Parental rights group leader warns America's parents about Harris/Walz presidency: ‘Worse than weird’
"Moms for Liberty" co-founder Tiffany Justice was blunt: She believes a potential Harris-Walz administration will be dangerous for America’s families.
In a new interview with Fox News Digital, Justice railed against the Democratic presidential ticket – particularly vice-presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn. – for policies she says will be harmful to American children and detrimental to their parents' rights to have a say in their public education.
"Tim Walz is worse than weird. He is the most anti-parent radical candidate that Kamala Harris could have chosen," Justice told Fox News Digital last week during Moms For Liberty’s 2024 "Joyful Warrior Summit."
The conservative group was co-founded by former school board members Justice and Tina Descovich in 2021 to rally parent activists to fight back against public school policies they believe are detrimental to children and their parents’ rights to oversee their education.
Since its beginning, Moms for Liberty has fought against public schools’ COVID-19 policies that members believed harmed kids’ school experiences. They since taken a stand against sexually explicit books found in public school libraries, as well as contesting pro-LGBTQ agendas that they believe have been foisted on many of the country’s schoolchildren without parental consent.
Justice warned that Walz’s policies as governor of Minnesota put him squarely at odds with everything Moms for Liberty stands against and could be a harbinger of how bad Vice President Harris’ time in the White House will be for families.
"It's really hard to pin Kamala Harris down on policies since she won't do any interviews. But we can look to Tim Walz and that vice presidential pick to really understand who she is," Justice declared.
"Tim Walz is anti-parent. He believes that if you're not willing to affirm your child's wish of changing their gender, that you should lose custody of your child. That is absolutely radical," she said.
Walz signed a bill into law in 2023 making Minnesota a "sanctuary state" for children seeking transgender surgical procedures and hormone prescriptions. The law tells courts in Minnesota not to follow prosecutions from other states against people who come to Minnesota for treatments like puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgery.
Before the law was passed, Walz had already issued an order in May 2023 to prevent criminalization of transgender procedures in the state.
Critics of the law maintain it has a provision that allows for parents losing custody of their trans children, as the Moms for Liberty co-founder described.
Bob Roby a Minnesota attorney who has worked in juvenile family court for thirty years, told Fox News Digital, "The most insidious aspect of this bill is the language that adds children who are being denied ‘gender-affirming care’ (defined as everything from therapy to hormone blockers, to transition surgery) to what amounts to the definition for a child ‘in need of protection or services’ in Minnesota, allowing the courts to take ‘emergency custody’ of the child."
Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matthew Sharp argued in a column for The Hill that the law says "If anyone — a parent, close relative, or even an unrelated adult — seeks custody of a child ‘for the purpose of obtaining gender-affirming health care,’ then that person can take the child to Minnesota, where state courts now have exclusive jurisdiction to hear the case."
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However, The New York Times and other mainstream fact-checkers have denied these claims, with The Times stating that groups "have been unable to name a case in which that has happened, pointing instead to hypothetical scenarios about a provision in the law."
AFP News included the claim among a "barrage of attacks on Tim Walz fueled by misinformation over his support for LGBTQ communities." The outlet added that critics "falsely accuse Walz of allowing the state to terminate parental custody if trans children are stopped by their parents from receiving gender-affirming care."
The Harris campaign told Fox News Digital that Justice's claim had been "debunked," citing the New York Times piece.
Justice turned around the "weird" moniker that liberals have frequently used against the Republican 2024 ticket.
"Cutting off the healthy body parts of children is more than weird. It's extreme," she said.
"We're very concerned about the fact that children can be put on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones without the consent or knowledge of parents in the state of Minnesota and in California, where Kamala Harris and Tim Walz hail from," she added.
In Harris’ home state, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., signed a new law banning school districts from notifying parents if their child uses different pronouns or identifies as a gender that’s different from what’s on their school record."
When asked why former President Trump – who spoke at the summit – still had Moms for Liberty’s support, Justice said his family's extensive involvement in his businesses and White House shows he cares about the country’s families.
"President Trump is a father, a husband, a grandfather. And America's watched as he's involved his kids in politics and business over the years," she concluded.