Banning Books Is Just The Beginning. The Scary Future Ahead If Project 2025 Is Successful

Justice has long been considered dangerous in America. This week, September 22nd through the 28th, is Banned Books Week, a decades-long movement to end censorship and in affirmation of open access to information. Refresher: Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in January 1981 after winning on a campaign that, among other things, championed to “make America great again.” George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) proved prophetic as book bans consumed the nation under Reagan’s repressive regime. In 1982, Banned Books Week was established in response to this “surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools.” More than forty years later, and with Project 2025 looming over our heads, the fight against suppression is just as fervent and urgent.

According to the American Library Association (ALA), there have been more than 400 attempts to censor library materials and services in the first eight months of 2024, including challenges to more than 1,000 unique titles. This is lower than book ban attempts in 2023 but is still much higher than pre-2020 levels and the most-banned titles are books by or about LGBTQ+ and Black people. It’s also important to remember that each individual attack affects dozens of students, educators, and writers who are being conditioned to proactively avoid certain material that has been labeled taboo or controversial. South Carolina high school teacher, Mary Wood, was forced to fight tooth-and-nail to teach Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, just years after books celebrating Blackness and queer identities were also banned in the district’s libraries. Katie Rinderle, a Georgia educator, was fired for reading a picture book about gender fluidity to her fifth-grade classroom. They are only two of the hundreds of instances like these over the last few years.

When experts are robbed of the opportunity to share nuanced information while fact-checking false narratives, it leads to an epidemic of “fake news.” The misinformation begins on social media and digital platforms but proposed legislation would extend the reach. If teachers and librarians cannot direct young people towards honest accounts of history, we are doomed to repeat the past while refusing to even acknowledge intergenerational harms. Disinformation is why some Southerners still believe in the “Lost Cause” and why Southern courthouses and Capitol buildings still bear Confederate flags. It’s why affirmative action is being struck down and mislabeled as “reverse racism.” It's why migrants are being attacked in cities across the nation based on ridiculous and false claims of Haitian immigrants “eating cats and dogs.” It’s why Trump is even the Republican nominee at all. 

Material that reflects so many of our daily realities have been vilified, and we can thank Governor Ron DeSantis and former-President Trump for their major roles in that uptick. Former Presidential hopeful Gov. DeSantis helped popularize and nationalize the effort by parents and local politicians to keep white children from learning about race, gender, or sexuality in the classroom. DeSantis framed such texts as “woke indoctrination” “teaching kids to hate their country,” and moved to ban critical race theory — and anything mischaracterized as it — from Florida classrooms. It wasn’t long before the language used in Florida bills was replicated in conservative states across the country. Hundreds of pieces of legislation have been introduced since 2021 to restrict what young people can access in schools, libraries, and other public spaces. And this is only the beginning.

Last year, Trump campaigned heavily on “culture wars,” another remnant of the ‘80s. In response to mass youth mobilization around racism, climate change, and gun violence, Trump and his cronies spread fear-driven narratives around inappropriate material being disseminated by progressives. The answer to this problem, Trump posed, was cutting off funding to educators championing “race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.” Following the blueprint laid out for him, Trump was careful to always allude to an infringement on parental rights as did Gov. DeSantis. In his 2023 memoir, The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, DeSantis wrote “Florida was one of the first states to enact a Parents’ Bill of Rights… guaranteeing parents the right to inspect the materials being used in their kids’ schools,” he wrote. “We prohibited the teaching of toxic racial ideologies and protected against the sexual inaction of children.” DeSantis and Trump aren’t alone; this mandate also serves as the foundation of Project 2025’s policy platform. 

In the overview and vision for the Department of Education, the plan sets out to “advance legal protections for parental rights in education” with the claim that parents are currently treated as “second-tier” in courts. The seemingly-harmless Parents’ Bill of Rights they propose would undercut the Department of Education along with any national investment in young America and the information we expose them to as they decide what sort of people to be. Project 2025 also outlines a path for parents to sue educational institutions for not complying with such bans, challenges, and curriculum guard rails. And what would warrant such a response? According to the authors of Project 2025, fear of supporting children through gender transitions and exposing them to curricula about race and gender is the boogeyman they’re after.

“As these preliminary numbers show, we must continue to stand up for libraries and challenge censorship wherever it occurs,” said American Library Association President Cindy Hohl. “We know people don’t like being told what they are allowed to read, and we’ve seen communities come together to fight back and protect their libraries and schools from the censors.” In response to the encroaching attacks on literature, advocates have jumped up to contest these restrictions. When Arkansas state legislators passed a law limiting public reading choices to what was appropriate for “the youngest of minors,” librarians and activists sprung into action securing a temporary injunction pending further arguments. Similarly, when a New Jersey school district attempted to block access to various sex education books and graphic novels, community activists organized a letter writing campaign which swayed the school board to overturn the move. “All of these librarians, community members, students, plaintiffs, and educators demonstrate how we can all stem the side of censorship by courageously taking action in our communities,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Truth-telling is very much on the ballot this election. As Trump runs for President for the third time, his base has only become more emboldened by disinformation, fake news, and the need to forcefully assert their dominance. From tiki torches in Charlottesville after the removal of Confederate monuments to insurrections at our nation’s capital in response to an election they wouldn’t accept, far-right extremists are going to violent ends to maintain the status quo. The fact that what we read, write, and share is such a strong antidote to racist and homophobic fanaticism shows our power. So, continue to support and amplify the works they are trying hardest to keep from you. And vote for candidates who are curbing these efforts. If we aren’t bold in our resistance now, we may live to regret it later.