The mosque-fighting, anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-CRT, 9/11 Truther, insurrectionist Laurie Cardoza-Moore just got even more power to choose what’s in Tennessee textbooks recently.
In a story first published on the Popular Information Substack, Cardoza-Moore won an appointment this month from Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton to sit on a committee to review social studies textbooks for the state’s public schools.
The state began a review of social studies academic standards in June. Since then, the public has weighed in, a teacher advisory group worked on the issue, revisions to texts were reviewed by another committee, and then the public was asked to weigh in on those revisions. In August, the State’s Standards Recommendation Committee, to which Cardoza-Moore was appointed, will “submit the final recommendations for standards” to the State Board of Education.
”The materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good, American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies,” Cardoza-Moore said in a news release statement from her Franklin-based group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN).
That release further crafts Cardoza-Moore as a controversial figure who recently ”came under fire for her criticism of Governor Bill Lee’s appointment of Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds as the new Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner.” Cardoza-Moore also beamed in the praise of a spokesman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for her review of textbooks there that ”caught and corrected dozens of books to prevent political indoctrination of Florida’s children.”
Cordoza-Moore does not shy away from her past controversies in her news release. In 2010, she publicly fought against the construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro. On “The 700 Club” television show, she told host Pat Robertson the mosque was a training camp for terrorists. In her news statement this month, she claimed one person on the mosque’s board was ”actively recruiting Muslims to kill Jews on his MySpace page.”
Cardoza-Moore once criticized President Barack Obama, saying that after a speech on Palestinian border claims, weather patterns in America changed and tornadoes came to kill hundreds.
In 2021, Cardoza-Moore was appointed by Sexton to the state’s Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission. In a confirmation hearing, Senator Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), asked her about a recommendation from her nonprofit to revise a textbook statement about 9/11.
The passage from the textbook reads, “on September 11th, 2001, members of al-Qaeda carried out a terrorist attack on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.” In the PJTN report, the phrase ”members of al-Qaeda carried out” is underlined. The PJTN report said “given the plethora of evidence, the reviewer suggests removing the underlined section of sentence.”
“This is a highly contested (per architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth, and demolition experts) argument,” reads the PJTN review. “There is ample evidence that refute the ‘official’ story of what was perpetrated that day.”
When Akbari pressed Cardoza-Moore to confirm that these were, in fact, the statements of her organization, Cardoza-Moore said: “What you’re quoting right now, I never would have said that.” Cardoza-Moore then told the committee on the question of al-Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11: “I need to see the quote in the context you’re pulling it from. Is that from a Power Point? I would never say al-Qaeda never participated in [9/11].”
After Cardoza-Moore’s testimony was complete, Akbari said she “cannot think of someone who is more uniquely unqualified to be on this position.”
