A Furry, the Lieutenant Governor, and Moms for Liberty have a Town Hall
- Vanessa Hall
- Oct 15
- 7 min read
Moms for Liberty Town Hall in Fairfax City, October 2025
I’m still questioning my life choices, but I attended the Moms for Liberty (M4L) Town Hall on Friday, October 3, 2025, and I survived. The event didn’t disappoint, but there were some surprises along the way.
Let's start with the pleasant surprises
It was a well-run event, with professional greeters and a high-level of security, likely since the sitting Lieutenant Governor and her running mate were attending. Pre-registration was required, and we were required to wear visible M4L stickers. I ripped off the M4L on my sticker. Why would I wear the name of a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) defined extremist hate group on my sweater if I don’t want my kids to wear confederate symbols of their high school.
There were so many high-level M4L “celebrities” in attendance: Tina Descovich (CEO and Founder), Jamie Hinkle (Coalition Coordinator), Katie Gorka (Advisor), Scarlett Johnson (Wisconsin chair). The event must have exceeded more than $50,000 in travel and production costs for only about 150 local attendees.
I was particularly taken with one speaker, who gave a moving speech about autism and autistic children, which must have been hard in front of a crowd that often expresses negative views about kids with learning disabilities, much less in front of a crowd that on the whole believes that autism is caused by vaccines.
Tina Descovich, M4L cofounder and CEO, was surprisingly congenial as she introduced and facilitated the panels. She channeled empathy instead of the wild-eyed indignation that I expected. I was surprised by her approach since it was in opposition with the only other position on empathy I’ve heard from M4L, as previously shared by another headliner, Merianne Jensen. Perhaps empathy is acceptable within M4L, and only condemned when it is used for children and families outside of their patriotic embrace?
Of course, there were quite a few unpleasant surprises
Despite being billed as “essential conversation about protecting parental rights and putting students FIRST,” students and parent’s rights took a backseat to partisan politicking. Call me naive, but I thought that a 501(c)(4) organization should at least attempt to have the appearance of nonpartisanship, but that was not the case.
Both Earle-Sears and Reid used their time to attack their opponents. Earle-Sears repeated allegations that her opponent, Abigail Spanberger, was “soft on crime,” which is odd since Spanberger was in law enforcement and received the police benevolent association endorsement for Governor. Reid claimed that his opponent, Ghazala Hashmi, was the leader of “everything that is a problem” in Virginia schools. That seemed like a wild statement because Hashmi is an educator and Chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, where she has championed bills to increase support and funding for educators, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities. I’ve seen her oppose the culture wars of the Youngkin administration when she stood up for parents, teachers, and students.
Clearly, this was a campaign event for GOP candidates Earle-Sears and Reid, but it was also intended to bring M4L and Turning Point USA to Northern Virginia, especially Fairfax County:
Katie Gorka, Chair of the Fairfax GOP, begged the room for a volunteer to chair a Fairfax County chapter of M4L. Interestingly, the reason there is no M4L chapter in Fairfax County is because Gorka, M4L, and IWF kyboshed the chapter that a local mom started in 2022. Personally, I’m not unhappy about the result, because I’ve seen what the Prince William County M4L chapter did to our Fairfax County students when they snuck into a kids’ discord group in order to undermine LGBTQIA activism by students, thereby exposing them to danger and threats.
Emery Seigler, Turning Point USA Club America Capitol Field Representative, invited students to start a chapter at their high schools. Her entreaty was repeated constantly throughout the event…along with complaints about barriers to finding sponsors.
Ian Prior, Senior Advisor of America First Legal, was on the political panel with Earle-Sears and Reid. He was hailed as some kind of savior to M4L parents in the room. He outlined his legal cases against school districts and connections to the current Trump administration (e.g., Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice and David Warrington, White House Counsel), which should concern anyone who cares about influence, accountability, and transparency in government. As a citizen who advocates for civil rights in our schools, I’m concerned about his connections, because he may choose to wield them against me and mine at any time.
The Town Hall was a constant airing of grievances where M4L described how “our children and parents’ rights are under attack” by radical school boards. This was repeated ad nauseum during the parents panel where nearly all of the participants were employed by a Project 2025 group, a M4L leader, or not a current K-12 parent. At least half of them were involved in America First Legal lawsuits against their school districts, as well.
Repeatedly, they acted as if kids starting TP USA chapters were oppressed by their peers and under attack for merely wanting to “have a conversation,” when in fact the “debate me” mentality is rooted in deceptive, often toxic, tactics (e.g., heavy use of logical fallacies), and bullying. Not only that, why would most people want to engage with those who are interested in taking away fundamental human rights, or want to debate civil rights?
On social media, John Reid praised the attendees “an awesome group of parents,” although most of the crowd were grandparents with no kids in our schools. Unfortunately, since he has blocked me on his candidate page–an odd choice for a man who claims to be open to conversations–I had to ask a friend for his post. Speaking of Reid, he had an outrageously awkward and maybe too personal moment at the event. You could hear widespread muttering and audible gasps when he mentioned Baptist preachers and strippers, juices flowing, and secrets. It’s worth a listen.
The question and answer period at the end of the event was most illuminating. For example, in response to a parent question about Governor Youngkin’s recent public health directive, Earle-Sears responded that it is their attempt to force Northern Virginia schools to comply with the anti-trans Youngkin model policies and Prior advocated for lawfare against school districts when he said, “keep suing these school districts.” People cheered, but I wondered how much this lawfare is costing my county and my schools.
Nonetheless, even I was surprised when an attendee shared that he dressed up as a furry for school board meetings. He seemed honestly confused as to why his antics would be considered disturbances by the school boards. I guess what he considers “performance art” is considered by others to be sharing demeaning, debunked conspiracy theories. Ironically, I was the target of insults by this attendee at a previous M4L Earle-Sears and Reid campaign stop in Prince William when he made unprompted anti-trans remarks about me, a cisgender mom, which begs the question: Where does performance art end and bullying begin?
If this had been a bingo drinking game of right-wing buzzwords, I would have been incapacitated before the end of the event, as they used the following words interchangeably: SEL, CRT, DEI, Marxism. The audience applauded and loved these words, despite the fact that the speakers never defined them, much less used them correctly.
M4L speakers used a lot of disturbing warlike metaphors calling our schools “battlegrounds.” In her opening speech, Jensen ended with this statement:
Remember, we are not just saving our schools. We are saving our kids' futures. We’re building a Virginia where our daughters are safe, our sons are heard, and parents are respected. - Moms for Liberty
Are our daughters not to be heard? Are our daughters not allowed to advocate for themselves? Which parents are to be respected? I certainly didn’t feel respected or heard in that room. And I have found myself to be the target of people like Prior who has called me a “Karen” for advocating for student civil rights while his associates have labeled me a “groomer” for merely sitting at a school board meeting.
The Town Hall’s constant emphasis of “keeping girls safe” from bureaucratic bogeymen and transgender children reminded me of segregationist messaging from the 1960s where white people claimed that they and their children would be endangered by integration in schools and public spaces–as if to share public spaces with Black people made public spaces more dangerous.
As in the 1960s with Black children, there is no evidence to support statements that transgender children pose a danger. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary showing that transgender children are more likely to be endangered by their cisgender peers.
Jensen’s statement about keeping “daughters safe, sons heard, and parents respected” made me begin watching the Handmaid’s Tale. Although a little too close for comfort, Margaret Atwood’s book and the Hulu series, tells the tale of the end result of Christian Nationalist efforts to “keep girls safe” where girls and women have no freedom of choice, movement, much less bodily autonomy.
The slow slide of women like Serena Joy of the Handmaid’s Tale being both the architects and handmaidens of an anti-women movement until only their sons and husbands were heard was not lost on me--especially considering the majority of the M4L Advisory Committee is men, and nearly all of their funding comes from men.
M4L and their allies focus on school boards, teachers, transgender children, and Marxism as dangers to girls, while completely ignoring real and present dangers to girls–including gun violence, sexual abuse, suicide, accidents, and disease–seemed like political pandering using tired Christian Nationalist tropes. As such, I can’t help but feel that their messaging about safety leads down a dark and dangerous path when they misidentify the sources of danger.
It makes me think that their solutions will be similarly misguided, and will not have the interests of girls, boys, or parents in mind. Especially not parents like me whose interests are not represented by M4L.
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