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moms for liberty
The Battle Over Public Education Is Loud; the Work of Teachers Is Louder
Even when faced with pressure and threats from almost all sides, the actual, individual people shaping the education of our children will not let themselves be cowed.
Dec 18, 2025
There is a looming threat to K-12 public education in America, but it is not only the substantial amount of laws restricting what can be taught in classrooms. The equally profound danger is that we are allowing a narrow political narrative to overshadow what is actually happening inside schools.
National pundits and scholars frame “the law” as a singular force indoctrinating students, obscuring the fact that we are dealing with a patchwork of rapidly evolving laws. While these legal shifts are detrimental, a more comprehensive understanding requires considering the lived experiences of educators, students, and the organizations that navigate them. The threat is not simply complacency to this “silent majority.” It is also the refusal to recognize that our schools are not homogeneous battlegrounds, but diverse communities experiencing these political pressures in very different ways.
The problem is not “the law,” it is the laws, plural, rushed through statehouses by politicians eager to score cultural points without any clarity on implementation or impact. Political influence on standards is nothing new, but recent controversies have reached a fever pitch as conservative lawmakers push divisive-concepts bills restricting topics such as race, gender, and LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2022, the South Carolina legislature debated bills banning The 1619 Project and any content feared to make white students “feel guilty.” Today, 35% of K-12 students attend school in states with anti-critical race theory laws. By 2023, 65% of history teachers reported limiting political discussions. As one Ohio teacher put it, “It’s tough for teachers to stick their neck out… you just see the attack on teachers increasing over and over again.”
While the legislators passing these laws attempt to rally popular support behind a narrative that they are the “silent majority,” we can’t let them obscure their genuine presence as simply a highly outspoken minority.
For example, New Hampshire is facing restrictive “divisive-concepts” laws, dwindling public school funding, and bounties on teachers that Moms for Liberty hopes to “catch.” As much as Moms for Liberty promotes its bounty as protection for children, the bounty serves one exclusive purpose. To instigate fear among educators, parents, and the broader public.
But this fear is largely baseless. Despite its efforts to intrude into the classroom and attack teachers, Moms for Liberty has remained unsuccessful. Even with a $500 cash prize on the line, not a single teacher was “caught” and fired for Moms for Liberty’s agenda. It’s as if, when investigated, teachers are not posing dangers to students. Rather, they are trained educators fighting for the strong democratic education of the nation's children.
While the legislators passing these laws attempt to rally popular support behind a narrative that they are the “silent majority,” we can’t let them obscure their genuine presence as simply a highly outspoken minority.
Legislative activity across the nation is also propagating fear among educators. But these bills are poorly crafted, vague, lacking expert input, and inconsistent with the First Amendment and academic freedom. While these threatening bills infiltrate news headlines, most of them have no real power. In 2024, 56 educational gag orders were filed, but only 8 were actually implemented. These are also new lows for proposed and implemented gag orders compared with the last few years.
Instead, we continue to see bipartisan opposition to politicized state lawmakers making choices about the content in K-12 schools. In 2024, we saw the first successful challenges to K-12 gag orders in court. Groups like Moms for Liberty remain unpopular among the public. Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project continue to suffer electoral losses, with their publicly endorsed candidates losing about 70% of their races nationwide in 2023.
Bearing this in mind, we must continue to hold strong against these loud (but little) groups. Although they’ve mastered the art of amplifying their voices and distracting us with frightening news headlines, we cannot succumb to their scare tactics and must continue to make informed decisions based on our own investigation.
Furthermore, beyond the failures of these scare tactics, perhaps one of the most profound places to look for hope is in the actions of individual teachers across the United States. Here, we will draw on the testimonies of three different teachers, whom we interviewed as part of an Amherst College course on the polarization of social studies education. Although they cannot single-handedly represent the entire nation, their words have been echoed throughout the sources and interviews we have examined in our class.
What these teachers can show us is that, even when faced with pressure and threats from almost all sides, the actual, individual people shaping the education of our children will not let themselves be cowed.
Even as some parents threaten the livelihoods and lives of teachers, a teacher in Florida makes the effort to reach out to the parents of the children he teaches, creating a parent-teacher relationship based on trust and respect, not hatred and anger. Even as legislators try to write teachers out of their laws, a teacher from Ohio continues to demand that his voice be heard and has ensured that, over the past six years, not a single bill has been passed that was not approved by the coalition of Ohio teachers. Even as the politicians in Washington squabble like children, a teacher in Arkansas crafts a classroom where the children she teaches learn to engage in civil debate and learn to disagree on a topic while still remaining friends.
All three of these teachers—and thousands more across the country—continue, quietly, to educate the nation's children with kindness and nuance, even as the politicians in the Capitol do their best to sabotage the fundamental educational structures of the United States.
So don’t give up, don’t let them win. Don’t let them write a story that places teachers as the villains.
Don’t let them make you forget how hope endures and that the strength of the educational system lies maybe not in the laws that politicians apply to it, but instead in the individuals who dedicate their lives to ensuring children can learn and play and will grow to shape the future of this country.
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The Fight for Palestine Is the Fight Against Fascism
We must understand that to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, we must also develop a longer-term strategy that contends with the growing power of far-right forces here in the U.S.
Jan 09, 2025
It has been over 450 days since Israel began its genocide and military invasion of Gaza and then Lebanon, Iran, and Syria. With the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president, the American government will continue and increase support for Israel’s all out war against Palestinian people.
For the past year, students have rallied and protested to demand divestment from Israel and its apartheid regime. Heated protests have erupted across the country, including in San Francisco where students planned walk outs and took over quads with encampments and teach-ins.
Alongside these students, parents from Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) communities went up against San Francisco’s school board to insist that their children cannot be censored for supporting Palestinian people. Many of these parents are Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) members, so I joined a meeting between these parents and the superintendent. When the superintendent would not bring up pressing issues around how students were being impacted by the ongoing genocide, parents disrupted the meeting and demanded their kids’ rights to speak up.
Through organizing, we build trust and are able to inoculate the harmful disinformation coming from white Christian nationalists and other right-wing forces.
However, not too long ago, I saw these same parents swayed by white Christian nationalists who were mobilizing Arab and Muslim parents around transphobia and homophobia. By circulating hateful rhetoric and drumming up fears about the “influence” of LGBTQ+ acceptance, white Christian nationalists convinced Arab and Muslim parents to pull their children out of public schools in the Bay Area. This is a trend we have seen across the country as Christian nationalist groups like Moms for Liberty recruit conservative Asian faith-based groups to rally against curricula portraying LGBTQ+ families and themes.
What happened? How did these parents go from being swayed by one fascist force to vehemently countering another fascist force? What can we learn as organizers from this moment?
The fight for a free Palestine is deeply ingrained into the many other fights against rising facism in the United States and abroad. We must understand that to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, we must also develop a longer-term strategy that contends with the growing power of far-right forces here in the U.S. We cannot do one without the other.
What does this take? First, we must be clear about who we’re up against and what strategies they are using. After 75 years of occupation and a year of military invasion, Zionism has made clear their strategy: complete annihilation of Palestine and its people. To do this, the Zionist system requires the support of other right-wing forces for monetary, political, and narrative power.
One formidable partnership is between white Christian nationalists and Zionists. Nationally, the largest Zionist organization in the United States is Christians United for Israel, which funnels millions of dollars into the Israel lobby every year. Project 2025, the 900-plus-page policy document spearheaded by the far-right Heritage Foundation, lays out far-right forces’ plan to transform the United States into a Christian nationalist theocracy that would sustain Israel’s military expansion. Locally, in San Francisco, when AROC campaigned with parents and students for the addition of Eid as holidays on the school calendar, Christian nationalists and Zionists allied to threaten the school board and halt the decision.
This issue of transphobia is a longer-term struggle that we will continue to face. We have not resolved it with our members, and there is no success story. However, we are helping our members to understand the contradictions of right-wing forces in order to move our communities on various contentious issues.
For years, Christian nationalists have made inroads into organizing Muslim and Arab parents in the Bay Area by manufacturing fear and outrage around queer and trans “influences” in schools. In the past year, as AROC has mobilized thousands of people to call for a permanent cease-fire and an arms embargo on Israel, we have also been engaging in deep political education and long conversations with our communities to point out the connections between various right-wing, fascist forces.
This past year has politicized many to call for Palestinian liberation. It has especially mobilized the SWANA families in AROC’s membership, many of whom have direct connections to the region that Israel is devastating. This past year has reemphasized that we need to deeply invest in grassroots organizing and basebuilding. This allows organizers and working-class people to work together to protect our communities from right-wing disinformation and come up with real solutions that can transform lives.
When the attacks on Gaza began last October, AROC was able to provide the space and container for our parents, youth, and activists to identify key issues and leverage our power locally. We got the cities of San Francisco and Oakland to adopt resolutions for an immediate and sustained cease-fire. Through those processes, we saw our community really engage with democratic processes and understand the power of civic engagement. Through organizing, we build trust and are able to inoculate the harmful disinformation coming from white Christian nationalists and other right-wing forces. This is key to winning our communities away from right-wing influences and building a stronger anti-fascist movement.
Grassroots organizing is how we build the power of our movement! Power means we can shift conditions in society and in our own lives. Power means we can end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and block the rise of far-right fascism.
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New Right-Wing Owner to Baltimore Sun Reporters: 'Go Make Me Some Money'
"The Sinclair TV owner bought The Baltimore Sun for the same reason Elon Musk bought Twitter," opined one critic. "Power."
Jan 17, 2024
New Baltimore Sun owner and right-wing media executive David D. Smith raised eyebrows and ire in media circles and beyond following a Tuesday meeting at which he reportedly insulted journalists at his new acquisition and told them to focus on profit.
Smith, the multimillionaire head of the Sinclair Broadcasts Group—a network notorious for its fealty to former U.S. President Donald Trump—purchased the Sun, along with a bevy of other Maryland papers, last week for what The New Republic described as an "unspecified, nine-figure" amount from Alden Global Capital, an investment firm known for its cost-cutting ways.
Sinclair started out in Baltimore and the Sun reported that it's the first time in nearly four decades that the paper will be locally owned. However, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik atold "All Things Considered" host Juana Summers that Sun staffers left the meeting with Smith "fairly on edge."
Smith "said he's only read [the Sun] about four times, which is kind of astonishing for a guy whose family has been there for more than a half-century," Folkenflik said, adding that the new owner also argued that the paper "just isn't offering people news that is holding local government actors accountable."
"This," Folkenflik added, "for a newspaper that, you know, revealed corruption by the then-mayor of Baltimore that led to the Sun winning a Pulitzer just a few short years ago."
The once-venerable Sun has, in fact, won 16 Pulitzer Prizes over its storied history.
Folkenflik, who once worked for the Sun, noted:
It has a really proud heritage going back to 1837. The story of the Sun, nonetheless, is kind of the story of modern American newspapering. Alden is the latest in a string of big corporate owners that has, you know, time after time, decade after decade, whittled down or slashed its staffs and its ambitions. The paper has shrunk pretty sharply.
Media accountability advocates expressed alarm and concern over Smith's purchase of the Sun. Popular Information publisher Judd Legum noted that the paper's new owner is a donor to far-right groups including Project Veritas, Turning Point USA, and Moms for Liberty.
"Sinclair Broadcasting, which is controlled by the Smith family,
forces nearly 200 local TV affiliates to run right-wing pro-Trump political commentary," Legum said. "Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that [Democratic National Committee] staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to WikiLeaks."
Sinclair and Smith have been closely aligned with the Trump family. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has admitted that the former president and 2024 GOP front-runner's campaign
struck a deal with Sinclair in 2016 for access in exchange for more favorable coverage.
"We are here to deliver your message," Smith
told the Trump campaign. "Period."
Smith is also openly inimical toward the mainstream media—including the
Sun. According to The Baltimore Banner, he told New York Magazine in 2018 that he viewed print media to be "so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble."
Pressed during Tuesday's meeting whether he still believed this, Smith answered in the affirmative. Asked if that included the paper he just bought, he replied, "in many ways, yes."
Sun staffers present at Tuesday's meeting told Folkenflik that their new boss seemed especially focused on the paper's bottom line.
"Smith told his new staffers that, you know, the
Sun was profitable but that he meant to make it more profitable," Folkenflik told Summers.
According to the Banner, he told them to "go make me some money."
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'I Was Mostly In It for Her': New Details in Rape Probe Embroiling Top GOP Official, Moms for Liberty Co-Founder
Amid charges of gross hypocrisy and many celebrating the possible downfall of a powerful far-right couple following revelations about their private sexual activities, the severity of the accusations led one Florida Democrat to remark, "None of this is funny."
Dec 03, 2023
New details made public over the weekend via police documents of a rape investigation have added fresh fuel to the political firestorm surrounding the chair of the Republican Party of Florida, Christian Ziegler, and his wife Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of the far-right Moms for Liberty, which engages in book-banning efforts, attacks on public education, religious moralizing, and the promotion of fascist ideology in chapters nationwide.
After an unnamed longtime associate accused Christian Ziegler of rape last week, the emergence of a police search warrant and associated affidavit showed that the alleged victim said she had engaged in consensual three-way sexual relations with the Zieglers in the past but on the day of the assault, on Oct 3., tried to call off the encounter because Bridget would not be there to participate.
"Sorry I was mostly in for her," the victim said, according to text messages quoted in the affidavit.
The high-profile political work of the Zieglers—who rail against the sexual identities and lifestyle choices of others and who have been openly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, often suggesting queer people are somehow deviant or morally problematic—has resulted in cries of hypocrisy and calls for Christian's resignation.
"Allegations of rape and sexual battery are severe and should be taken seriously," said Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried in a statement on Thursday. "I applaud the accuser's bravery in coming forward against a political figure as powerful as Christian Ziegler, and I trust that the Sarasota Police Department will conduct a thorough investigation into these allegations of criminal behavior."
Given the severity of the allegations against him, Fried called on Christian Zeigler to resign from his post, a call echoed later by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican currently running for the GOP presidential nomination.
Fried said that "what happens behind closed doors is Christian and Bridget's personal business," but added that she did "find it interesting that two people who are so obsessed with banning books about gay penguins might be engaged in a non-traditional sexual relationship," referring to a children's book about gay parents which has been targeted by Republicans for banning in schools in Florida and elsewhere.
"As leaders in the Florida GOP and Moms for Liberty," said Fried, "the Zieglers have made a habit out of attacking anything they perceive as going against 'family values'—be it reproductive rights or the existence of LGBTQ+ Floridians. The level of hypocrisy in this situation is stunning."
According to the Washington Post:
News reports emerged several days ago about the allegations of rape, but more records were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request late Friday and reported by several Florida news outlets. They include details of recorded conversations via Instagram and phone calls between the woman and Christian Ziegler that detectives obtained. Police have filed search warrants for Ziegler’s phone, email and other devices. The Sarasota Police Department did not reply to several requests for comment.
Christian Ziegler's attorney, Derek Byrd, said in a statement Thursday that his client "will be completely exonerated." Byrd and Ziegler did not respond to requests for comment Saturday about the details in the affidavit.
"It's certainly deeply, deeply troubling," state Rep. Spencer Roach, a member of the Florida GOP executive committee, told the Post in an interview. "I would describe this as just an absolute body blow to the Republican Party. Everyone that I've talked to about this is in an absolute tailspin."
Paulina Testerman, a co-founder of the nonprofit Support Our Schools, which defends public education, spoke to The Daily Beast about the allegations of rape in the context the Ziegler's political activities in Florida.
"Many of us have stood at the podium of countless school board meetings and listened to Mrs. Ziegler drag the LGBT+ community, so it's natural to want to celebrate when bullies get what's coming," Testerman said. "But we must remind ourselves that there are many victims in this story. An alleged rape victim is the obvious victim, but our LGBT children and all marginalized children have all been the victim of the Zieglers and their hate machine. We are hopeful that their reign is over, and our community can start healing."
Bridget Ziegler—who reportedly confirmed to detectives she and her husband did have a consensual sexual relationship in the past—is not named in the affidavit, but Moms for Liberty defended her in a post on X following the initial revelations last week.
"#StrongWomen scare those that seek to destroy our country," the group stated. "We stand with Bridget Ziegler and every other badass woman fighting for kids and America."
But critics like Anne-Marie Principe and others pushed back on that.
"The hypocrisy is real," Principe tweeted. "First, they engaged in the sexual freedoms they want to deny others. Second, the alleged sexual assault of their threesome partner is not only denigrating women, it's a crime. So, I guess you are only about YOUR liberties. #WrongWomen not strong ones."
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Analysis Exposes Trumpian Project 2025 as 'Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism'
"Our plea to political leaders and to the media is to accurately describe Project 2025 as a dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to move us towards an authoritarianism guided by Christian nationalism."
Nov 13, 2023
As former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump campaigns with openly fascist rhetoric, a research and advocacy group on Monday published an exposé of the Heritage Foundation-led 2025 Presidential Transition Project.
Project 2025, as it is also known, builds on Heritage's latest Mandate for Leadership, a series which since the Reagan administration has served as the right-wing think tank's to-do list for the next Republican president.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) put out a detailed analysis of Project 2025, which the group described as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism" and "a threat to a multiracial, diverse democracy."
"Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all."
Across 13 sections, the GPAHE report introduces the project, explains the role of Christian nationalism, and details efforts to gut the civil service, reverse progress on racial equality, eviscerate LGBTQ+ rights, restrict reproductive freedom, impose hardline immigration rules, roll back climate action, end "woke" military policies, overhaul public education, and curb human rights.
The analysis also features a full list of organizational supporters and profiles of key backers, including the Family Research Council, Heartland Institute, Moms for Liberty, and Turning Point USA.
"The path to authoritarianism usually first involves democratic backsliding, propelled by political figures and parties with authoritarian instincts who employ specific tactics," the report states. "These factors are evident in Project 2025, which explicitly advocates politicizing independent institutions by replacing the federal bureaucracy with conservative activists and removing independence for many agencies."
"The entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the 'real' community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent," the document continues. "Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and 'replacing American values.' Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025."
"Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism. It rejects the constitutional separation of church and state, rather privileging religious beliefs over civil laws. Religious freedom is referenced throughout the plan and is seen to trump all other civil rights which should be subsumed to an individual's religious rights," the report adds. "The message that America must remain Christian, that Christianity should enjoy a privileged place in society, and that the government must take steps to ensure this is clear in every section of the plan, as is the idea that American identity cannot be separated from Christianity."
The document also stresses the role of Trump in degrading U.S. democracy and promoting the policies that the project aims to advance. Trump is facing four criminal cases—two of which relate to his efforts to flip the 2020 election—and lawsuits arguing that he is constitutionally disqualified from holding office again after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Still, he is the GOP front-runner.
During a Saturday campaign rally, Trump pledged to "root out the communist, Marxist, fascist, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," claiming that "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within." The comments fueled demands for more serious media coverage of his fascist threats.
Even before Trump's latest comments, GPAHE co-founder Heidi Beirich argued to Salon last week that given his chances of winning the White House next year, "the public needs to know about policy plans, such as the program being designed for the next conservative president by the Heritage Foundation, called Project 2025."
Beirich said in a statement Monday that the project "does not reflect the values of the American people, and our plea to political leaders and to the media is to accurately describe Project 2025 as a dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to move us towards an authoritarianism guided by Christian nationalism."
GPAHE co-founder Wendy Via—who, like Beirich, is an alumna of the Southern Poverty Law Center—similalry said that "voters, political figures, and the media must be on alert that Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all."
The GPAHE report was released as Axios reported Monday that Trump's inner circle plans to purge from government "anyone viewed as hostile to the hard-edged, authoritarian-sounding plans he calls 'Agenda47'" and his allies "are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists" in "legal, judicial, defense, regulatory, and domestic policy jobs."
"The government-in-waiting is being orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation's well-funded Project 2025, which already has published a 920-page policy book from 400+ contributors," the outlet explained. "Heritage president Kevin Roberts tells us his apparatus is 'orders of magnitude' bigger than anything ever assembled for a party out of power."
Trump's 2024 campaign claimed Monday that his Agenda47 "is the only official comprehensive and detailed look at what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House," and "while the campaign is appreciative of any effort to provide suggestions about a second term, the campaign is not collaborating with them."
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Censorship Opponents Vow to Fight Right-Wing Assault This Banned Book Week
"When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives," said the American Library Association. "But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book."
Oct 02, 2023
A coalition of publishers, teacher and librarian groups, and other advocates on Sunday kicked off this year's Banned Books Week by rallying behind the freedom to read amid an alarming surge in right-wing book bans across the United States.
For over 40 years, the annual Banned Books Week—whose theme this year is Let Freedom Read—has united writers, publishers, booksellers, educators, librarians, and readers "in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular," as the American Library Association (ALA) put it.
"When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book," the ALA said. "We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read!"
As of August 31, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom has documented 695 attempts this year to remove a total of 1,915 titles from public and school libraries. Last year, the group counted 1,269 attempts to censor library books and other resources—the highest number of ban efforts since the ALA started tracking them over 20 years ago and nearly double the previous year's tally.
ALA said that of the record 2,571 unique titles targeted for censorship, most were by or about LGBTQ+ people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
"This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials," ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom director Deborah Caldwell-Stone said in a statement. "Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs."
For this year's Banned Books Week, PEN America and We Believe led a joint statement signed by more than three dozen publishers and advocacy groups.
The statement begins: "We believe in the freedom to read. Schools and libraries are critical places to kindle imaginations and spark a lifelong love of learning. Students deserve classrooms and school libraries that help them be successful. We believe stories matter. Books can be powerful, compelling, insightful, and enjoyable. Literature has endless value and should be publicly accessible to all."
"We believe in the freedom to learn," the signers continued. "Students need access to accurate history. Students deserve the chance to understand their world and everyone in it. Growing up is hard enough. Classrooms and school libraries should be spaces where all students feel they belong."
"We believe teachers and librarians deserve respect," the statement continues. "Schools and libraries are staffed by trained professionals who make informed decisions about educational materials. Their assessments should be respected and not subject to political pressure, threats, or intimidation."
"We believe parents are partners in education," the publication asserts. "Parents have long had a voice in schools. When a parent, student, or teacher requests or objects to a book, they should have their concerns heard and considered. However, one parent's views or one group of parents' views should not restrict access to books for all."
"We believe in clear, consistent, transparent policies around reviewing books," the advocates added. "Books must not be removed from shelves just because they are challenged. Evaluations of books must be based on facts and the merits, considered by decision-makers who have read the book in its entirety."
PEN America recorded a 33% surge in book bans at U.S. K-12 public schools during the 2022-23 academic year over the previous school year. The group noted 3,362 incidents involving 1,557 unique titles. Over 40% of these bans happened in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—a 2024 presidential candidate—is waging a war on public education.
According to PEN America, the single-most censored title during the last school year was Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, a graphic memoir recounting the transgender author's journey from adolescence to adulthood. The book has been banned in dozens of school districts, often following pressure from far-right activists like Florida-based Moms for Liberty.
"If I'd had a book to read like this, specifically, when I was like a freshman in high school, it would have saved me years of questioning and confusion about my identity," Kobabe said in defense of the award-winning work.
A survey published last week by EveryLibrary Institute and Book Riot found that nearly three-quarters of U.S. parents agree or somewhat agree that book bans by public libraries infringe on their right to make choices for their children.
This week, PEN America and We Believe are also leading a letter for concerned citizens to sign and send to state governors and lawmakers to urge them to "fight back against book bans."
The letter begins, "Did you know that 4 in 5 Americans say they would be less likely to support a candidate in 2024 who is in favor of implementing book bans, according to a new poll from Ipsos and We Believe?"
"America's children are our future. Preparing them to lead and succeed in our increasingly diverse and complicated world starts with protecting their freedom to read, learn, and grow," the letter states. "Our nation's strength has always come from the free flow of speech and ideas. We should be modeling these ideals for our kids—not ripping books from their shelves."
The popular anti-censorship campaign has sparked at least one effort to ban Banned Books Week. However, the growing censorship threat has also spurred action to protect the freedom to read. Earlier this year, Illinois became the first state to prohibit public libraries from banning books.
"I refuse to let a dangerous strain of white nationalism determine whose histories are told in Illinois," Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said after signing the legislation. "Because what these book bans in libraries really are about is censorship—marginalizing people, ideas, and facts."
At the national level, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hi.) last week reintroduced a resolution recognizing Banned Books Week and condemning "the escalating attacks on books and freedom of expression in the United States."
"The escalating crisis of book bans across our country in recent years is a direct attack on First Amendment rights and should concern everyone who believes freedom of expression and the freedom to read are essential for a strong democracy," Raskin said. "The sinister efforts to remove books from our schools and libraries are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes."
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ALA Decries 'Attacks on Our Freedom' With Record Book Challenges So Far in 2023
The data reflects a growing right-wing movement to restrict the topics taught in public schools and the media that children have access to.
Sep 20, 2023
A record number of library books were challenged during the first eight months of 2023, the American Library Association revealed Tuesday.
The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 695 attempts to remove a total of 1,915 library titles as of August 31. That's up from the 681 challenges to 1,651 distinct titles for the same period in 2022, and last year as a whole broke the overall record for book challenges since data collecting began more than two decades ago.
"These attacks on our freedom to read should trouble every person who values liberty and our constitutional rights," ALA OIF director Deborah Caldwell-Stone said in a statement. "To allow a group of people or any individual, no matter how powerful or loud, to become the decision-maker about what books we can read or whether libraries exist, is to place all of our rights and liberties in jeopardy."
The data reflects a growing right-wing movement to restrict the topics taught in public schools and the media that children have access to. In 2019, the ALA only counted 377 challenges to 566 titles, The Associated Press reported. In 2020, the number fell even further as libraries were closed because of Covid-19 lockdowns. Then, in 2021, it surged with a then-record 729 challenges targeting 1,597 books, the ALA said. In 2022, that record was broken again with a total of 1,269 challenges to 2,571 titles, 32% more than the previous year's record, ALA executive director Tracie D. Hall pointed out in an opinion piece for Time.
"This attempt to weaponize the right to read, and by extension the libraries that steward and protect that right, should be especially distressing to all of us as recent nationwide polling indicates that the vast majority of adults in this country, regardless of political party, oppose banning books," Hall wrote.
One sign that this is a censorship wave pushed by far-right groups like Moms for Liberty is the fact that the number of challenges targeting multiple books is rising. So far in 2023, 11 states reported challenges to 100 or more books, up from six states in 2022 and none in 2021, the ALA said. In 2022, 9 out of 10 challenges named more than one book.
"This places politics over the well-being and education of young people and everyone's right to access and use the public library."
This is leading to situations in which parents sign on to challenges backed by extreme groups despite never having read the books in question.
"If we have come to a time in this country when parents can be successfully swayed into restricting access to books they haven't read, what does that mean for our future as a nation?" Hall asked.
Another alarming trend is that challenges increasingly target books in public as well as school libraries, at 49% in 2023 versus 16% in the first eight months of 2022, according to ALA figures.
"The irony is that you had some censors who said that those who didn't want books pulled from schools could just go to the public libraries," Caldwell-Stone told AP.
In a separate statement, she said that public libraries were the "very embodiment of the First Amendment in our society."
"This places politics over the well-being and education of young people and everyone's right to access and use the public library," she said of the mounting challenges.
Finally, the challenges target the growing diversity of U.S. society, as the majority of them focused on books about or penned by members of the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color. The three most challenged books of 2022 were Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, George Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
"What this data set does not reveal are the people who want books that speak to their lived experience and librarians who want to make books accessible to people who find them relevant," ALA president Emily Drabinski said in a statement. "Both are under attack."
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Defend Our Liberty From Moms For Liberty
The far-right group embraces book banning, but held its national convention in Philadelphia, in an unmistakable message about the central role the group sees for itself in American culture and politics.
Jul 04, 2023
In May of 1933 in Berlin, Nazis gathered in the streets, built a gigantic bonfire, and burned thousands of books.
The books had been seized from the city’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. The nonprofit institute was the first in the world to focus on the science of gender and sexuality. It was supportive of LGBTQ studies and provided gender-affirming health care.
Before the raid, the organization had a number of transgender employees and hosted an extensive library of materials on LGBTQ health. Tragically, at least one transgender woman is believed to have died in the violent attack that preceded the book burning.
As Nazi atrocities go, this was an early and foreboding event.
We’re witnessing the wholesale forgetting of the authoritarian forces behind book-banning and censorship. And the worst thing we could do would be to look away.
The attack on scholarship and on a vulnerable community heralded an eventual descent into unimaginable violence. Book burning and banning, while not invented by the Nazis, became closely associated with them—and with authoritarian repression more generally.
It’s stunning now, after so many years and lessons learned, to watch the meteoric rise of the right-wing, pro-censorship group Moms for Liberty.
The group embraces book-banning as a centerpiece of its activism. Its favored targets are materials relating to Black, brown, and LGBTQ communities. For its national convention the weekend before the Fourth of July, it chose to bring its supporters to Philadelphia, a city with a rich civil rights history and ties to our nation’s independence.
That sends an unmistakable message about the central role the group sees for itself in American culture and politics. So does the attendance of the half-dozen presidential candidates, including Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
This is especially disorienting for a younger generation that grew up with incremental but seemingly irreversible progress toward freedom and inclusivity.
We saw the rise of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at work and school and the legalization of same-sex marriage. We saw the election of our first Black president. We took it for granted that we would always have the right to reproductive freedom. Until we didn’t.
We’re witnessing the wholesale forgetting of the authoritarian forces behind book-banning and censorship. And the worst thing we could do would be to look away.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is not looking away—it named Moms for Liberty as an extremist group in its annual Year in Hate and Extremism report.
Some media outlets have been vigilant about debunking Moms for Liberty’s claims to be a low-budget, grassroots group. Ditto any claims that it is peaceful: There are numerous reports that local Moms for Liberty operatives have turned threatening and aggressive.
The organization was even forced to apologize after a local chapter approvingly quoted Hitler in its newsletter.
But this criticism hasn’t really dented Moms for Liberty’s ability to attract money or the attention of presidential candidates. It will take more than that to protect the freedom to learn.
We need a multiracial, multigenerational, cross-cultural response that clearly affirms American values.
We need to assert the right of parents to decide if their kids are mature enough to read a book, but not to make that decision for everybody else’s kids.
We need to stand up for accurate and honest school curricula in which our nation’s full history is taught and the stories of all Americans are included. That fosters respect, understanding, and empathy—and prepares kids for meaningful civic engagement.
The last big right-wing group to promote book-banning and censorship—the Moral Majority—collapsed under the weight of its own financial and sexual scandals, but not before it did serious harm to marginalized communities in this country. We can’t wait around for this movement to burn itself out as well.
Fighting censorship is as American as you can get, and that’s what this year’s celebration of our country’s birthday should be about.
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