While delivering the keynote speech at a conservative conference in Tampa, Florida, former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos called for the abolition of the very department she led only a few years ago. “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” DeVos said to attendees of the three-day Moms for Liberty Summit, many of whom broke into raucous applause at her comment. As the Florida Phoenix reported, DeVos said that educational decisions should be left up to state and local boards. Such messaging fit right in at the summit, where training was offered on how to secure conservative majorities on school boards, which have become hotbeds of hyper-local yet widely-resonant political activism. Moms for Liberty is part of the self-identified parental rights movement, which is particularly robust in Florida.
