“The weaponization of libraries … is a bludgeon that’s scaring people everywhere,” said American Library Association President Emily Drabinski.
By Jennifer Bendery, Apr 7, 2024, 05:30 AM EDT
Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association.
It’s that time of year again: National Library Week! A time to celebrate the endless adventures that children can experience in books that are free and accessible to all, and the safe spaces that libraries provide for learning and creating a sense of community.Or, it’s a time to reflect on how we got to a place where librarians are living in constant fear.
They have become the targets of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty that are hellbent on banning books about LGBTQ+ people, people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.
More recently, and perhaps most alarmingly, the GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.
Attempts to restrict what kids in school can read are on the rise. But American book-banning started with the Puritans, 140 years before the United States
The New English Canaan by Thomas Morton criticized the Puritan government in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz
The American Library Association reports that 2022 saw more attempts to have books removed from schools and public libraries than in any prior year this century—indeed, it documented nearly twice as many attempted bans in 2022 than in 2021. Notably, the common thread in these aggressive efforts is the subject that binds the most-challenged titles: Most of them address themes of LGBT+ identity or gender expression. On our latest episode of the Smithsonian magazine podcast “There’s More to That,” I talk with journalist Colleen Connolly about Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, the first book ever to be suppressed in North America. What did the Puritans find so threatening about it, and how has this book echoed through subsequent centuries? Then I’m joined by Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, for a wide-ranging conversation about the history of book bans in the United States, how a resurgent wave of book bans in many states differs from those of prior eras and why organized attempts to prevent specific people from reading specific books usually fail.
The former President continues to attract millions of supporters who have such antipathy for Biden and the Democrats that they interpret Trump’s deviance as defiance and his fury as their fury.Photograph by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP / Getty
To read the stark criminal indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on Tuesday, charging Donald Trump with conspiring to steal the 2020 Presidential election is to realize more deeply than before that the country is headed for a great reckoning—in the courts and at the ballot box.
It suggests a question that cannot be escaped: Will the American electorate show itself capable of overlooking a conspiracy to undermine democratic rule and return the chief conspirator to power?
The third and latest indictment against Trump sets out four charges and makes the case against him in the plainest terms. “Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” the introduction to the forty-five-page document reads—and where have you seen a more succinct summary of criminal intent?
Editor’s note: Featured image is mine, free to re-use.
The Department of Energy’s low-confidence assessment that Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China is still a minority view within the intelligence community, three sources familiar with the intelligence community’s findings tell CNN.
While the FBI has also assessed – with moderate confidence – the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 likely leaked from a lab, the majority of the intelligence community still believes that Covid either emerged naturally in the wild, or that there is still too little evidence to make a judgment one way or another.
Three sources told CNN that the Department of Energy’s shift was based in part on information about research being conducted at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control in Wuhan, China, which was studying a coronavirus variant around the time of the outbreak.
Popular distrust of the news media has been traced to the coverage of the stormy 1968 Democratic National Convention. Photograph from Bettmann / Getty
When the Washington Post unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” on February 17, 2017, people in the news business made fun of it.
“Sounds like the next Batman movie,” the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said.
But it was already clear, less than a month into the Trump Administration, that destroying the credibility of the mainstream press was a White House priority, and that this would include an unabashed, and almost gleeful, policy of lying and denying.
The Post kept track of the lies. The paper calculated that by the end of his term, the President had lied 30,573 times.
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…
WASHINGTON, DC—The Ways and Means Committee voted to publicly release the Committee’s investigation of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Mandatory Audit Program under the prior administration.
The Committee’s investigation found the mandatory program was dormant, at best, with only one audit opened while the former President was in office, and none have been completed.
Excerpts from Chairman Neal’s opening statement:
“Ways and Means is entrusted with great responsibilities. Today, the weight of our job is heavy. Congress serves as a check on the Executive Branch, and our Committee is entrusted with oversight of our revenue system. We all come to Ways and Means with the goal of creating a fairer tax code. Because at the root of it all, it is our federal tax system that funds the democracy we all cherish and love.
Our voluntary collection relies on the public confidence that our tax laws are applied evenly and justly, regardless of position or power. For four years, the Committee has been reviewing how the IRS enforces the federal tax laws against, and ensures compliance by, a president.
“A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility.
“We are only here today because four years ago, our request to learn more about the program under 6103 was denied. This was the first time that this key oversight function was hampered, and our Committee’s jurisdiction was challenged.
“The Committee expected that these mandatory audits were being conducted promptly and in accordance with IRS policies. However, our review found that under the prior Administration the program was dormant. We know now, the first mandatory audit was opened two years into his presidency. On the same day this Committee requested his returns.
“We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that. This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hope to find.
“But the evidence is clear. Congress must step in. I’ve proposed legislation to put the program above reproach. Ensuring IRS conducts yearly, timely examinations while publicly disclosing certain information.
“Our work has always been to ensure our tax laws are administered fairly and without preference, because at times, even the power of a president can loom too large.”
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