The New Republic convened a meeting to discuss Trump, book banning and the culture wars. Randi Weingarten described the attack on schools as a coordinated strategy to destroy public schools and promote vouchers. Edith Olmsted of The New Republic interviewed her. None of this is new to readers of this blog, but the American public needs to hear this message. Again and again.
Book Bans Are a Conservative Plot to Destroy Public Schools, Says Randi Weingarten, The teachers union head denounced the “extremist strategy,” which also includes voucher campaigns and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.
DANIEL BOCZARSKI/GETTY IMAGES FOR MOVEON
Teachers union head Randi Weingarten says that the campaign by conservatives to ban books isn’t about the books at all, but part of a broader strategy to destroy public schools—one that was supercharged by the pandemic.
“You take the agita and the anxiety that people had at Covid, that fear, and you combine it with a right wing who has wanted to kill public schools for years and take that money for vouchers, and you have the scenario we have,” Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit.
Vouchers, which use public education dollars to fund private and religious school attendance, are just one pillar of the conservative campaign to “undermine, destroy, and defund” public schools, she said. The other two are book banning and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.
Weingarten pointed to conservative activist Chris Rufo and a comment he made at Hillsdale College, a Christian nationalist school, in which he admitted that focusing on these issues was all part of a master plan to promote universal vouchers: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”
In an interview with TNR after the event, Weingarten explained the “extremist strategy” Rufo and other conservatives have used to defund public schools. “The hook was trust. If you really create as much distrust as possible in public schooling, then parents will look at privatization as an option,” she said.
That’s where critical race theory comes in.
“[Rufo] tried to make a term that nobody knows so toxic, so that you can weaponize it and make fear,” she said. “Conversations about hard subjects became weaponized as indoctrination. Which is patently ridiculous, and dangerous.”
Race, as well as gender, is the subject conservatives have focused on in their campaigns to ban books in public schools and libraries.
“What [Republican Governor Ron] DeSantis is doing in the so-called ‘war on woke,’ is exactly part of their playbook—to make people afraid of books, and afraid of what we do in school,” Weingarten said. According to Pen America, Florida passed 15 “educational intimidation” bills in the last two and a half years.
The “parents’ rights” movement is made up of a loud minority, Weingarten said, and actively undermines what most parents want. “What we see in Florida is that 60 percent of the book banning has been done by 11 people,” she said.
The AFT has partnered with The New Republic in fighting back against such bans. TNR’s Banned Books Tour has been delivering thousands of banned books across the country this month, most recently in Florida.
When 12-year-old Braden Fahey collapsed during football practice and died, it was just the beginning of his parents’ nightmare.
Deep in their grief a few months later, Gina and Padrig Fahey received news that shocked them to their core: A favorite photo of their beloved son was plastered on the cover of a book that falsely argues COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike of sudden deaths among healthy young people.
The book, called “Cause Unknown,” was co-published by an anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, who is now running for president. Kennedy wrote the foreword and promoted the book, tweeting that it details data showing “ COVID shots are a crime against humanity.”
The Faheys couldn’t understand how Braden’s face appeared on the book’s cover, or why his name appeared inside it.
Braden never received the vaccine. His death in August 2022 was due to a malformed blood vessel in his brain. No one ever contacted them to ask about their son’s death, or for permission to use the photo. No one asked to confirm the date of his death — which the book misdated by a year. When the Faheys and residents of their town in California tried to contact the publisher and author to get Braden and his picture taken out of the book, no one responded.
“We reached out in every way possible,” Gina Fahey told The Associated Press in an emotional interview. “We waited months and months to hear back, and nothing.”
How could a member of one of the most influential political dynasties in American history be involved in such a shoddy, irresponsible project, the Faheys wondered?
Braden’s story is just one example of how Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, has used his famous name to disseminate false information about vaccines and other topics in a time when spreading conspiracy theories has become a powerful way to grow a constituency. An AP examination of his work and its impact found Kennedy has earned money, fame and political clout while leaving people like the Faheys suffering.
Now, Kennedy’s decision to drop his Democratic bid for president and run as an independent gives him a new spotlight in an election that’s currently heading toward a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. There’s concern in both parties that he could emerge as a spoiler who could affect the outcome of the campaign in unexpected ways. And at a time when Republicans in the 2024 race also are sowing doubt about vaccine effectiveness, it threatens to further promote harmful misinformation that already has cost lives.
One mom told AP about how she had delayed important care for her child because she believed Kennedy’s vaccine falsehoods. A former elected leader described being harassed by Kennedy’s followers. Doctors and nurses recounted how his work has hurt people in the U.S. and abroad.
Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to several emails seeking comment for this article, but after AP contacted Kennedy and others involved in the book last week, the president of Skyhorse Publishing, which co-published it, texted the Faheys, offering to talk. Gina Fahey told AP she felt he reached out only after it became clear the situation could harm his reputation.
“There’s still that lack of compassion that was always there from the beginning,” she said, adding that she is hesitant to engage with them now because she doesn’t trust their intentions. “It’s only now that they’re reaching out, days prior to knowing this story is going to be released.”
Braden’s parents have read vicious comments from people who falsely blame vaccines for their son’s death. They say seeing Braden’s memory being misrepresented by Kennedy and others has been deeply painful.
“When you barely feel like you can even come up for air, you just get smacked back down again by this,” Gina Fahey said.
“It’s very manipulative. And you know, he’s making money off of our tragedies,” she said, adding, “How could you want somebody running our country that operates like that?”
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Many years before anti-vaccine activists exploited the pandemic to bring their ideas to the American mainstream, Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, was among the most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines. He has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. He has said vaccines had caused a “holocaust,” and has traveled the world spreading false information about the pandemic.
In recent years, Kennedy has used his name and rhetorical skills to build his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, or CHD, into an influential force that spreads false and misleading information. An AP investigation previously revealed how Kennedy had capitalized on the pandemic to build CHD into a multimillion-dollar misinformation engine.
One of the ways Kennedy and CHD have made money is through the sale of books. Kennedy’s longtime publisher, Skyhorse, joined with CHD to create a book series that has published titles including “Vax-Unvax,” “Profiles of the Vaccine Injured,” and the book that included Braden Fahey, “Cause Unknown.”
“We are just not seeing anything that suggests that,” said Dr. Matthew Martinez, of Atlantic Health System in Morristown Medical Center, who researches cardiac events among professional athletes.
The AP found dozens of individuals included in the book died of known causes not related to vaccines, including suicide, choking while intoxicated, overdose and allergic reaction. One person died in 2019.
AP asked Kennedy’s campaign, CHD, Dowd and Skyhorse president Tony Lyons several questions about the book, including why they chose to feature Braden, why they didn’t speak to his family first and what steps they took to fact check.
The only person to respond was Lyons, who also co-chairs the Kennedy Super PAC American Values 2024.
In emails, Lyons did not address why Braden specifically was chosen for the cover but defended his inclusion by saying that news stories and his obituary did not mention his cause of death.
Hundreds of deaths are cited in the book, though Lyons said it only attributes nine of them to the vaccine. Lyons said Braden’s death and others are never explicitly attributed to the vaccine, and that the book explores many possible reasons for deaths that have appeared in headlines since 2021.
Still, the book several times refers to its “thesis” that mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike in deaths. Braden’s parents said his appearance in the context of the book implies he died of the vaccine, putting his death in a false light.
Lyons said he was unaware of the Faheys’ efforts to contact his company and asked AP to share with them his contact information. He said he would make some corrections in future editions, including to Braden’s date of death, but said they were studying whether to remove him from the book or the cover.
Lyons told the AP that Children’s Health Defense has a publishing deal with Skyhorse, though he would not say how much money CHD has received through it.
Kennedy also has a consulting deal with Skyhorse that personally paid him $125,000 since August 2022 for scouting out books for the company, according to a financial disclosure he filed. Lyons said that deal has so far resulted in 27 books of different genres including children’s books, mysteries and cookbooks, but declined to name them.
Lyons also praised Kennedy’s record of environmental work, such as protecting New York’s Hudson River, and other work he’s done to take on powerful corporate interests and what Kennedy sees as government corruption. Those are also topics Kennedy has focused on during his presidential campaign.
The platform Kennedy built for himself has an impact. In a study of verified Twitter accounts from 2021, researchers Francesco Pierri, Matthew DeVerna and others working with Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media found Kennedy’s personal Twitter account was the top “superspreader” of vaccine misinformation on Twitter, responsible for 13 percent of all reshares of misinformation, more than three times the second most-retweeted account.
The messages Kennedy shares have convinced a significant slice of the public, some of whom attend his campaign events proudly wearing pins with crossed-out syringes or repeating Kennedy’s talking points about vaccine ingredients.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
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Many people have staked their lives and the lives of their families on the views espoused by Kennedy and others who oppose vaccines.
The AP spoke to mothers who once identified as anti-vaccine and counted themselves among Kennedy’s most devoted followers.
“I thought he was heroic, because he was saying the things publicly that other people were too afraid to say,” said Lydia Greene.
Greene, who lives in the Canadian province of Alberta, declined all vaccines for her son after buying into the claims by Kennedy and other anti-vaccine “gurus” that vaccines cause autism. When her son started to show signs of autism, Greene discounted it out of hand.
“I couldn’t even see his autism because in the anti-vax movement, autism is the worst outcome that can happen to a child. And when they talk about their vaccinated autistic kids, it’s often with a tone of resentment and how they talk about how their life is ruined, their marriage is ruined, and it’s just this kid is damaged,” Greene said. “And so when my son was different, I couldn’t see that stuff about him.”
She said she did not recognize his condition until she “came out of the rabbit hole of anti-vax.”
“I realized I had wasted so much valuable time where he should have been in occupational therapy, speech therapy, evidence-based therapy for autism,” Greene said.
Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense produces articles, newsletters, books, podcasts, even TV shows on its own CHD.TV. Greene said those articles often validate anxious parents’ fears – no matter how irrational – while making them feel like someone powerful is listening.
Today, Greene believes the group exploited her.
“That’s what CHD does,” Greene said. “They find parents when they’re vulnerable. And hack into that.”
Because of his national profile, Kennedy’s work has ripple effects beyond the most devoted anti-vaccine activists.
Medical professionals told the AP that vaccine disinformation spread by Kennedy and other influencers makes the patients they serve wary about lifesaving vaccinations.
Sharon Goldfarb, is a family nurse practitioner in Berkeley, California, who spent the worst of the pandemic caring for people on society’s margins: people with no homes; people who were living in the country illegally; people with serious mental health needs. She has seen firsthand the consequences of vaccine misinformation and refusal.
“It’s disturbing because he has a huge family name,” Goldfarb said. “When you’re a trusted public figure and you have a trusted family name, you have to answer to a higher authority. … I just don’t get it.”
Dr. Todd Wolynn, a Pittsburgh pediatrician who works to clarify the facts about vaccines on social media, said despite Kennedy’s lack of clinical experience, he has an outsized influence on his followers.
“He uses a very big platform to amplify disinformation that leads people down a path to make a decision that’s not evidence based,” Wolynn said. “And as a result, it puts their own lives, the lives of their children, the lives of their family, in harm’s way.”
Though Kennedy did not respond for this story, he has long said that he is not anti-vaccine, and only wants vaccines to be rigorously tested. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that vaccines undergo thorough testing before they are authorized or approved in the U.S. and they are monitored for safety after they are introduced to the public.
COVID-19 vaccines were initially developed under the Trump administration, through the program Operation Warp Speed. But what his Republican-led administration viewed at the time as a point of pride has since become a topic of criticism in Republican circles, including among GOP presidential candidates who have expressed skepticism about the immunizations.
The Republican candidate and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said in a July podcast interview that if he’d had the facts he would not have gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. The administration of fellow GOP candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has broken with CDC guidance to advise Floridians under 65 not to get the latest COVID-19 booster.
That kind of rhetoric, along with the conspiracy beliefs that Kennedy has shared about other subjects, like 5G, “can impact the smooth running of societies,” said Daniel Jolley, a University of Nottingham social psychology professor, who has published several papers on conspiracy thinking and its impacts.
While skepticism is important, proper evaluation of the evidence is key, Jolley said. Anyone pushing conspiracy theories while running for president makes the theories seem normal.
“It’s that kind of rhetoric that I think is really damaging,” Jolley said. “You worry when you think about the next pandemic or the next event or the next issue that’s going to come our way.”
Jolley wonders: Will people listen to doctors or experts next time?
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Kennedy’s role in legitimizing anti-vaccine activism has not been limited to the U.S. Perhaps the most well-known example was in 2019 on the Pacific island nation of Samoa.
That year, dozens of children died of measles. Many factors led to the wave of deaths, including medical mistakes and poor decisions by government authorities. But people involved in the response who spoke to AP said Kennedy and the anti-vaccine activists he supported made things worse.
In June 2019, Kennedy and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, visited Samoa, a trip Kennedy later wrote was arranged by Edwin Tamasese, a Samoan local anti-vaccine influencer.
Vaccine rates had plummeted after two children died in 2018 from a measles vaccine that a nurse had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant. The government suspended the vaccine program for months. By the time Kennedy arrived, health authorities were trying to get back on track.
He also met with anti-vaccine activists, including Tamasese and another well-known influencer, Taylor Winterstein, who posted a photograph of herself and Kennedy on her Instagram.
“The past few days have been profoundly monumental for me, my family and for this movement to date,” she wrote, adding hashtags including #investigatebeforeyouvaccinate.
A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children in a population of about 200,000.
Public health officials said at the time that anti-vaccine misinformation had made the nation vulnerable.
The crisis of low vaccination rates and skepticism created an environment that was “ripe for the picking for someone like RFK to come in and in assist with the promotion of those views,” said Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccinologist from New Zealand who worked on the effort to build back trust in the measles vaccine in Samoa.
Petousis-Harris recalled that local and regional anti-vaccine activists took their cues from Kennedy, whom she said “sits at the top of the food chain as a disinformation source.”
“They amplified the fear and mistrust, which resulted in the amplification of the epidemic and an increased number of children dying. Children were being brought for care too late,” she said.
Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to emails seeking comment about Samoa, though he says on his campaign website that he had no role in the outbreak. He also said in an interview for a forthcoming documentary, “ Shot in the Arm,” that he bears no responsibility for the outcome.
“I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t, you know, go there for any reason to do with that.”
But people who worked on the Samoan measles response told AP the credibility he gave to anti-vaccine forces when he met with them had an impact.
Moelagi Leilani Jackson, a Samoan nurse who worked on the vaccination campaign to stem the scourge of measles, said she remembered that after Kennedy’s visit, the anti-vaccine influencers “got louder.”
“I feel like they felt they had the support of Kennedy. But I also think that Kennedy was very – well, he came in and he left,” she recalled. “And other people picked up the pieces.”
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A few weeks after his trip to Samoa, Kennedy appeared in Sacramento, California, where lawmakers were debating a bill to make it more difficult to get a vaccine exemption. The bill was sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan, a pediatrician.
As a crowd gathered outside the capitol, Kennedy stood to speak. Two large posters behind him featured Pan’s image, with the word “LIAR” stamped across his face in blood-red paint. Pan told AP he felt the staging was intended to incite the crowd against him.
“So he’s rallying to have people attack me, essentially, personally,” said Pan, who is no longer in office.
Within months, one anti-vaccine extremist assaulted Pan, streaming it live on Facebook. Another threw blood at Pan and other lawmakers.
Kennedy has repeatedly brought up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public health mandates, comparisons that Pan said amount to an “indirect call to violence” against health advocates.
“Who creates an atmosphere where they think what’s appropriate is to actually physically assault a legislator? It’s people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Pan said.
Pan said it’s one of many instances when Kennedy has whipped people up against public health advocates. Kennedy also wrote a bestselling book attacking infectious disease expert and former top government scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has received death threats.
Those attacks have prompted criticism from Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy, who invoked the Kennedy family history of political violence – their father and uncle were both assassinated – when she told the AP in 2021: “Attacking doctors and scientists is irresponsible because many have received death threats. This can deter people from those professions. Our family knows that a death threat should be taken seriously.”
Kerry Kennedy and three other siblings on Oct. 9 issued a statement denouncing Kennedy’s independent candidacy, calling it “dangerous” and “perilous” to the country.
Pan said that Kennedy’s rhetoric, which often demonizes scientists and health care professionals, is part of a strategy to intimidate and silence them.
“When you call something a holocaust, it is incitement to violence,” Pan said.
“The real consequence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is we have dead children, and we have people who are in good faith doing their best to try to protect people, including children, who are basically being threatened and even assaulted because of his rhetoric and his lies,” said Pan, who is now running for mayor of Sacramento, a nonpartisan position. “That harms America.”
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Associated Press video journalist Terry Chea contributed to this report.
This is important to understand what the goal of the right is. The goal is to destroy public education, and instead force public taxpayer funds, the public treasury, to be diverted to private businesses and religious institutions. They want to give religious organizations, church affiliated schools that discriminate against LGBTQIA tax dollars of people they discriminate against, so they can indoctrinate public schools kids with their churches doctrines. Here are some quotes. There is more in the article at the link above. Hugs. Scottie
That means it will be difficult to discern whether the spike in EdChoice scholarships came from parents looking to leave public school or those whose children already attend (private schools).” One serious problem here is that the voucher expansion is to be paid for out of the school foundation budget that also pays for the state’s public schools.
In Iowa, 40 percent of more than 17,000 applicants to the state’s new universal education savings account program have left public schools, while the remaining 60 percent were not enrolled in public schools before applying…. The gap is even wider in Florida, where 69 percent of roughly 122,000 new applicants… were already in private schools before applying…. Another 18 percent are children entering the K-12 system for the first time as kindergarteners….”
“Northeast Ohio Catholics have been thrust into the national debate about LGBTQ rights after the diocese released its policy…. for churches and 79 elementary schools and five high schools. It includes bans on students and staff from undergoing gender-affirming care; their use of new pronouns or first names; and the use of restrooms or other facilities different than their ‘God-given biological sex.’ Church and school staff must notify parents if their child may be transgender. Students and staff cannot display LGBTQ pride flags or other symbols. Students cannot attend dances or mixers with a date of the same sex.” Most of these Cleveland Catholic diocesan schools accept EdChoice Expansion vouchers from the state of Ohio.
But the larger injustice exposed here is even more distressing. More and more students under the state’s new universal school voucher expansion will be using public tax dollars to pay tuition at Catholic schools in greater Cleveland which are now—seemingly with impunity—explicitly discriminating against a specific class of students whose rights are protected under Title IX of the Constitution of the United States.
WTF !!!! This is wealthy Jewish supporters doxing young adult students just for exercising free thought! It is entirely an attempt to stop any expression of support for anything but the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Texas requires teachers to sign a pledge to Israel. It is not being done by Jewish people, it is being done by evangelical Christians to get to their end time. Hugs.
Antonia Hylton, investigative reporter for NBC News and co-host of the new podcast Grapevine, reports on the infiltration of far-right Christian ideology into classrooms in Texas and across America.
The hate and misinformation continues and spreads. The over the top rush to return to a regressive past of strict gender roles, censorship, and an enforced social acceptance of only what is acceptable to the leading churches in the area. Think of the time these people want desperately to return to, and ask why. It did not fix anything, it did not solve any problems. Gay kids were still born, they just had miserable lives. Trans people were still born, they just had to suffer with no social acceptance or relief. These people hate civil rights for anyone but themselves. They are demanding a return to a time when it was not only legal but acceptable to discriminate against anyone who was not a straight cis white person. That is what they want so badly, the right to insult, shame, targeting for bullying and harming people who are different. I have to ask why, what makes that time so attractive for these people. I think it is the right to abuse others, to feel superior to them! Again I repeat that a lot of this hate and bigotry is driven by fundmentlist religious sects. Below is are two quote. Hugs
The ALA said book challenges nearly doubled nationally in 2022 and are “evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval.”
“The book fair is one of our biggest fundraisers, but unfortunately, we have seen more and more books that promote and support LBGTQ+ views,” the school wrote. “We’re at a crossroads where we share different values and beliefs, especially when it comes to exposing young children to adult topics. Friendswood Christian School is a private institution devoted to creating a complete learning environment for children by incorporating Christian principles into the academic framework. We want to provide an environment where children can hang on to their innocence as long as possible.”
As Texas enters its third straight school year of coordinated book banning activity, a growing number of districts are targeting library books. Caught in the dragnet: books featuring a “naked” crayon and one with a cartoon butt.
The American flag reflects off a Houston Little Free Library designed to look like a prison filled with banned books. Credit: Callaghan O’Hare/Reuters
This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. Also, sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
As a new Texas law further restricting what books students can check out of school libraries takes effect, local bans are gaining steam in districts across the state — in some cases going in startling directions.
In Katy, a growing Houston suburb, school officials recently bought $93,000 worth of new library books and promptly put them in storage so an internal committee could review them. The district then banned 14 titles (bringing its total since 2021 to 30), including popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume, as well as “No, David!” an award-winning children’s book featuring a mischievous cartoon character who at one point jumps out of a bathtub, exposing a cartoon backside. (This wasn’t the district’s first foray into regulating cartoon nudity; over the summer, a book about a crayon that lost its wrapper, becoming “naked” in the process, was flagged for review but ultimately retained.)
Following the latest removals, the Katy school board decided that cartoon butts would be exempted from a district policy that called for removing books showing nudity. “Explicit frontal nudity,” on the other hand, would not be allowed.
“The board’s intent was never to remove well-known cartoon-like children’s books just because they showed a little drawing of a little boy’s rear-end,” its president, Victor Perez, said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
One hundred miles to the east, a school district near Beaumont made headlines last month after removing a substitute middle school teacher who had read students portions of an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, which detailed her hiding from the Nazis and was published after her death in the Holocaust.
The book, which had not been approved as part of the district’s curriculum, had been included on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year, according to television station KFDM.
The district is investigating whether administrators knew the book was being used in the class, according to news reports.
And just south of Houston, the private Friendswood Christian School announced it was canceling its Scholastic Book Fair, barring the nation’s largest children’s book publisher, which has put on book fairs at schools around the country for decades.
In a letter to parents, obtained by ABC13 in Houston, the school made clear the decision was aimed at books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters.
“The book fair is one of our biggest fundraisers, but unfortunately, we have seen more and more books that promote and support LBGTQ+ views,” the school wrote. “We’re at a crossroads where we share different values and beliefs, especially when it comes to exposing young children to adult topics. Friendswood Christian School is a private institution devoted to creating a complete learning environment for children by incorporating Christian principles into the academic framework. We want to provide an environment where children can hang on to their innocence as long as possible.”
Kasey Meehan, the Freedom to Read program director for the New York-based free speech organization PEN America, said that as Texas enters what is essentially its third consecutive school year of book banning activity, efforts have taken some troubling directions.
“Even after that first removal of books, what we see is a continued chilling effect that happens across schools,” she said in an interview. “There are these ripples that are going to extend beyond simply removing a book to just read, erring on the side of caution and bringing a bit more scrutiny to any availability of books and any opportunities that students can have to access books.”
The local censorship efforts come as courts wrestle with a new Texas law that requires booksellers to rate public school library books based on their depictions of or references to sex. Books in which such references are deemed “patently offensive” by the vendors will be issued a “sexually explicit” rating and can’t be sold to schools and must be removed from shelves of school libraries. Books that reference or depict sex generally will be rated “sexually relevant” and require parental permission to read.
Texas schools would be barred from buying books from vendors who don’t use the ratings.
On Sept. 18, a U.S. district judge in Austin issued a written order blocking the law, which was passed this spring, from taking effect. Judge Alan D. Albright, a Trump appointee, ruled the law would impose “unconstitutionally vague requirements” on booksellers and “misses the mark on obscenity.”
“And the state,” he wrote, “in abdicating its responsibility to protect children, forces private individuals and corporations into compliance with an unconstitutional law that violates the First Amendment.”
A week later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the judge’s ruling, temporarily allowing the law to go into effect while the court considers the case, which it is expected to take up this month.
Book bannings have increased precipitously in the state since ProPublica and The Texas Tribune started reporting on the issue in rural Hood County two years ago, where a fight over library books foreshadowed the intense partisanship that has come to mark many Texas school board races. The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the Granbury Independent School District after the superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove library books with LGBTQ+ themes.
The federal probe, which followed a ProPublica-Tribune investigation with NBC News, remains open, according to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Last year, in response to the outlets’ investigation, the district said it was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds.
The issue continues to roil Granbury, as some community members and trustees don’t believe the district has gone far enough to remove books. Last month, the school board censured a trustee who wants additional titles removed after she was accused of sneaking into a school library to examine books with a cellphone flashlight.
Of the 1,269 documented attempts to remove books from school or public libraries across the nation in 2022, 93 took place in Texas, affecting over 2,300 titles, the association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom found. The ALA said book challenges nearly doubled nationally in 2022 and are “evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval.”
The American Library Association itself has come under fire among conservative circles in Texas. In August, Midland County commissioners voted to withdraw from the association. Days later, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission pulled out.
What’s been your experience with school library book bans in Texas? Email Austin-based reporter Jeremy Schwartz at jeremy.schwartz@propublica.org to let him know.
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How far will these racist bigots take their crusade to take the US society back to the 1950s? Books banned not for sexual content but for the fact that the last name of the author being gay and another for the fact that an unarmed black teenager is shot. Only white cis straight morally Christian sanitized stuff is fit for people to read. Banning adult magazines for adult people is coming next. Below is a quote from the article. Hugs
“This proves, as always, that censorship is never about limiting access to this book or that one. It is about sending the message to children that certain ideas—or even certain people—are not worthy of discussion or acknowledgement or consideration,” Brassard said. “This is a hateful message in a place like a public library, where all children are meant to feel safe, and where their curiosity about the world is meant to be nurtured.”
“Read Me A Story, Stella” was added to a book list of potentially sexually explicit books at the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library because the author’s last name is Gay.
“Read Me a Story, Stella” is a children’s picture book about a pair of siblings reading books together and building a doghouse. However, because the author’s name is Marie-Louise Gay, the book was added to a list of potentially “sexually explicit” books to be moved from the children’s section of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (HCPL) system.
Gay’s book has never been “mistakenly censored,” according to Kirsten Brassard, Gay’s publicist at Groundwood Books.
“Although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on their list of censored books simply because the author’s last name is Gay, the ridiculousness of that fact should not detract from the seriousness of the situation,” Brassard said in a statement.
Brassard mentioned other books on the list, including Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” which has no LGBTQ themes or sexual content but does depict the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager at the hands of police.
“This proves, as always, that censorship is never about limiting access to this book or that one. It is about sending the message to children that certain ideas—or even certain people—are not worthy of discussion or acknowledgement or consideration,” Brassard said. “This is a hateful message in a place like a public library, where all children are meant to feel safe, and where their curiosity about the world is meant to be nurtured.”
HCPL executive director Cindy Hewitt admitted “Read Me a Story, Stella” should not have been put on the list and was added because of the keyword “gay.”
“Obviously, we’re not going to touch that book for any reason,” Hewitt said. She’s also read “The Hate U Give” and said it’s an excellent book that no librarian should remove from the young adult section. Hewitt insists there was never any intention to target the LGBTQ community. Instead, she was hoping to be “proactive instead of reactive.”
“Read Me a Story, Stella” was one of 233 titles slated to be reviewed and potentially moved. However, after internal and public criticism that the list targeted the LGBTQ community, the process was halted. Librarians moved some of the books to the adult section, and some have not been re-catalogued.
“We wanted to be proactive and allow our library staff to look at our collection and make decisions about moving material to an older age group and not have someone from outside dictating that for us,” Hewitt said. She added that HCPL considers public opinion, but “our librarians are trained in collection development, and it should be their responsibility to examine the collection and make those changes.”
Hewitt said the review was based on a list of 102 books compiled by Clean Up Alabama. Clean Up Alabama has been targeting “sexually explicit” books in libraries around the state this year. “Read Me A Story, Stella” is not on this list. She said the library was gearing up for “unprecedented” book challenges by using this list as a starting point.
AL.com received a copy of the book review list for the Madison branch and found that 91% of 233 titles had the words lesbian, gay, transgender, gender identity, or gender non-conforming in the subject header, which lists numerous themes for each book. Hewitt said the keywords she asked the 10 branch managers at HCPL to use were “sexuality, gender, sex, and dating.”
Hewitt insisted this was a miscommunication problem and there was confusion about the process. “We understand and appreciate our community, and the needs of our collection to reflect our community,” Hewitt said. “We were never eliminating any book. We were just looking at it as a whole.”
Alyx Kim-Yohn is a circulation manager at the Madison branch of the library and said it’s “cosmically ironic” that the situation escalated during Banned Books Week. Kim-Yohn was frustrated because the directive wasn’t simply a review of the books. They said this was a mandate to review and move the books based on a list from the Alabama Public Library Service, which Hewitt confirmed doesn’t exist yet.
“The decision had been made,” Kim-Yohn said. “There was no debate. There’s no conversation. This is what was happening.”
Kim-Yohn refused to participate because they said it violated their professional ethics. They said even if they weren’t queer, they wouldn’t participate.
“Why are we just unilaterally moving all of this before anyone’s even complained about these books yet?” Kim-Yohn wondered.
Hewitt said she didn’t know how many books librarians moved and returned because she took a “hands-off approach” to the process. Community members with the group Read Freely Alabama, which is against the book challenges, visited several branches and compiled a list of 40 books moved into the adult section from various branches in Madison County.
AL.com obtained this list and determined that at the time of publication, several books are designated as “adult” in the online catalog at the North Huntsville branch but “young adult” in other branches, including “A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns,” “What’s The T: The Guide to All Things Trans and/or Nonbinary,” and “We Deserve Monuments” a mystery novel about an LGBTQ biracial teen.
Kim-Yohn hopes Hewitt apologizes and hopes this never happens again. They also want to encourage the public to visit libraries and utilize staff despite this incident.
“If you’re mad, what we need you to do is to come check these books out, come to story times, put in purchase requests for books that you want to see,” Kim-Yohn said. “We need you to keep supporting the library.”
The books in question were checked out or renewed more than 8,000 times. The full list of books slated for review and potential relocation is below.
It is terrifying how self entitled these maga white Christians are. They only accord rights and freedom to themselves, and deny them to everyone else. They see the world where ignorance and selfish denial of anything they do not agree with as the way it should be. They believe everyone must live as they live, do as they do, and no one has a right to a difference of opinion or a different lifestyle. They are the US republican Christian Taliban. Hugs
A group has been impersonating government officials, harassing New York residents at their homes and falsely accusing them of breaking the law, state officials have warned.
But what sounds like a scam aimed at people’s pocketbooks is actually part of a shakedown with a much different target: voters.
State prosecutors have sent a cease-and-desist order to a group called New York Citizens Audit demanding that it halt any “unlawful voter deception” and “intimidation efforts.”
It’s the type of tactic that concerns many state election officials across the country as conservative groups, some with ties to allies of former President Donald Trump and motivated by false claims of widespread fraud in 2020, push to access and sometimes publish state voter registration rolls, which list names, home addresses and in some cases party registration. One goal is to create free online databases for groups and individuals who want to take it upon themselves to try to find potential fraud.
The lists could find their way into the hands of malicious actors and individual efforts to inspect the rolls could disenfranchise voters through intimidation or canceled registrations, state election officials and privacy advocates warned. They worry that local election offices may be flooded with challenges to voter registration listings as those agencies prepare for the 2024 elections.
John Davisson, director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the concern reflects the competing interests over voter data – a need to protect voter rolls from cybersecurity attacks against the desire to make them accessible so elections are transparent.
“It’s not surprising that this is a battleground right now,” he said.
Baseless claims of widespread voter fraud are part of what’s driving the efforts to obtain the rolls, leading to lawsuits over whether to hand over the data in several states, including Maine, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
In New York, a warning from the state elections board preceded the cease-and-desist letter from the state attorney general’s office. Voters in 13 counties had been approached at their homes in recent weeks in an apparently coordinated effort by people impersonating election officials, in some cases wielding phony IDs, the board said. Residents were confronted about their voter registration status and accused of misconduct.
In one instance, people wearing identification badges accused a woman at her Glens Falls home of committing a crime by apparently being registered to vote in two counties, said Warren County spokesman Don Lehman. But the woman had already filed to change her registration and canvassers were apparently using out-of-date information, he said.
“She was quite shaken by the whole thing,” Lehman said. “She did nothing nefarious at all. Either these people don’t understand that or understand how the process works, but it seems like they were quite accusatory.”
State prosecutors found no evidence that any of the those contacted had committed voter fraud or any other type of crime, they said in their warning letter.
NY Citizens Audit emailed a statement that dismissed as “absurd” concerns that its canvassers might have impersonated an official or harassed anyone. Instead, the group urged election officials to investigate “each of these millions of suspected illegal registrations.”
“We train our people to do legal canvassing, and if ever verified, voter intimidation would be completely unacceptable and against our policy,” NY Citizens Audit Director Kim Hermance said in the statement.
One of the most ambitious groups, the Voter Reference Foundation, was founded after the 2020 presidential election by Republican Doug Truax of Illinois with a goal of posting online lists from every state. The VoteRef.com database so far includes information from 32 states and the District of Columbia and is run by Gina Swoboda, a former organizer of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Arizona.
A federal trial is scheduled to start later this month over the group’s fight to access and use New Mexico’s voter registration list.
The group also sued Pennsylvania, which refused to hand over the information and said that publishing it would put every registered voter at greater risk of identity theft or misuse of their information, said the state’s Office of Open Records.
Truax declined to speak to The Associated Press, but has said in a statement on the Pennsylvania case that, “We have a crisis of confidence in America when it comes to election results, and the answer is more transparency, not less.”
The head of elections in New Mexico, Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, fears many voters might withdraw from registration lists as personal data is posted online. Her office cites email inquiries about how to cancel voter registrations during a short-lived canvassing effort by election activists last year in southern New Mexico.
“Voters can and should expect a reasonable amount of privacy,” said Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat. “What Voter Reference is doing is saying, ‘If you have doubts about the election and who is registered to vote and who is voting, here is every voter’s information. Go out and figure it out for yourself whether these people are real.’”
The Voter Reference Foundation argues that federal law is on its side, citing public disclosure provisions of the National Voter Registration Act that require states to make a “reasonable” effort to keep the registration lists free of people who died or moved away. The foundation also invokes free speech and due-process rights.
Nearly every state prohibits the use or transfer of the lists for commercial purposes, while several confine access to political candidates, parties for campaign purposes and some government activities.
In March, New Mexico banned the transfer or publication of voter data online, with felony penalties and possible fines of $100 per voter.
Virginia data was removed from VoteRef.com after Republicans and Democrats united last year to ban online publication of registrations.
In Maine, an ongoing legal dispute over privacy and the use of voter lists is pitting state election regulators against a conservative-backed group that has been highlighting and litigating what it says are shortcomings in election systems for a decade. It has assembled voter rolls from multiple states.
The state historically provided voter registration lists to candidates and political parties before being sued in 2019 for failing to provide its voter list to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. In 2021, Maine’s governor signed a bill allowing the voter registration lists to be turned over to additional organizations, but with a stipulation that no voter names could be published in a way that compromises privacy.
The restrictions interfere with comparing lists across states, said the group’s president, J. Christian Adams, whose case against the state is scheduled for legal arguments Thursday at a Boston federal appeals court. Adams, a Republican, served on a commission Trump convened after his 2016 win to investigate voter fraud. The commission was disbanded without any finding of widespread fraud.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said residents sharing details about voters, including addresses, is a bad idea.
“In an era of conspiracies and lies about our elections, integrity of voter information is hugely important,” she said. “We want to make sure that no voters are targeted or harassed or threatened because of their decision to register and cast a ballot.”
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This story has been updated to correct the name of a law firm. It is the Public Interest Legal Foundation, not the Public Interest Law Foundation.
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Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also contributed to this report.
A quote below is the reason. We can not have anything not supporting racism and Christian nationalist 1950s strict gender roles in society / public view. We really must stop this religious racist take over of the country. Again a person born in the early part of the last century making decisions against modern society. Governor Ivey was born October 15, 1944. She is 79 years old. She can not accept the changes in society, in medical science, in the understandings we have learned since she was in her prime. She is extremely against the LGBTQIA and doesn’t support them having any rights. She believes that the nation was a founded as a religious nation and that attempts to stop the push of Christianity on kids in public schools via government is “destroying our nation’s religious heritage.” So, another Christian nationalist. Hugs
Emails show that during the legislative session in April, the Governor’s office received a document, created by Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellvillle, that highlighted passages from the book referencing systemic racism, white privilege and LGTBQ families.
“I have been told by multiple education groups that ‘divisive concepts’ are not in our schools, yet the material I read was offensive to me and the majority of the people I represent,” Kiel said at the time.
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AL.com received this photo of disposed teacher training manuals, which was taken at a Montgomery waste recycling plant on May 2, 2023. Gov. Kay Ivey disavowed a teaching manual from the National Association for the Education of Young Children in April 2023.
After Alabama’s governor ousted a top state official over a “woke” pre-K training manual, officials dumped dozens of the books, totaling thousands of dollars, in the trash.
A photograph shows more than 100 manuals, newly bought from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, scattered across the floor of a Montgomery waste recycling plant about 5 miles from the offices of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education.
The photo was taken May 2, a day after ADECE Secretary Barbara Cooper left office amid legislative pressure.
The person who took the photograph requested to remain anonymous. AL.com has confirmed the date and location of the photo. The books and registrations cost $165 apiece, according to officials. AL.com estimates the materials in the photo initially cost the department at least $16,500.
Just a year ago, officials spent $37,950 to buy 230 book registrations of the fourth edition of NAEYC’s Developmentally Appropriate Practices manual.
The books, a common teacher development tool, are not meant to be read as curriculum, but are supposed to help early childhood educators hone their skills in the classroom. Some passages of the manual’s fourth edition encouraged educators to consider their own biases and the social and cultural backgrounds of their students.
NAEYC is a leading national preschool group that accredits hundreds of high-quality early childcare facilities. Cooper, who was also a member of the group’s governing board, praised the new manual in a review, stating that it “fully supports our practice in the field of early learning and care.”
But months later, a complaint from a lawmaker forced a complete cleanout of the books – and Cooper’s sudden departure.
Emails show that during the legislative session in April, the Governor’s office received a document, created by Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellvillle, that highlighted passages from the book referencing systemic racism, white privilege and LGTBQ families.
Kiel said he created the document after receiving a complaint from an educator.
“I have been told by multiple education groups that ‘divisive concepts’ are not in our schools, yet the material I read was offensive to me and the majority of the people I represent,” Kiel said at the time.
On April 13, Liz Filmore, the governor’s chief of staff, shared a copy of the document with Cooper, asking her to review the materials. Filmore called the complaint “obviously concerning!”
In a memo released a day later, Cooper disavowed the books, calling them “unacceptable” and asking staffers to promptly return the materials to their supervisors.
Then on April 21, a week later, Ivey abruptly announced Cooper’s resignation.
“The education of Alabama’s children is my top priority as governor, and there is absolutely no room to distract or take away from this mission,” the governor wrote. “Let me be crystal clear: Woke concepts that have zero to do with a proper education and that are divisive at the core have no place in Alabama classrooms at any age level, let alone with our youngest learners. We want our children to be focused on the fundamentals, such as reading and math.”
Ivey later told reporters that the two had “mutually agreed” to part ways after a conversation about the “direction” the department was going in.
But the extent of the fallout from Cooper’s ousting – including what actually happened to all of the tens of thousands of dollars worth of manuals and other NAEYC products – is unclear.
Neither Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, nor Samuel Adams, a spokesman for ADECE, initially responded to questions about where the books were stored, or whether officials had taken any steps to resell or donate them.
After AL.com presented officials with the photo of the books at the scrap yard, Maiola issued the following response:
“The governor immediately directed the department to disavow and discontinue the book,” she said. “That was done.”
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A Flourish table
Scottie's Playtime 