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HARRIS: Accusing Republicans of Banning Books
The early 2020s saw an increase in momentum for a parent-led movement aiming to remove, from school libraries and classrooms, books whose content contained explicit sexuality, pornography, transgender themes, the anti-white tenets of Critical Race Theory, and material otherwise inappropriate for young children. In 2023, for example, Florida passed HB 1069, a state law that:
Many Democrats and their leftist supporters misrepresented such initiatives as “book bans” that prevented students from being exposed to literature that dealt with topics like slavery, the Jim Crow era, and racism.
During a July 21, 2023 address in Florida, VP Harris said: “And what is happening here in Florida? Extremist so-called leaders for months have dared to ban books. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2023.”
In July 2024, Harris told an American Federation of Teachers gathering: “While you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history … including book bans…. We [Democrats] want to ban assault weapons, and they [Republicans] want to ban books. Can you imagine?”
BIDEN: Accusing Republicans of Banning Books
In June 2023, President Biden appointed domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden to coordinate the Department of Education’s efforts to address the alleged spike in book bans. “In too many parts of our country, LGBTQ Americans are being targeted for who they are, and that, simply put, is discrimination,” Tanden said, adding: “Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to stigma and isolation,”
In September 2023, President Biden said: “Now is the time for all Americans to speak up when history is being erased, books are being banned. Diversity is being attacked.”
During his third State of the Union speech in March 2024, Biden said: “And stop denying another core value of America: our diversity across American life. Banning books. It’s wrong! Instead of erasing history, let’s make history!”
WALZ: Accusing Republicans of Banning Books
In 2023, parents in Minnesota organized to stop Call Me Max, a book about a transgender boy, from being read aloud to kindergarten children. Specifically, the parents expressed concerns that the story would raise doubts and anxieties about sexual identity in children too young to understand the concept. Deriding such parental efforts as “regressive,” Governor Walz in 2024 signed Senate Bill 3567, a state law barring parental groups from removing books or other materials from school libraries “based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” The new law stipulated that all decisions regarding what materials to stock should be entrusted to “a licensed library media specialist, an individual with a master’s degree in library sciences or library and information sciences, or a professional librarian or person with extensive library collection management experience.”
When Senate Bill 3567 was first introduced in March 2024, Walz told Minnesota Public Radio: “Those who have asked for book bans have never been on the right side of history. They have never been viewed as being the folks that were the heroes of freedom; they have never been viewed as the people that were looking out for others.” “Trying to tell someone else’s children that they can’t read The Hobbit, or whatever it might be, you’re in the wrong,” Walz added.
On July 25, 2024, Walz derided Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s opposition to abortion and to the presence of sexually explicit books in school libraries and classrooms: “I don’t need him telling me about my wife’s health care and her reproductive rights,” said Walz. “I don’t need him telling my children what books they can read.”
During the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, Walz said that “while other states were banning books from their schools, we [in Minnesota] were banishing hunger from ours.” He did not mention that the Feeding Our Future program to which he was referring – a program that was supposed to provide food for needy schoolchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 – had perpetrated America’s largest COVID-related fraud scheme and bilked at least $250 million from taxpayers.