If Project 2025 is enacted, politicians censoring library books will go nationwide | Opinion

In January 2020, I was briefly a celebrity, when my warning about “a shockingly transparent attempt to legalize book banning” went viral in the press and on social media.

I was commenting on Missouri House Bill 2044, the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act, which sought to establish “parental review boards” to censor Missouri’s public libraries. “Every reader and writer in the country should be horrified, absolutely horrified, at this bill,” I wrote on behalf of PEN America. “The fact that a librarian could actually be imprisoned for following his or her conscience and refusing to block minors from access to a book, that tells you all you need to know about the suitability of this act within a democratic society.”

The bill’s lead proponent told news outlets he proposed it after learning that a few public libraries in larger cities had hosted drag queen story hours. The bill envisioned treating librarians as potential criminals, declaring that those who refused to comply with the board’s decision could be imprisoned for up to a year.

The media largely agreed with me.

“Put this in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up category,” wrote The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss. Missouri’s Jefferson City News Tribune opined that while the bill “likely won’t pass,” the proposal “is unnecessary. Worse, it’s dangerous.”

The idea that librarians could be imprisoned for refusing to censor their own library collections was so shocking, in fact, that snopes.com — the website devoted to debunking urban myths — ran an article confirming that the claim was true.

That bill ended up dying in committee. But what most people saw then as a dangerous and misguided idea has become normalized today — at least, for some politicians.

Fast forward to present day — only four years later. Bills of this type have become law in six states — Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and yes, Missouri — and have been considered by legislatures in at least 17 states over the past year. And across the country, school district after school district has been roiled by a sustained campaign from conservative activists and their think-tank allies who believe that librarians are “grooming” their children.

Thankfully, no librarian has yet been arrested. But it has been close: In Granbury, Texas, a recent report reveals how one law enforcement officer attempted to file felony charges against three school librarians for refusing to pull “obscene” books — including “The Bluest Eye” by the late Nobel Prize laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison. The officer — a man with documented ties to anti-government and far-right extremist groups — failed only because the local district attorney refused. If charges had been filed, these librarians would be facing potential prison terms of up to 10 years. One librarian who was targeted by this investigation decided to leave the district.

It gets worse: Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-backed “playbook” that is widely expected to shape the policies of a potential second Donald Trump administration, is explicitly gunning for librarians. In his foreword to Project 2025, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts argues that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” He goes on to say, even more explicitly, “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children … has no claim to First Amendment protection. … Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

What this means is that if Project 2025 is implemented by the next administration, we can expect the federal government to join the witch hunt against librarians.

And make no mistake: This is a witch hunt. Public libraries have long-standing procedures in place to evaluate books to ensure literary or educational merit. Not all books will be right for all children — but to ban a book from a public library is to take away that choice from every family in that community. That is undemocratic.

While the idea of imprisoning librarians for refusing to ban books has become normalized, that doesn’t make it normal. It is just as extreme an idea as it ever was. And the damage these laws cause is real. They are scaring off talented librarians, narrowing literary access for young Americans, and imposing ideological constraints on what children can read.

As books, libraries and librarians are under increasing attack, we should remember that just because book banners have become louder, that does not make them right.

James Tager is research director at PEN America, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that defends writers, artists and journalists and protects free expression worldwide.