Education
GOP Nominee To Run North Carolina Schools Is A QAnon Extremist

Michele Morrow

Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, frequently promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory in newly unearthed social media posts. She also referenced a QAnon-fueled conspiracy theory to suggest that actor Jim Carrey drinks the blood of children.

Morrow is a far-right commentator who has written for Newsmax and appeared on various media outlets. Her history includes marching in Washington, D.C., on January 6 (Morrow said that she didn’t storm the Capitol) and attacking public schools as “socialist indoctrination centers.” She espouses anti-LGBTQ views, such as saying during Pride Month in June 2023: “As a nurse, I want you to understand something: There is no pride in perversion.”

Morrow is also anti-Muslim: She has written that the country should “ban Islam” and “ban Muslims from elected offices.” (She has claimed “that she was only talking about supporters of radical Islam.”)

She won the Republican primary on March 5. North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction oversees more than 2,000 schools and more than 100,000 teachers and administrators.

QAnon is the sprawling far-right conspiracy theory in which supporters claim that Donald Trump has been secretly working to take down pedophilia rings that are supposedly linked to high-profile politicians and entertainment figures, among others. The conspiracy theory has been linked to numerous acts of violence.

Over the years, Republican politicians including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have promoted the conspiracy theory. Trump has also repeatedly promoted QAnon supporters online.

Morrow frequently engaged with the conspiracy theory in the lead up to the 2020 election.

One of the movement’s hashtags is WWG1WGA (“where we go one, we go all”). In 2020, Morrow posted the QAnon hashtag at least seven times.

Michele Morrow QAnon hashtag 3Michele Morrow 2 QAnon images 1Michele Morrow 2 QAnon images 2Michele Morrow 2 QAnon images 3

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

She has also responded to posts that mentioned “Q” and “QAnon.”

In 2020, she positively responded to a post about Trump going after drug cartels that had the hashtags “#qarmy #qanon #WWG1WGA #WWG1WGA_WORLDWIDE.”

Michele Morrow QAnon response 1

In 2019, she also responded “Yes! Prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!” to a pro-QAnon post which stated, “POTUS 45 + Q + General Flynn + Mister Durham + AG Barr ... and many many other warriors are starting the storm ... 44 and his criminals will be brought to justice ... no mercy please !!!!”

Michele Morrow QAnon response 2

Additionally, in 2020 she promoted the QAnon-fueled adrenochrome conspiracy theory in response to a post about actor Jim Carrey and added the hashtag “JusticeIsComing”. The conspiracy theory essentially claims that elites are harvesting and drinking the blood of tortured children to extend the drinkers’ lives.

Michele Morrow Jim Carrey conspiracy theory

In 2020, Trump thanked Morrow after she praised him on CNN.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

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Moms for Liberty founders, Tiffany Justice, left, and Tina Descovich

Tiffany Justice, left, and Tina Descovich

Following a disastrous interview on 60 Minutes, Tiffany Justice – a co-founder of the extremist group Moms for Liberty – retreated to the friendlier terrain of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in an attempt to mitigate the damage she’d done to her organization.

Bannon and Justice spent nearly 11 minutes criticizing CBS’ Scott Pelley for supposedly subjecting the anti-LGBTQ activist to unfair scrutiny, primarily by reading Moms for Liberty’s own tweets to her and asking for her response. At one point, Pelley asked Justice and her fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich what they meant by “grooming.” At another, Pelley asked for clarification on what ideology they claimed kids were being indoctrinated into. Justice and Descovich responded by dodging and retreating to their standard talking points.

It’s no surprise that Justice sought to clean up her mess using Bannon’s show. She usedWar Room and other right-wing media programs to build up Moms for Liberty in 2021 and 2022, and then leveraged that growth into a series of friendly mainstream media profiles and interviews. Now, as parents and communities become more aware of her organization’s extreme, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Black positions, they are fighting back, as demonstrated in the 60 Minutes segment.

During the War Room interview, Justice accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing her responses.

“You’re saying they selectively edited out your answers?” Bannon asked.

“Yeah, they wanted to make it seem like Tina and I didn’t know what we were talking about, I guess,” Justice responded.

On X (formerly Twitter) Descovich posted what she claimed were excerpts from the official transcript of the interview, purportedly exposing CBS’s omissions. The only problem with the Moms for Liberty counter-narrative is that the exchanges Descovich posted were just as incoherent as the responses CBS aired.

“If there are any lawyers watching this and you’d like to try to help me to navigate dealing with 60 Minutes, I’m open to ideas,” Justice said later in the interview. “But I’ve been talking with a few and trying to figure out —”

“Are you thinking of suing 60 Minutes?” Bannon interjected.

“I want to make sure I’m releasing information in a legal way,” Justice responded.

Bannon also said CBS was trying to make Moms for Liberty look like “bad and evil people, that are hurting people, bullies, whatever you want to call it,” as though that were self-evidently false. Unsurprisingly, Bannon didn’t mention the myriad examples of Moms for Liberty harassing and intimidating teachers and administrators, including an incident where Justice’s conduct was “so disruptive and disrespectful,” according to a superintendent, that she “could be barred from the campus.”

Later in the War Room segment, Bannon told Justice that Moms for Liberty was “trending” on X and that “one of the terms is Klansman Karenhood,” adding, “They’re trying to say you’re the new Klan.”

“They are out to destroy you,” Bannon said to conclude the interview. Despite Bannon’s trademark bombast, it might just be that parents and teachers are opposed to a group that has repeatedly quoted Hitler and attempts to ban books in schools.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.