Trump to Speak at Moms for Liberty Convention

Former President Donald J. Trump is set to speak Friday evening to a gathering of Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group whose priorities mirror much of his own education platform.

Like Mr. Trump, they have called for stricter classroom discipline and vouchers for private school tuition and home-schooling costs. They want to ban certain books and cut funding to schools that embrace progressive ideas on gender and race, while slimming down or even closing the federal Department of Education.

But as his presidential campaign leans heavily on cultural divides over gender, parenting and education, there have been signs of voter weariness, and questions over whether social issues in schools are still energizing voters.

“Is this a wave that’s on the decline?” asked Julie Marsh, a professor at the University of Southern California who has studied school board elections. “We’re perhaps seeing signs of parents being turned off by some of this.”

Mr. Trump’s appearance in Washington, D.C., is his second time speaking at the annual convention of Moms for Liberty, which was founded in 2021. He has embraced the group’s rhetoric, telling convention attendees last year that he would “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”

In the past several months, Mr. Trump has floated provocative ideas like allowing parents to elect principals and creating an alternative credentialing body for teachers who embrace “patriotic values.”