understanding of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause mean for these cases before us? The answer is really quite simple: the plaintiffs' cases should go forward. Because the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, as originally understood, poses no extrinsic limit on Congress's ability to authorize expansive personal jurisdiction in federal courts, the district court had personal jurisdiction over NYK pursuant to Rule 4(k)(2).

And here is the dissent's conclusion:

The Supreme Court has never interpreted the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause with respect to personal jurisdiction. The Court has expressly left the question open. It is our duty to offer an answer. But the majority opinion simply copies and pastes inapplicable modern Supreme Court case law expounding on the Fourteenth Amendment, as if the Fourteenth Amendment imbues the Fifth Amendment with new meaning. In my view, we should not put new wine in an old wineskin. There is no substitute for a diligent inquiry into the original public meaning of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. As originally understood and applied (or rather, not applied), the Fifth Amendment imposed no significant restriction on Congress's ability to authorize service of process abroad, and hence, to expand federal courts' personal jurisdiction.

Judge Ho wrote a concurring opinion joined by Judge Costa that responded to the dissents by Judge Elrod (p. 28). Ho explains that reading the Due Process Clause to have different meanings in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot be squared with the Court's incorporation doctrine:

Under the doctrine of incorporation, the Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed that we must interpret the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment coextensively with various provisions of the Bill of Rights. And therein lies the logical challenge I see with the dissent's proposed framework. For if we accept the dissenters' theory of linguistic drift when it comes to due process, logic would presumably require that we entertain the possibility of linguistic drift in every aspect of due process. For example, what does the First Amendment require when it comes to the states? Well, we know the First Amendment might have meant one thing in 1791, but something quite different in 1868. And so too with the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and so on. So presumably the dissenters would apply a different body of First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, and so on, to the states as opposed to the federal government, in recognition of the possibility of linguistic drift between 1791 and 1868. But we don't do that. Because the Supreme Court has told us we can't do thatmost recently, in N.Y. State Rifle. And that's the logical problem I see with the dissent's approach. If Supreme Court precedent requires us to apply the same standard of "due process" to the states and the federal government when it comes to other constitutional rights like the First and Second Amendments, what's the logic in applying different standards when it comes to due process itself? If we're being principled about linguistic drift, we presumably wouldn't limit it to just the Fifth Amendmentor just the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. We would either allow for linguistic drift with respect to every provision of the Bill of Rightsor to none of them. To my mind, logical fidelity to Supreme Court precedent would seem to suggest that the answer must be none.

Judge Ho finds that fidelity to Supreme Court precedent, even for an originalist judge, compels this ruling:

But the members of this court all agree that fidelity to Supreme Court precedent must trump fidelity to text and original public meaning. And that means reading precedent faithfully. "Lower court judges don't have license to adopt a cramped reading of a case in order to functionally overrule it." NLRB v. Int'l Ass'n of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, & Reinforcing Iron Workers, Local 229, AFL-CIO, 974 F.3d 1106, 1116 (9th Cir. 2020) (Bumatay, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (quotations omitted). See also Josh Blackman, Originalism and Stare Decisis in the Lower Courts, 13 NYU J.L. & Liberty 44, 51 (2019) ("Of course, judges can always draw razorthin distinctions and contend that a particular issue is not governed by a nonoriginalist precedent. But judges should resist this temptation."). "[L]ogic [may] demand[] that we extend an [allegedly] atextual body of precedent in order to preserve rationality or consistency in the law." Williams, 18 F.4th at 821 (Ho, J., concurring).

Perhaps the Supreme Court will adopt the two-tier approach in the future. But for now, Judge Ho will stick with precedent:

Perhaps the Supreme Court will someday switch gears and embrace the dissent's view that due process under the Fifth Amendment is indeed different from due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Perhaps the Court will one day hold that fidelity to text and original public meaning necessitates the complexity of developing two distinct bodies of federal constitutional rightsone against the feds and one against the states. But until then, I will stick with the simplicity of the approach adopted by the majority of my colleaguesnot to mention all of the circuits that have previously addressed the issue.

Judge Oldham wrote a solo dissent. He does not follow the "linguistic drift" argument advanced by Judge Elrod. Rather, he made yet another claim about the original meaning of the Fifth Amendment:

This case should be resolved by two propositions. First, the Supreme Court has never answeredin fact, it has expressly left "open""the question whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same restrictions [as the Fourteenth] on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court." Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Super. Ct. of Cal., 137 S. Ct. 1773, 1784 (2017); see also J. McIntyre Mach., Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 873, 885 (2011) (plurality op.); Omni Cap. Int'l, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U.S. 97, 102 n.5 (1987). Second, as originally understood, the Fifth Amendment did not impose any limits on the personal jurisdiction of the federal courts. Instead, it was up to Congress to impose such limits by statute. See, e.g., Stephen E. Sachs, The Unlimited Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, 106 Va. L. Rev. 1703, 171727 (2020); Picquet v. Swan, 19 F. Cas. 609, 615 (C.C.D. Mass. 1828) (No. 11,134) (Story, J.); see also ante, at 5461 (Elrod, J., dissenting). That should've been the end of the case. With all respect for my esteemed colleagues, I do not understand how this case implicates (1) "linguistic drift." See ante, at 4344, 63 (Elrod, J., dissenting). Nor do I see how the Supreme Court's (2) "longstanding incorporation jurisprudence" or (3) unenumerated-rights precedents prevent us from adopting the originalist answer here. See ante, at 3132 (Ho, J., concurring).

Judge Ho also responds to Judge Oldham's dissent:

So we agree that there is one body of due process law, not two. Here's where we part company, then: If we're agreed that there's only a single body of due process law, then I don't see how we can ignore Supreme Court precedent under Fourteenth Amendment due process in a case involving Fifth Amendment due process. And that's where my reference to the doctrine of incorporation comes in. Judge Oldham dismisses my invocation of the incorporation doctrine on the ground that that is a doctrine of substantive due processwhereas this is a personal jurisdiction case, which implicates procedural due process. See id. at 102. He makes the same observation about the judicially-created right to abortion examined in Carhart. See id. at 103. He's of course entirely right that both the incorporation doctrine generally, and abortion in particular, are creatures of substantive due process. But I don't see why the substantive/procedural due process distinction should make any difference here.

On the Fifth Circuit, three prominent originalists (Elrod, Oldham, and Ho) offer differing accounts of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. What a fascinating court.

See more here:
The En Banc Fifth Circuit Sharply Divides On Personal Jurisdiction and the Fifth Amendment - Reason

By Don Poole

Updated: 6 hours ago Published: 6 hours ago

I want to encourage all Alaska voters to cast their vote carefully in the new election system. This is the first time for it, so vote carefully. Many Alaskans do not trust this new idea of ranking and intend to vote just for Kelly Tshibaka and no other ranked-choice entry.

Kelly Tshibaka will support Alaskas resources and rights. She has spent her career holding government insiders accountable, exposing waste, fraud and abuse. She intends to make government work for the people, instead of it working against us.Kelly has always been a hunter and champion for our Second Amendment rights.

This year, Murkowski voted against the NRAs position regarding gun control. Murkowski, along with Sen. Susan Collins, voted against Brett Kavanaughs appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Murkowski voted to impeach former president Donald Trump. Murkowski is the second most liberal Republican senator behind Sen. Susan Collins. Kelly Tshibaka will be a breath of fresh air for all Alaskans. She is one who can get things done for Alaska. She is a special leader of whom Alaska can be immensely proud.

Don Poole

Soldotna

Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Letters under 200 words have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length.

Read the original:
Letter: Tshibaka will get things done - Anchorage Daily News

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It is the first full day of the inaugural Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors National Summit, and 500 such warriors are listening raptly as Florida governor Ron DeSantis delivers the keynote address. They fill tables in the grand ballroom of the Tampa Marriott, waving Mamas for DeSantis signs, and wearing T-shirts bearing the slogans I dont co-parent with the government and Stop woke indoctrination. They jump to their feet and cheer when DeSantis, who is obviously considering a presidential run in 2024, brags about having stood up to Disneys leftism and again when he refers to President Biden as Brandon blundering around every time you go get gas.

The moms have been primed by a morning program that has been nothing short of a pep rally. First came a deluxe version of the national anthem, replete with a rarely sung verse added in 1986. A color guard of four teenagers looked on, flags, sabers, and rifles by their sides. A prayer followed, enlisting God in the fight against the scourge of progressivism in schools. When DeSantis finally took the stage, three Moms for Liberty leaders presented him with a bright blue sword, emblazoned with the groups logo. It is what the gladiators were rewarded with after they had fought a long, hard battle for freedom, said the groups founder Tina Descovich. So this is a representation from all of us moms here in Florida and across the country that appreciate all youve done to stand up for parents rights. Clutching the sword, DeSantis grinned at the crowd as the press at the back of the ballroom snapped pictures.

Governor Ron DeSantis is presented with The Liberty Sword during the Moms for Liberty National Summit in Tampa.

Lauren Witte/Tampa Bay Times/Zuma

Parents rights is Moms for Libertys rallying cry. But they dont mean every right. Theyre decidedly unconcerned about a parents right to ensure that their gender nonconforming child is safe at school, for instance, or that their immunocompromised child is protected from Covid. Rather, the Moms who are for Liberty have mobilized around parental concerns that are decidedly conservative. They want to excise lessons on systemic racism, LGBTQ-friendly books, accommodations for transgender students, and Covid mitigations like vaccine and mask mandates. They want to defend the Second Amendment rights that have allowed school shooters to obtain weapons. They work toward these goals with an unflagging spirit of good cheerhence the joyful warriors conference theme. People want to be around joyful people, one presenter said. They dont necessarily want to be around angry, screaming, yelling people, or its not going to grow.

Moms for Liberty isnt the only parents rights group that has coalesced around the culture wars in the last few years, but its one of the largest. The organization was officially founded in early 2021. Just 19 months later, it has more than 100,000 members in some 200 chapters across 38 states.

Already, the group has made national news for its followers extreme positions on education. In New Hampshire, a local chapter recently offered a $500 reward for anyone who caught an educator teaching about systemic racism. And last year, after Moms for Liberty founder Tina Descovich lost her school board race in Brevard County, Florida, her opponent, Jennifer Jenkins, reported that the group incited protests that turned threatening, with people showing up at her house to accuse her of being a pedophile. Were coming for you, they yelled, mistaking friends standing on my porch for me and my husband, she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in October. Were coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!' Someone reported her to the Department of Children and Families, falsely claiming that she had abused her 5-year-old daughter. If there are differences of opinion about whats fair for all students, Im happy to discuss them, she wrote. But I have rights, too, and that includes the right to be free from harassment and assault. (Justice denied that members of Moms for Liberty participated in the harassment campaign. We are joyful warriors, and our chapter has never been involved in anything like that, she said.)

Media coverage of Moms for Liberty often tends to portray them as kooks who cant possibly be taken seriously. But its a mistake to underestimate their power or the possibility they could be a deciding factor in the midterm elections. While billing itself as a grassroots organizationa loose coalition of like-minded moms who are concerned about the liberal bent of educationits supporters include heavy hitters in the conservative movement. Influential Republican strategists populate its leadership team, and major right-wing think tanks support it both financially and with expertise.

All that conservative political prowess fuels one explicit goal: to take over school boards. The strategy sessions at the conference were hosted by the Leadership Institute, a conservative training group that counts among its alumni Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former vice president Mike Pence, and activist James OKeefe. The sessions included Vetting and Endorsing Candidates a crash course in how to identify and endorse the best candidates in an ever-growing pool of people who claim to be pro-parent. Another, Win by the Numbers, promised to teach attendees the most effective methods of winning over voters, how to drive turnout for your cause or candidate, and determine exactly how many votes you need to win.

Although the rank-and-file members of Moms for Liberty are squarely focused on school board races, the Republican organizers who court them are thinking bigger. In his address on the second day of the conference, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) laid out the sweeping political strategy in no uncertain terms. If you guys run, youre gonna make everybody else win, he said. Im responsible for the next Republican Senatorial Committee. You will make sure senators win all across the country, congressmen and women win all across the country.

Scott was not just talking hypothetically. In November 2021, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin defeated incumbent Terry McAuliffe on a platform of parental rights, courting the self-described mama bears of his state. Following his victory, Moms for Liberty wrote in a triumphant Instagram post, We anticipate seeing the same effects throughout the 2022 midterm cycle. Parents are engaged and are seeking elected officials at all levels of government who respect their right to direct the education, upbringing, and care of their children.

Robin Steenman, chair of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, delivers a public comment against teaching critical race theory, during a school board meeting in Franklin, Tennessee.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Ron DeSantis is ardently courting this particular constituency. His emphasis on parental rights (especially during the pandemic) could have been torn from the Moms for Liberty playbook. A recent profile in the New Yorker suggested that the governor was almost entirely devoid of charismaPeople who work closely with him describe a man so aloof that he sometimes finds it difficult to carry on a conversation, Dexter Filkins wrotebut the women who attended the conference seemed to love him. At the podium, he landed zinger after zinger. I think parents in this country should be able to have their kids go to school, watch cartoons, just be kids without having an agenda shoved down their throats, he said. He went on to praise the growing army of Florida parents that have enlisted to fight with him in his war on woke-ism. If you just show people that youre willing to fight for them, man, they will walk over broken glass barefoot to have your back.

A few hours into the conference, I realized that the Moms for Liberty wasnt the only group holding an event in this little corner of the Tampa riverfront. Right next door at the citys convention center was Metrocon, an annual celebration of all things sci-fi, comic, and anim that attracts more than 10,000 attendees, mostly teenagers and young adults, every year. During conference breaks, I watched some of the Moms for Liberty gape at the Metrocon crowd: a teenager in Japanese schoolgirl drag; a twentysomething in a yellow Pikachu fat suit paired with fishnets; someone dressed completely conventionally except for a lifelike prehensile tail snaking out of the back of their jeans. While the Moms for Liberty cheers and expressions of enthusiasm were restricted to the speeches, the Metroconners kept up a constant thrum of jubilant energy, striding confidently around the hotel lobby.

I watched all of this from the second-story mezzanine, where I loitered between sessions. A Moms for Liberty coordinator had denied my request for a press pass to attend the conference, telling me I had missed the deadline. So Mother Jones paid the $199 fee for me to attend as a participant. This came with certain advantages: Registered members of the media were not allowed into the breakout sessions, but I had full access. I never lied about who I was; if anyone asked, I told them I was a reporter for Mother Jones. When I dropped the name of my publication, most of the people I talked to smiled. Maybe they welcomed the scrutiny. Or maybe these Moms for Liberty simply thought I worked for a magazine about, well, mothers. At any rate, no one seemed to mind that I was theredespite the fact that I was one of the only people wearing a mask.

Because after all, the more joyful warriors, the merrier! When I called Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, she described the beginning of their group almost as if it happened by serendipity. In 2020, Justice, a mother of four, had just finished a termon her local school board in Indian River County, Florida, midway down the states Atlantic coast. The other co-founder, Tina Descovich, a mother of five, had just lost her school board reelection campaign in Brevard County, Florida, about 40 miles north. The two women connected at an awards ceremony they both attended, and they found they were both dismayed by how little say parents had in their childrens public-school education.

They began to organize friends and neighbors who were also outraged by Covid policies, and by what they were witnessing in their childrens school Zoom sessions. Many were astonished to find that, instead of being simply taught reading, writing and arithmetic, their kids were being fed lessons on highly divisive topics of questionable academic benefit, the two founders wrote in a November 2021 Washington Post op-ed. We started with just two chapters here in Florida in our communities, Descovich said in a June 2021 YouTube video. The real power of Moms for Liberty happens in your own backyard, adds Justice.

What the founders dont mention is the big assist theyve gotten from powerful conservative organizers, starting with the third (and much less visible) founder of the group, Bridget Ziegler, a member of the Sarasota County school board whose husband, Christian Ziegler, is the vice chairman of Floridas Republican Party. I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic, he told the Washington Post in 2021. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me. Moms for Libertys executive director for program development is Marie Rogerson, a prominent Republican campaign strategist in Florida.

Because Moms for Liberty is so new, its hard to get much information about their financesthe 501(c)(4) nonprofits tax filings arent yet available. Justice declined to disclose the groups annual budget, saying only that the main source of funding is donations and T-shirt sales. At the conference, there were hints that some of those donations are sizable. According to a chart posted in the exhibition hall, the Leadership Institute was a presenting sponsor of the conference, meaning it donated at least $50,000. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, donated at least $10,000. Several groups that rail against progressivism in education, such as Parents Defending Education and Turning Point USA, contributed at least $5,000.

In late June, Moms for Libertys brand new political action committee received a $50,000 donation from Julie Fancelli, whose father founded the supermarket chain Publix. Fancelli also played a role in funding the groups whose events preceded the January 6 insurrection, according to the Washington Post, including paying$60,000 to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiance of Donald Trump, Jr., in exchange for her appearance at the rally that day.

The speed and effectiveness of Moms for Libertys political force have astounded pundits and those whove tangled with it alike. Quinn Hargett, a stay-at-home mother of three in Union County, North Carolina recalls that in 2021, seemingly out of nowhere, members of the group began posting in local social media forums, inviting parents to their meetings. Curious, Hargett looked into the public Facebook page of the local chapter leader, Britney Bouldin. She was flabbergasted by what she saw. There were posts downplaying the seriousness of the January 6 insurrection. One accused mainstream media of having helped Nazis during the Holocaust. In another more recent post, she wrote, Bidens open border matters and Uvalde happened because of it!! (Justice told me that inflammatory speech isnt allowed on chapter leaders group-affiliated pages, but that the group doesnt monitor members personal social media accounts, and Bouldin didnt respond to a request for comment.)

Several members of the Union County local school board have joined Moms for Liberty. The public meetings, which previously were quiet and polite affairs, now draw an entirely different crowd of parents-rights true believers. Recently, someone showed up carrying a Dont Tread on Me flag. Hargett worries about the outcome of the school board elections this fallfive of the ten candidates are currently or have been affiliated with Moms for Liberty. Im not worried about someone grooming my son to be a drag queen, she told me. Im worried about someone grooming my son to be a White nationalist.

Moms for Liberty is new, but the ideas that fuel it are ancient. Moral panic over childrens well-being pervades early European conspiracy theories that accused Jews of murdering Christian babies and harvesting their blood. Hysteria reared its head during the American Civil Rights Movement when White parents fighting desegregation claimed that their daughters would be raped by Black boys. It came back in the 1970s, when Anita Bryant, a singer, former Miss America second runner-up, and passionate opponent of gay rights, warned parents that gay people would molest their children in order to recruit them into a homosexual lifestyle. In the 1980s, as more American women entered the workforce and enrolled their children in daycare, a rash of false accusations of sexual abuse at childcare centers, known as the satanic panic, appeared. Some of the culture-war tactics used by Moms for Liberty seem to be deployed every decade or sothe practice of banning certain books from schools and protesting language in textbooks, for example, has a long history in the United States.

Whats different about the Moms for Libertyand the other parental rights groups that have sprung up over the past two yearsis their leveraging of local school boards to flex political power. Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia Universitys Teachers College, told me that school board conflictsusually over local issues, like tricky budgets or unpopular superintendentswere not historically the stuff of national headlines. A lot of people felt like local school politics were kind of backwaters, and the real action was in state capitals, and in Washington, DC, he said. Folks on the right had a little bit of an awakening, realizing that at the local level, theres an awful lot of resources. Whats more, social media helped local groups across the country connect with one another. Its a three-dimensional gameits local, state, and national, and those arent separate games anymore. Theyre interrelated.

So what will the Moms for Liberty do if they take over school boards? They mostly promise the obvious things, like fighting mask mandates and pressuring school libraries to remove books that they consider obscene. If you listen carefully, though, you may hear hints of a far more radical goal: getting rid of public schools altogether.

They talk openly about school choice, the education trend popularized by former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, whose tenure was marked by her crusade to funnel public funds into private religious schools. During one session, after a presenter had detailed the myriad ways in which public schools were indoctrinating students with dangerous ideas, a frazzled attendee asked, How do we stop it? How do we stop this from going through our schools when they lie to our face? The presenter sighed. My answer is always to leave, she said. The only way you stop it is leaving.

Rose Jamieson, 64, cofounder of St. Pete for Change, protests outside the Moms for Liberty National Summit in Tampa.

Lauren Witte/Tampa Bay Times/AP

Once more, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is at the vanguard. His policies have paved the way for an influx of publicly funded charter schools, as well as a voucher system that allows parents to use state money for tuition at the private school of their choice. This new guard of Florida charter schools is exempt from many federal education laws, including those that protect LGBTQ children and teachers from discrimination. According to the National Charter School Alliance, Florida charter schools grew by nearly 4 percent from 2020-2021, while district public schools shrank by 3 percent.

Justice expressed deep skepticism about the role of the US Department of Education in schools. It really seems like the work that the federal government is doing is very concerning, and really far away from what the parents and students and communities want, she said. She told me that she and Descovich still believe in public education, but if a parent feels that they need to pull their child out of the public education system, we completely support that.

At the conference, excitement about alternatives to public school was palpable. In the exhibition hall, one booth advertised Optima Classical Academy, a brand new Florida-based virtual-reality charter school, where children use Oculus headsets from the comfort of the couch. The curriculum is classical, meaning a heavy emphasis on the Western canon. In order to learn about, say, the promise of individualism and the powers of big government, the students could travel to ancient Rome, a spokesperson explained. (Optima, I later learned, was a sponsor of the conference.)

During the School Choice Lunch, DeVos herself said the quiet part out loud. And when she did, she received one of the loudest and longest ovations of the whole conference. DeVos reflected on her time leading the Department of Education under President Trump (before she resigned in protest after January 6), musing about her accomplishments. While I know that everything we did was with the interest of kids in mind, and policies that would really give as much power back to the states and local communities as we possibly could, she said, I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.

If you do choose to send your children to public school, the Moms for Liberty recommend that you approach your childs government-sponsored education with unyielding vigilance. Should parents let down their guard even for a moment, they warn, scheming progressives can subtly inject their values into the curriculum. On the second day of the conference, I attended the Education Not Indoctrination Lunch, featuring a talk by Dr. James Lindsay, a math Ph.D., former massage therapist, and conservative commentator with 311,000 Twitter followers. (A few weeks after the conference, he would be banned from Twitter for calling a Harvard law instructor a child sexualization specialist.)

Lindsay was there to discuss one of the most fearsome btes noirs of the Moms for Liberty and the parental-rights movement as a whole: social-emotional learning programs that many districts use to teach soft skills like self-regulation, conflict resolution, and perseverance in the face of adversity. Far-right groups argue that social-emotional learning is really just a Trojan horse for critical race theory and gender ideology. Elementary school classes may not actually teach courses in these subjects, they allow. But the graduates of the universities that do teach these subjects, they claim, infuse their lessons with what they learned in college: that the legacy of slavery has made the systems and institutions of the United States racist, or that gender is a spectrum rather than a binary.

Some parents and policymakers escalate the implications of social-emotional learning to an even greater sense of urgency. Lindsay, who hosts a podcast called Groomer Schools and changed his Twitter name to James Lindsay, equipping my war moms for the duration of the conference, began his talk by telling the crowd about a trend in corporate responsibility. He introduced the concept of environmental, social, and governance metrics, a group of principles developed by the World Economic Forum, a coalition of top global businesses that aims to promote corporate responsibility. Over the last two decades, the forum has increasingly used ESG metrics to evaluate a companys contributions to the good of societyreducing its greenhouse gas emissions, for example, or ensuring that its hiring and compensation practices arent discriminatory. By Lindsays account, though, ESG metrics werent actually about social good at allrather, they amounted to an evil plan to usher in a global era of Marxism.

The orchestrator of this plan, Lindsay said, was Klaus Schwab, a German engineer and economist who is the forums executive chairman (and, along with George Soros, a central villain in many antisemitic conspiracy theories). Schwab and his cronies, Lindsay falsely claimed, had turned the principles of ESG metrics into a curriculum that became social-emotional learning, designed to condition school children to Marxist values. To elucidate this point, Lindsay compared Klaus Schwab to Hitler. Hitler said, What are you? Youre going to pass away. I have your children, said Lindsay. While Schwab says we need social-emotional learning. And the point of social-emotional learning is to teach the children not to be able to be psychologically competent to live in a world thats not ESG compliant.

One of the goals of this curriculum, he said, was to inject messages about systemic racism into academics. Theyre going to present critical race theory through Ruby Bridges and statistics lessons, he said, referring to the civil rights icon of school desegregation. The point is to turn your regular curriculum into a politics curriculum. But the critical race theory portion of social-emotional learning wasnt his main concern. The most diabolical part of Schwabs plan, Lindsay said, speaking in a terse staccato, was to sexualize children through lessons on gender fluidity.

When you sexualize children, you destabilize them. It is not developmentally appropriate for children to have their fundamental categoriesman, woman, boy, girlcomplicated. So, with social-emotional learning, they introduce this complicated topic, and then they tell them how they are supposed to feel about it [Children] become moldable entities that you can shape into whatever purpose you want, like becoming change agents and activists when they decide that the world they see and inhabit is fundamentally unfair to them. Secondly, you get them to sever ties to their family. And make your kid a little sexual weirdo, they come home, they talk to mom, to you. And youre like, what? I dont want you to talk like that. And its, Mom, you dont understand me. You dont know, things are different now.

The closest parallels to social-emotional learning, Lindsay noted ominously, are the Chinese communist reeducation programs. You have to understandthat youre sending your children to Maoist thought-reform prisons, he said. It was up to parents to fix this system to get this crap seen and identified for the crime against humanity that it is and pulled out of the schools, he thundered. Youre war moms, you got this. The war moms cheered.

Moms for Libertys Tiffany Justice is more circumspect than Lindsay (who didnt respond to a request for comment for this article). Justice told me that she believes social-emotional learning was perhaps originally intended for good but has since been weaponized to drive a wedge between the parents and the child in American schools. Even that seems like a stretch when you consider the actual history. Contrary to Lindsays claims, there is absolutely zero evidence that the ESG goals are part of a grand Marxist scheme. And while Schwab may have praised school-based programs that teach children skills for navigating their feelings, he certainly didnt create them. Rather, social-emotional learning was developed decades before ESG principlesit came about in the late 1960s at the Yale School of Medicines Child Study Center, out of the work of Dr. James Comer, who studied the emotional lives of students in under-resourced schools. Comer, the Yale School of Medicines first-ever tenured Black professor, found that teaching students to build relationships helped them succeed academically and later in life. Since then, psychologists and educators have built on Comers work to create evidence-based lessons tailored to childrens developmental phases. Robust research shows that social-emotional learning programs raise students test scores, reduce disciplinary incidents, and encourage civic engagement.

But do Moms for Liberty even want to raise civically engaged citizens? During the breakout session on social-emotional learning, the presenter seemed to rail against the virtue of altruism. Contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities? she asked incredulously, referring to one groups description of one of the goals of social-emotional learning. When did that become their responsibility? Did you guys think you were sending your kids to school to be their own best selves and learn skills and knowledge to improve their own lives? Well, suddenly theyre responsible to co-create the school community and the local community.

As the session wrapped up, a woman sitting next to me struck up a conversation, asking if I would mind sending her the notes Id been taking. She told me she could see the sense in social-emotional learning for kids whose families werent teaching them good values at home, but she saw no reason for her children to discuss systemic racism since her school district was 90 percent white. Furthermore, My kids dont see color, she told me. She had had no idea that her sons best friends at elementary school were Black until she met them at the end of the year. Her son had never mentioned his friends skin colorjust their names, which werent typical Black names, she noted. She shook her head ruefully. She sometimes wondered if our grandparents and great-grandparents had it all figured out, back when school was just about learning to read, write, and do math. She had looked into the local private schools but found the same kind of curriculum there, and she didnt want to pay $40,000 a year for her children to learn about transgender stuff. Gazing into the future, she worried a lot about her White sons job prospectsin this climate of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, who would hire them?

The 500 Moms for Liberty who attended the conference represented just .005 percent of the members, many of whom likely signed up after reading about the group online and have never attended a meeting. Moms for Libertys social media accounts have healthy followings: 40,000 on Instagram and 54,000 on Facebook, and that doesnt even count the individual accounts for many of the hundreds of chapters. But most people likely dont find out about the group through social media. The most typical pathway is via the thousands of small community-based moms groups, where parents across the country discuss everything from potty training to puberty. Once these forums used to hew closely to the topic at hand, with parents exchanging car seat recommendations or reviewing local playgrounds. But as Ive reported, since the beginning of the pandemic, these groups have become crucibles for extreme ideology.

Online wellness influencers began to visit these groups in orderto mine followers. Their newly radicalized adherents used the groups to share Covid conspiracy theory videos, alleging that the virus had been planned by the government. As those chaotic first months of the pandemic wore on, anxiety over the virus gave way to anti-vaccine and anti-mask posts, which in turn opened the floodgates for theories that the virus was not the real danger to childrenrather, the greatest threats were the pedophiles in thrall to a shadowy group of global elites. This paranoid fantasy, part of the QAnon conspiracy theory, ran rampant in Facebook moms groups and certainly found its way into conversations in local communities. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, as protests swept the country, influencers folded the Black Lives Matter movement into their grand narrative, warning that its organizers had hatched a plan in cahoots with the global elites to destabilize the nation with divisive ideas about race.

Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, the wife of Governor Ron DeSantis, is joined by her five-year-old daughter Madison after a question and answer session during the Moms For Liberty Summit at the Tampa Marriott.

Octavio Jones/Getty

Moms groups seemed an odd fit for far-flung QAnon musings about the deep state. But to the people who study the spread of conspiracy theories, it made perfect sense. Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public, focuses on the spread of disinformation in online communities of women. Its not that women are any more credulous than men, she explains. Rather, underlying social structuresthose that disproportionately place the burden of childcare on mothersmake women susceptible. Purveyors of disinformation deliberately exploit those vulnerabilities. Women are charged with the unfathomably heavy burden of keeping children safe from all harmoften without paid family leave or affordable childcare. The threat of child abduction and molestationa central part of many online conspiracies targeting womenleaves many mothers feeling desperate, and others in a low-level state of constant anxiety. This obsessive preoccupation with childrens safety in a world filled with predators can make for fertile ground for the spread of conspiracy thinking. Youre at a very uncertain period of your life, in a period of incredible uncertainty that weve been under, and paired with that, isolation, says Moran. Its understandable why women would go online where its all too easy to find not only misinformation but incredible communities that surround that misinformation.

Such immersion in online anxiety was an excellent setup for the conference, where the presenters appeared intent on painting a picture of a progressive movement that preys on children. This strategy was on full display during the session on gender ideology, during which the speakers used the word transition as a transitive verb, referring to teachers who strategize about how not to tell the parents that they are transitioning their children, as a session leader said. Along with teachers, she said, school counselors werent to be trusted, because they do interventions, without your knowledge. Your kids could be having targeted intervention. The same went for school nurses, who, the speaker implied, could even give out hormonal medications to students. (Not true.)

Teachers too were in on the plot. In two different sessions, speakers showed a handout supposedly used in elementary school classrooms, a diagram of a figure labeled with terms like identity, attraction, and sex. (Is that a piece of candy on his genitals? a woman next to me hissed, horrified. Um, I think its supposed to be DNA? I offered. Like a double helix.)

The presenters warned parents not to believe trans youth advocates who cite dire statistics about the high rates of suicide among people who suffer from gender dysphoria. The vast majority [of parents] would never agree except for this emotional blackmail, one said. Another speaker at the session, a Florida mom named January Littlejohn recounted how she had been appalled to learn that her school district would support her 13-year-old in coming out as gender nonconforming. Littlejohn became convinced that her teen had been swept up in a kind of mass hysteria, she said. We tried for many weeks to resolve this issue with the district because I naively thought, if they just know what I know, if they know this is a social contagion, that these girls are falling prey to this ideology, theyll be just as horrified as I am. When her attempts failed, she filed a federal lawsuit against the school district, which served as the inspiration for Floridas Dont Say Gay law. The lawsuit is ongoing, but Littlejohn proudly announced during the session that she had stopped her child from transitioning. My daughter is living proof, she said, that the weaponization of suicide is a lie.

Her claims missed an important piece of nuance. Its true that teens who experience gender dysphoria do have a high risk of suicideabout half of trans boys and a third of trans girls reported that they had attempted to end their lives, according to a 2018 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But gender-affirming care can significantly reduce those risks, a 2022 study in JAMA found. Even more divorced from reality is the notion of proselytizing trans advocates who threaten parents with child suicide, an echo of the old myth that queer people seek to convert straight people.

Steve Lynch, candidate for Northampton County executive, poses for a photo with supporters at a Moms for Liberty rally at the Pennsylvania state Capitol.

Paul Weaver/Sipa USA/AP

All of this leads to a more fundamental question: Exactly who do Moms for Liberty consider enemies? According to the speakers at the sessions, its the woke left, the government bureaucrats, and sometimes the socialists. But once I sat through these sessions, it became clear that their true targets were people who have been marginalized. They refused to entertain the idea that transgender peoples lived experiences might genuinely enhance classroom discussions, or that learning about Black suffering might sharpen a White students moral compass. When I suggested to Justice that Moms for Libertys ideas might come off as threatening to people from marginalized groups, she accused me of speculating. Theres no reason to fear anyone at Moms for Liberty, she said. As I said, we are joyful warriors.

Back in my hotel room after the gender ideology session, I texted about what I had seen with my oldest friend, the nonbinary White parent of an adopted Black toddler. I am going to bed because I have a long day of Liberty tomorrow, I wrote. Keep me posted, they responded. Dont tell anyone about me or my baby.

At the cocktail party before the final awards dinnerduring which exemplary members would receive prizes named after the countrys Revolutionary War-era founding mothersa woman came up to me and asked if I was a journalist. When I said yes, she smiled and introduced herselfshe was a doctoral candidate in gender theory at Ohio State University, working on a dissertation about the privatization of education. We swapped stories about our experiences at the conference. We marveled at the fact that we hadnt been the pariahs of the conference. On the contrary, at tables in the grand ballroom and during sessions, the attendees we talked to seemed to assume that we shared their beliefs, that we were like them.

And why shouldnt they? The women at the conference contained multitudes. They were from Florida and Texas, but they were also from Massachusetts and California. They were lifelong Republicans. They considered themselves independents. They never cared much about politics until they began to wake up politically in 2020. They love everything about Trump. They loved some things about Trump but hated some of the excesses. They considered themselves feminists. They couldnt stand feminists and described them as shrill. They were in bright red Talbots dresses with spike heels. They had dyed purple hair and wore T-shirts and jeans. Almost all of them were White, but a few were not. They were mama bears. They were grandma bears. A few were papa bears. They were not all members of Moms for Libertyyet. I talked to several people at the conference who were there on their own, without their local chapter. Sitting alone at a table in the ballroom, the mother of a preschool-aged child in Florida told me she had come to learn. I still dont have kids in school yet, she said. Im just trying to get a full picture. Its hard to know.

To kick off the awards dinner, Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative podcast host and influencer with 421,000 Instagram followers, told the crowd about the kind of woman she had in mind when she was writing her podcast script or crafting an Instagram reel. The woman in her minds eye, she said, leaned conservative, but didnt pay much attention to politics, because she assumed that lawmakers decisions didnt have much to do with her own life. I think about that moment when she wakes up, when the danger shows up at her doorstep, in her childs classroom, at her local library, her church, her job, her community, said Stuckey. Her naivet then is shattered. And shes confused. And shes scared and shes angry. She wants to know, am I alone? And thats where we come in.

Jeffrey Henig, the Columbia education and politics professor, told me he wasnt yet sure whether Moms for Libertys parental-rights crusade would leave an enduring mark on school curriculum and policies. There was a possibility, he said, that parents would be turned off by these groups extremism. The uproar over critical race theory, for example, made a big splash among parents at first. But Im not sure that when they actually started looking in their communities that their fears were substantiated, he said. Whats gonna happen? My answer is, I dont know. It seems like a jump ball.

The Moms for Liberty seemed to know how to whip up their cheering section. After a meal of grilled chicken and steak, plates were cleared, and the awards ceremony began. While we ate white chocolate cake, about a dozen winners were announced. The Mercy Otis Ward Award, for activating liberty-minded leaders to serve in elected positions, was given to a New York member. The Sybil Ludington Award, for understanding the limited role of government, went to a South Carolina member. By the time the last award was handed out, both Descovich and Justice were teary. I hope you know that we are on this mission for good, said Justice. For good for our children, and the future of this country.

When the program was over, I took the escalator down to the lobby and left the hotel. In the pressing heat of the July evening, I watched the Metrocon crowd stream by. I saw a girl in an octopus suit and two elaborately outfitted pirates clutching swords, not unlike the one DeSantis had been presented with. I saw Black and Brown and White kids wearing pink wigs and combat boots. Thunder rumbled, and the rain poured down, but the Metrocon kids didnt seem to notice. They were incandescent. A big group shrieked with laughter as they crossed the street, high on the thrill of trying out being someone else, or maybe just of being in a place where they belonged.

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The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party Mother Jones - Mother Jones

The sign for the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building can be seen through fencing and barbed wire surrounding construction on the side of the building in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 17, 2022.

Leah Millis | Reuters

House Oversight Committee leaders urged eight social media companies Friday to crack down on online threats against law enforcement that are reportedly on the rise following the FBI's raid of former President Donald Trump's home Mar-a-Lago.

The lawmakers sent letters demanding information and documents from Twitter, TikTok, Facebook parent company Meta and Telegram, as well as the Trump-backed app Truth Social. Three other platforms with largely conservative followings, Rumble, Gettr and Gab, were also contacted.

The letters seek data on the threats posted online since the Aug. 8 search of the former president's Palm Beach, Florida, residence, along with information about company policies for reporting and removing threats.

Statements by Trump and his Republican allies about the search may have "unleashed a flood of violent threats on social media that have already led to at least one death," Oversight Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and National Security subcommittee Chairman Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., wrote in the letters.

They cited a warning from the FBI and Homeland Security Department that threats against officers have spiked online since agents executed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, according to NBC News.

The Democrats were also referencing a man who fired a nail gun at an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, then fled before being killed in a gunfight with police. That man, identified by police as Ricky Shiffer, had apparently posted numerous threatening messages on Truth Social following the Mar-a-Lago raid.

"We urge you to take immediate action to address any threats of violence against law enforcement that appear on your company's platforms," Maloney and Lynch wrote in the letters.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., are seen during a House Oversight and Reform Committee markup in Rayburn Building on a resolution on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress on Wednesday, June 12, 2019.

Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

"The Committee strongly supports the First Amendment rights of all Americans to speak out about the actions of their government and law enforcement matters, including on social media platforms. However, threats and incitements of deadly violence are unacceptable and against the law," they wrote.

The committee leaders said they are also looking into "whether legislative reform is necessary to protect law enforcement personnel and increase coordination with federal authorities."

Trump himself revealed the search in a furious statement on the evening of Aug. 8, declaring his resort home was "under siege" by FBI agents.

Numerous Republican officials quickly issued statements criticizing the raid and supporting Trump, the de facto GOP leader who is considering a 2024 presidential run. Some, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested the Department of Justice during President Joe Biden's administration had been weaponized against its political opponents.

Even former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump has considered an enemy ever since Pence refused to reject key electoral votes confirming Biden's win in the 2020 election, said he felt "deep concern" about the "unprecedented" move.

The letters sent Friday morning cited numerous threatening posts from Truth Social that "coincided" with the rhetoric from GOP leaders.

"The Second Amendment is not about shooting deer! Lock and load!" one post read. "Arm yourselves! We are about to enter into Civil War!" another user wrote.

Maloney and Lynch are asking the companies to send the requested information by Sept. 2.

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House Democrats urge Twitter, TikTok, Meta and others to address spike in threats against law enforcement after FBI search of Trump home Mar-a-Lago -...

In trying to salvage itshistoric domestic terrorism case, the prosecution left jurors with one final image Monday to remember as they deliberatethe Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case: a group of men casing the governor's house in the middle of the night.

"Dont forget the most important thing these defendants were outside a woman's house in the middle of the night with night vision goggles, and guns, and a plan to kidnap her. And they made a bomb. Thats real enough, isn't it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in his closing arguments, which focused heavily on attacking defense claims that this was just make-believe, and entrapment.

"Look at how close they got, yards away from her house where she stayed with her family casing her house," Kessler said.

Kesslerargued repeatedly in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids that Adam Fox andBarry Croft Jr.were willing participants in the kidnapping scheme and portrayed them as angry militiamen who wanted to set off a second civil war.

"And they wanted to do it long before they set sights on Whitmer," said Kessler."They didnt want to just kidnap her. … They wanted to execute her.

Fox and Croft are being retried on charges they plotted to kidnap the governor out of anger over her handling of the pandemic.Later Monday the defense made itsclosing arguments, which you can read here. The jury then began deliberations.

The first trial in April ended in no convictions. Two men were acquitted and the jury deadlocked on charges against Fox and Croft, whose lawyers have long maintained their clients were set up by rogue FBI agents who enticed them into saying and doing things they wouldn'thave otherwise.

More: Defense urges Whitmer kidnap jury to acquit: 'Send this show packing ... this isn't Russia'

Not quite, countered the prosecution, which urged the jury to remember comments that Fox and Croft made in the spring of 2020,before the FBI infiltrated their group.

"Remember what they said ... 'Which governor is going to be dragged off and hung first.... God knows the governor needs hung. .... Take the governor, we have to do something bold for once in our lives. ... If we can get to her, we can get to you.' "

They were talking aboutWhitmer, Kessler said, telling jurors that Croft recruited Fox to be part of a national militia movement that involved targeting governors and law enforcement with the hopes of sparking a second civil war.

"Adam Fox is totally on board," Kessler said. "He wants you to believe hes just some poor sap who got suckered into this."

But he wasn't, Kessler said, arguing that Fox was a willing participant who in the summer of 2020 told an undercover FBI informant the following:

"'Were gonna kidnap the bitch. We need a seven- to eight-memberteam.Were gonna go up to her house and take a look at it ... and were going as low-profile tourists, pure Michigan bro.'"

Kessler later added: "The recordings are the strongest witnesses ...you heard them saying in their own voices over and over again, saying they were going to do it."

But they didn't just talk about it, Kessler said, stressing that Fox and Croft also made several overt acts took action to carry out the kidnapping plan, including:

Even if kidnapping Whitmer wasn't a realistic possibility, Kessler said, the threat was still present.

"They would've killed somebody," he said. "How far do you let something like this go?"

In closing, the prosecutor laid out a timeline for the jury as it moves into the deliberation room. Here is how the prosecution laid out its case, one last time, for the jury:

In 2017, Croft, a trucker from Delaware, fell on the government's radar when he started talking about starting a revolution. By 2020, Croft launched a call to action: He wanted to kick off his revolution by hanging a governor.

Croft would eventually meet Fox on social media and tell him about his plan.The two set their sights on Whitmer and hatched a plan to kidnap her, with Fox agreeing to recruit members.

"Im on board man. Im going to actively begin recruiting, I cant wait. … were going to put together a group to go snatch a motherf-----," Fox tells Croft in an audio message that was played for the jury.

This was before the FBI infiltrated their group.

In April of 2020, akey government informant known as Big Dan went undercover for the FBI. The former army veteran did this after joining the Wolverine Watchmen and hearing members talk about killing cops. He reported this to a police-officer friend, who contacted the FBI, with Big Dan agreeing to go undercover,fearing police were being targeted.

The defense claims Big Dan manipulated Fox. But the prosecution says Fox was willing and eager to kidnap the governor, and that two weeks before Fox even met Big Dan, hehe had talked about a plan to take the governor … we have to do something bold for once in our lives

On June 18, 2020, came a Second Amendment rally at the state Capitol, as public outrage over lockdowns and masks built. Fox met members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia at the rally, and invited them back to his place for a meeting to discuss plans to kidnap Whitmer.

It was held in the basement of a vacuum shop in the Grand Rapids area, where Fox lived, and Fox made all the invitees leave their cellphones upstairs, concerned one might be a spy and he didnt want the session recorded.

Unbeknownst to Fox, Big Dan was wired, and recording the whole thing.

After the vacuum shop meeting, Fox reported back to Croft, told him he had rounded up militia members, and that he would bring them to a meeting in Cambria, Wisconsin, whereCroft made the following comments:Governors are destroying the nation … we need to clean out the rubbish … if we get her in custody, treason is a hanging offense.

He wasreferring to Whitmer, and called for a quick precise grab on that f------ governor. Whitmer. Whitmer.

Two weeks after the Wisconsin meeting, Fox told Big Dan the group would kidnap Whitmer.

On Aug. 29, Fox and Big Dan headed up to Eagle Rapids to find Whitmers lakefront cottage.

Thats it, dude. Thats it. Lets turn around and see it again, Fox is heard saying.

During that trip, Fox also discovered a boat launch, drove by the police station to see how far it was, then drew a map of the area marked with Elk Rapids Police Department, 3 miles.

In September, the group started ramping up for another training exercise, with Fox saying: We need a hood for our asset. I have flex cuffs.

On Sept. 12, 2020, came the nighttime surveillance. Three cars set out and Fox says: We already put eyes on our f------ cottage up there. Were going to take a look tonight. Its perfect. Theres a boat launch concealed by trees.

Croft was in the same car as Fox that night. His lawyer argued during trial that Croft didnt know where he was going.

Do you think its a coincidence that Mr. Lets-hang-a-governor ends up yards away from Gov. Whitmers house in the middle of the night? Do you really think he didnt know where they were going? Kessler askedthe jury.

But Croft did know where he was going, Kessler argued.

"If he didnt know what they were doing, he may have stayed silent, or said, What are we doing here?'"Kessler said, adding that Croft instead was looking for his accomplices on the other side of a lake as they drove past Whitmers house.

"He says, She should be right around where those three lights are,'"Kessler said, referring to Crofts comments that night. "The defense suggests he might be doing land navigation. But he says 'she.' Thats Governor Whitmer who hes talking about right there.

Kessler then asked the jury to consider what Croft said after the nighttime surveillance: "Taking her out by the big lake is the best option."

Kessler also told the jury to remember Croft talking about Joe Biden winning the election and giving Whitmer extra security, telling his cohorts they would need a rocket launcher to fight the security detail during the kidnapping.

"In an operation of this magnitude, you are going to have to walk away from your life," Croft is heard telling his accomplices.

Kessler also told the jury to recall Fox saying: We need to practice. Get her in her sleep. Ill get some regular f------ handcuffs sowe can practice.

The group also talked about needing body armor and silencers for the operation.

Ask yourself, who needs a silencer? Kessler said. These guys did. And you know what for."

After Foxs arrest, the FBI searched his home and found a so-called go bag, filled with the following: duct tape. Rope. Flex cuffs. A knife and a gas mask.

The defense suggested this was camping gear. The prosecutor disagreed.

When you go camping, you dont need a gas mask. You dont need flex cuffs. Thats part of the kidnapping kit, Kessler said.

Fox and Croft are also charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a bridge.

The defense has denied the claim, maintaining the men experimented with benign fireworks in the woodsand hadno plan to blow anything up.

But the prosecution cited some of Crofts comments like, Im going to blow shit up. Im going to terrorize people." Prosecutors told jurors that he built explosive devices out of fireworks, pennies and BBs that he said would go right through your skin. It also showed jurors videos of Croft trying to detonate his homemade bombs, but they didnt work.

Thats when Fox told his cohorts, "I have a baker Up North."

"Baker" is code for bomb builder. In this case, the baker was a man named Matt Keepers, who testified at trial that Fox reached out to him and asked him to join his militia and build a bomb. But the man told the jury he wanted no part in it.

According to the prosecution, the FBI was fearful that the group would obtain explosives on their own, so they placed an undercover agent in the group who pretended to be a bomb builder.

His cover name was Red. He gave the group a menu of explosives and said, This is what I can build for you.

What kind of price tag are we looking at? Fox allegedly asks.

"Its not, 'Woah, I dont want to do that, the prosecutor told the jury. "Its, 'How much is it going to cost?'"

According to the prosecution, Red said the bomb would cost $4,000. Fox gathered the group on Sept. 13, 2020, and told them they needed to raise $4,000, and another $600 for flash-bangs.

On Oct. 7, Fox and four cohorts traveled to Ypsilanti to make a down payment on the explosives and pick up free military gear that Red promised.

Butwhen they got there, the FBI was waiting with handcuffs and arrested the men. Croft was arrested at a gas station in New Jersey.

Fox had $360 on him when he was arrested. After the sting,Fox shared a jail cell with one of his co-defendants, who said Fox told him: "'Ive got another 600 toward the bomb back at the vac shack."

The FBI searched the vacuum shop, Kessler told the jury, "and thats exactly what they found" $600 in cash.

Kessler also urged the jury to consider the testimony of Kaleb Franks and Ty Garbin the two co-defendants who pleaded guilty early on and agreed to testify against the others at trial in exchange for leniency.

They pled guilty. They knew it was real. It wasnt costume play, Kessler said before asking the jury to consider Garbin and Franks' outfits on the stand. And those orangejumpsuits arent costume either. They went to prison.

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com.

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Feds try to salvage Whitmer kidnap case in closing arguments: 'They wanted to execute her' - Detroit Free Press