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pen america
Stephen King 'Most Banned Author' in US Schools, Says PEN America
"Self-righteous book banners don't always get to have their way," the iconic author wrote, urging people to read banned titles. "This is still America, dammit."
Oct 01, 2025
Stephen King was the most banned author in US public schools during the 2024-25 academic year amid "rampant" censorship led by purportedly free speech-loving Republicans, a report published on Wednesday revealed.
According to PEN America, there were 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts during the last scholastic year. Although that's a significant drop from the more than 10,000 proscriptions recorded by the group during the previous academic term, it is still more than double the number from 2022-23, and brings the total number of prohibitions to nearly 23,000 since 2021.
For the third straight year, Florida topped the dubious list, with 2,304 instances of book bans, followed by Texas, where 1,781 bans occurred, and Tennessee, with 1,622. Right-wing groups and Republican state lawmakers—who often claim to champion free speech—have worked together to pass censorship laws driving bans on books they don't like, especially titles related to racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights.
“No bookshelf will be left untouched if local and state book bans continue wreaking havoc on the freedom to read in public schools,” PEN America Freedom to Read program senior manager Sabrina Baêta said in a statement.
“With the Trump White House now also driving a clear culture of censorship, our core principles of free speech, open inquiry, and access to diverse and inclusive books are severely at risk," Baêta added. "Book bans stand in the way of a more just, informed, and equitable world. They chill the freedom to read and restrict the rights of students to access information and read freely.”
Bestselling author @stephenking.bsky.social was the most banned author during the school year. 87 titles of King’s were banned, totaling 206 times. Next most banned was @ellenhopkins.bsky.social author of young adult fiction including Crank and Burned, who had 18 titles banned totaling 167 times.
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— PEN America (@penamerica.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 7:23 AM
King, the bestselling icon of horror novels and short stories, was the most banned author during the 2024-25 school year, with 87 titles banned a total of 206 times. King has been an outspoken critic of both book bans and President Donald Trump, whose presidency he has called a "horror story."
The most blacklisted title of any author was Anthony Burgess’ dystopian 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, which PEN America said was banned 23 times.
Responding to becoming the nation's most proscribed writer, King said on social media, "I am now the most banned author in the United States—87 books."
"May I suggest you pick up one of them and see what all the pissing and moaning is about?" he added. "Self-righteous book banners don't always get to have their way. This is still America, dammit."
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ACLU Asks Court to Free Journalist at Risk of Swift Deportation to El Salvador
"If Mr. Guevara is deported it will be a devastating outcome for a journalist whose initial detention was a gross violation of his rights," said ACLU of Georgia legal director Cory Isaacson.
Sep 19, 2025
The ACLU is asking a federal district court in Georgia to order the immediate release of Mario Guevara, a journalist arrested while covering a June "No Kings" protest, after the Board of Immigration Appeals on Friday ordered his return to El Salvador.
The Emmy-winning Spanish-language journalist has reported on immigrant issues in the Atlanta area for two decades. When he was arrested on the job this year, he had a work permit and a path to a green card through his US citizen son. The charges from June have been dropped, but he remains at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Folkston.
ICE refused to comply with a July 1 decision that Guevara could be released on bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals has now dismissed his bond appeal "as 'moot' because it has also granted the government's motion to reopen his removal proceedings," according to the ACLU—which secured an emergency federal district court hearing on Friday.
"Mr. Guevara should not even be in immigration detention, but the government has kept him there for months because of his crucial reporting on law enforcement activity," said Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "The fact that he may now be put on a plane to El Salvador, a country he fled out of fear, at any moment, despite a clear path to becoming a permanent resident, is despicable. The court must ensure he is not deported and should order his release from detention immediately."
"The fact that he may now be put on a plane to El Salvador, a country he fled out of fear, at any moment, despite a clear path to becoming a permanent resident, is despicable."
In a letter published Friday by The Bitter Southerner, Guevara detailed his experience since his arrest and wrote: "I don't know why ICE wants to continue treating me like a criminal. It pains me to know that I have been denied every privilege and the right to be free when I have never committed any crime."
"This whole situation has me devastated, and not only morally, but also economically, because I am the breadwinner for the home," he explained. "Since my arrest, I have lost tens of thousands of dollars, and my company, the news channel MGNews, is on the verge of bankruptcy."
"But I have to remain strong and confident that the United States still has some caring and decency left and that in the end justice will prevail," he added. "Hopefully, soon all my tears and my family's tears will be wiped away, and we can have fun and smile, triumphant, as we did before, together and in absolute freedom."
Guevara's legal team and press freedom groups have emphasized that his case is bigger than a single reporter. As ACLU of Georgia legal director Cory Isaacson put it on Friday, "If Mr. Guevara is deported it will be a devastating outcome for a journalist whose initial detention was a gross violation of his rights."
"The immediate release of Mr. Guevara is the only way to correct this injustice that has immeasurably harmed his well-being and the well-being of his family, the community, and the people of Georgia," Isaacson added. "In a democracy, journalists should not be arrested for exercising their constitutional rights to report the news."
Mario Guevara is here legally and is not facing any criminal charges.He is being thrown out of the country for nothing but reporting news.
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— Freedom of the Press Foundation (@freedom.press) September 19, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Other free press advocates also responded with alarm to the Board of Immigration Appeals' Friday decision.
"We are outraged that journalist Mario Guevara was initially detained for almost 100 days because the government believes that livestreaming law enforcement poses a danger to their operations," Committee to Protect Journalists US, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator Katherine Jacobsen said in a Friday statement.
"This latest move allows the government to circumvent addressing the reason why Guevara was detained, in retaliation for his journalism," Jacobsen continued. "Instead, authorities are using the very real threat of deportation to remove a reporter from the country simply for doing his job and covering the news."
Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, similarly said that "if carried out, this ruling would mark a dangerous moment for press freedom, with the United States—long considered a beacon for free speech—moving to deport a journalist in direct retaliation for his reporting."
"This mirrors the tactics of authoritarian governments the US has long condemned and sends a chilling message to reporters everywhere, especially those covering vulnerable communities or government abuses of power," he added. "We urge the court to reconsider and to allow Mario Guevara to remain in the country and continue his reporting free from fear of deportation or retaliation."
US President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations, and since returning to power in January, his administration has sought to deliver on that. On Friday, Free Press senior counsel Nora Benavidez warned, "Deportation without due process—that would be the new normal set by Mario Guevara's removal from the United States."
"Horrific and lawless, this is the environment the Trump administration created to promote a singular approved narrative, remove critical news coverage for communities, and chill journalists' freedom should they dare hold power to account," she said. "Mr. Guevara's case is happening live, with breaking updates occurring under a sealed case shrouded in secrecy, upon which his removal and ability to report depend."
Ahead of the developments on Friday, Benavidez had tied Guevara's case to the government's effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil over his protests against Israel's US-backed genocide in Gaza, and Disney yanking late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after the Trump administration objected to his comments about the fatal shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"Mahmoud Khalil was just ordered to be deported for his free speech," she said Thursday. "Mario Guevara is in detention for filming police. Jimmy Kimmel taken off air for his speech. TikTok [is] being bought by Trump cronies. All of it moves towards one singular narrative Trump approves. We must resist."
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Journalist Who Decried Trump's 'Deportation of Dissent' Says He Was Deported for Dissent
"Alistair Kitchen's deportation is a clear case of retaliation in connection with his reporting, and such action sends a chilling message to journalists," said one press freedom defender.
Jun 18, 2025
A leading press freedom advocate on Tuesday condemned the United States' "disturbing pattern" of screening and expelling international visitors for their political viewpoints following the detention and removal of an Australian journalist who criticized the Trump administration's targeting of Palestine defenders on college campuses.
Alistair Kitchen said he was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Los Angeles International Airport while en route from Melbourne, Australia to New York last week.
"If you are deleting social media 48 hours before your flight to the U.S., it is already too late."
"I was denied entry, detained, and deported from the USA over the last 48 hours because of my reporting on the Columbia [University] student protests," Kitchen wrote Friday on the social media site Bluesky. "I arrived back in Melbourne hours ago and had my phone handed back to me upon landing."
"I had it easy," he added, "one woman had been in that detention room four days when I arrived; she's still there."
Kitchen said that CBP agents "were waiting for me when I got off the plane," and although he "had cleaned up my online presence expecting ad hoc digital sweeps," he "was not prepared for their sophistication."
"If you are deleting social media 48 hours before your flight to the U.S., it is already too late," he stressed.
Kitchen wrote that the agents "just came out and said it: 'We both know why you've been detained…it's because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia,'" he recounted.
"Writers, artists, and scholars must be free to express their views openly without compromising their free movement across borders," said PEN America's @jonfreadom.bsky.social following detainment and deportation of Australian writer Alistair Kitchen for his personal writings pen.org/press-releas...
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— PEN America (@penamerica.bsky.social) June 17, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Responding to Kitchen's ordeal, Jonathan Friedman, managing director of the U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, said in a statement Tuesday that "it is gravely concerning to read an account of someone being detained and turned away at the border due to their writings on student protests, Palestine, and the Trump administration."
"Writers, artists, and scholars must be free to express their views openly without compromising their free movement across borders," Friedman added. "Kitchen's account fits a disturbing pattern, in which border agents appear to be screening visitors to the U.S. for their viewpoints. That is anti-democratic, and it must be halted."
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—which earlier this year issued its first-ever travel advisory for journalists entering the United States, including warnings about searches of electronic devices—called Kitchen's detention and expulsion "alarming."
"Alistair Kitchen's deportation is a clear case of retaliation in connection with his reporting, and such action sends a chilling message to journalists that they must support the administration's narratives or face forms of retribution," CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program coordinator Katherine Jacobsen said Monday.
"Foreign media operating on U.S. soil are covered by First Amendment protections, and it is incumbent upon U.S. officials—from [CBP] to the White House—to allow journalists to do their jobs and travel freely without fear of reprisal," Jacobsen added.
Kitchen suspects CBP agents used technology contracted from Palantir, which has been targeted by the No Tech for Apartheid movement over its involvement in Project Nimbus, a cloud computing collaboration between Israel's military and tech titans Amazon and Google criticized for enabling Israeli human rights crimes.
In March, Kitchen published a piece on his Kitchen Counter blog, titled "On the Deportation of Dissent." The post highlighted the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and former Columbia University student and Palestine solidarity activist arrested on March 8 by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers in front of his pregnant wife in New York before being transferred to New Jersey and then to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockup in Louisiana, where he missed the birth of his son.
Khalil, who the Trump administration admits has committed no crime, is being held as a political prisoner under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests. Numerous foreign nationals, including green-card holders, have been targeted under the law for criticizing Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and U.S. complicity.
Kitchen wrote:
The goal here is the deportation of dissent. In an executive order 10 days ago, the Trump administration promised to "go on offense to enforce law and order" by "cancel[ing] the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses." This is a mode of speech suppression that seeks to physically remove the undesirable elements it can, and, through fear, ensure silence in everyone else.
To my mind the arrest of a student on utterly specious grounds by a neo-fascist state, clearly designed to breed a climate of fear among students, calls for the resignation of a university president. That role is untenable so long as it does not involve the ferocious protection of student speech. The same goes for faculty, who last year demonstrated a mixed commitment to the defense of students. The situation requires their concerted action.
"The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on the Columbia student protests," Kitchen told Guardian Australia on Sunday.
However, a DHS spokesperson denied Kitchen's assertion, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he was denied entry to the United States "because he gave false information" regarding alleged drug use on his Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application.
"Lawful travelers have nothing to fear from [vetting] measures, which are designed to protect our nation's security," the spokesperson added. "However, those intending to enter the U.S. with fraudulent purposes or malicious intent are offered the following advice: Don't even try."
Kitchen told Guardian Australia that he had previously indicated on an ESTA application that he had not done drugs, but admitted under interrogation that he legally purchased marijuana in New York state and partook while abroad.
"There's certainly not proof of me doing drugs on my phone," he said. "But this is a method of interrogation that uses entrapment."
Kitchen added that "in retrospect, I should have... accepted immediate deportation," but that he was "too compliant, too trustful, too hopeful" at the start of his detention.
Free press advocates said Kitchen's detention and removal was yet another sign that "we are becoming a police state," as well as a reason "to avoid the United States as a holiday destination like the bubonic plague," and, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous called it, "a harsh lesson in digital footprints."
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