By 2020, reporters spoke of working in an environment of fear and uncertainty, with newsrooms on edge about angering the White House cpj.org cpj.org . CPJ’s experts noted that requests for journalist safety advice spiked due to worries that Trump’s rhetoric had emboldened harassment and even physical threats toward reporters cpj.org . Tragically, we saw hints of this: in 2018, a Trump supporter sent mail bombs to CNN’s offices; and throughout these years, many journalists faced death threats echoing Trump’s language. The tone set at the top – calling the press “enemies” and purveyors of fake news – filtered down into public attitudes. By one poll, a third of Americans agreed the press “is the enemy of the people”, a disturbing legacy of Trump’s influence brookings.edu . This hostile climate has only encouraged Republican officials at other levels of government to pursue their own campaigns to control information.
Book Bans and Educational Censorship in Republican States
Simultaneous with Trump’s clashes with the national press, a wave of censorship and content control efforts swept through Republican-led state governments and local school boards. After 2020, these efforts reached levels not seen in generations, targeting books, curricula, and library materials that some conservatives deemed objectionable. Books about race, gender, and sexuality have been especially singled out, often under the banner of parents’ rights or anti-“woke” policies. The result has been a historic surge in book bans across schools and libraries, with profound impacts on teachers, students, librarians, and communities.
The Surge in Book Bans: Scope and Motivations
Over the 2021–2023 school years, book challenges and bans exploded to record highs. Free-expression watchdog PEN America documented 3,362 instances of individual book bans in schools during the 2022–23 year, affecting 1,557 unique titles – a 33% increase from the previous year pen.org . The American Library Association likewise tracked over a thousand book challenges in 2022 alone, by far the most since it began counting decades ago. Many of these bans are driven by political groups and newly passed state laws. PEN America notes that “new state-level rules and legislation are key drivers of the bans,” with Florida alone accounting for an outsized share after passing multiple restrictive laws publishersweekly.com . While proponents claim to target “pornographic” or “age-inappropriate” materials, **in practice the majority of books being removed feature LGBTQ characters or discuss race and racism, or are written by authors of color or LGBTQ authors washingtonpost.com . For example, analyses show many challenged titles are about Black history, civil rights, or have LGBTQ protagonists – topics some conservatives have branded as divisive or immoral washingtonpost.com . One Florida school district official candidly admitted that a list of books for review was heavily “LGBTQ focused”, reflecting the bias in challenges washingtonpost.com .
Behind this movement are vocal advocacy groups like Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ organization that formed in 2021 and rapidly spread to school board meetings nationwide. Moms for Liberty members have lodged complaints about hundreds of books – from children’s picture books about same-sex parents to novels by celebrated Black authors – often reading out sexually explicit passages out of context to demand removal. Republican politicians have amplified these efforts. At least 14 Republican-led states enacted laws from 2021 to 2023 making it easier to remove books or harder to discuss certain topics in class. These laws vary in scope but share a common thread of injecting government control into curriculum and library content:
“Anti-CRT” laws: The first wave, starting with Idaho in 2021, aimed to ban teaching “critical race