Thoughtcrime in the Library

Lessons from Tr*mp's first siege of American literature

— written by Sarita Donaie

When D*nald Tr*mp entered the White House for the first time in 2017 for what was known to be his first presidential term, Throughout the next four years, the Tr*mp Administration, along with Betsy DeVos, misused the Department of Education, which was problematic given her limited experience in public schools, and this has contributed to the current surge in book banning in America. The Tr*mp Administration’s Slow But Steady Undoing of the Department of Education details the seven methods his first administration implemented to annihilate the Department of Education from the inside. One method from the article states that DeVos was responsible for “eliminating hundreds of guidance documents…to provide states and districts with support in serving all students.” The Department of Education’s elimination of guidance documents affects how states approach literature censorship, as most red states openly pursue book-banning efforts. These book-banning efforts will involve many different aspects that the Department of Education prevents from happening within public schools: unjust, discriminatory issues regarding race, income, language, sexual orientation, and disability. The Department of Education has been upheld as the most effective and protective measure for ensuring that the educated of the future are taught with the best tools; however, unfortunately, those tools are actively being banned. Between Tr*mp’s first term as president, in 2017, and the current year, 2025, for nine years, book-banning efforts have been enacted by states - NINE YEARS of the government actively allowing other states to withhold literature from their patrons. Tr*mp’s announced re-run in 2019 only solidified the possibility of more unjustified censorship. Ensuring that the expansion of censorship further increased even when the Democratic Party was leading, book-banning efforts were still pursued even after the Tr*mp Administration lost the 2021 election to Joe Biden and his Administration.

March 2023 saw the development of legislative laws like the Arkansas Act 372, which exposes librarians and booksellers to criminal penalties for distributing materials to minors that are considered harmful. Senator Dan Sullivan cosigned the Arkansas Act 372 bill, which upholds that “the school district shall have a written policy for addressing 10 challenged materials that [are] physically present in the library…and meet the requirements.” The Arkansas Act 372 bill will allow school districts to determine which materials should be accessible to students—these same school districts allow the removal of novels that reflect the victims who survived and continue to struggle with generational trauma surrounding the past horrors of American culture written by authors of different civilizations and races; additionally emphasizing how that literature exposes our government for its injustice and inequality. Idaho HB 710, enacted in April 2024, limits minors’ access to arbitrarily harmful materials, thus resulting in self-censorship among libraries and the withholding of informative novels surrounding the experiences of other non-white Americans. These laws can even result in fines of “two hundred fifty dollars ($250) in statutory damages as well as actual damages.”

Executive Orders 14149 & 14190, made under Tr*mp’s Administration, were created to target efforts of freedom of speech meant to address misinformation and prohibited the teaching of “anti-American” topics such as Critical Race Theory, a serious topic on the subject of systemic racism in America known to discuss the issues of racial discrimination against minorities in any environment, historical and present. Executive Order 14149, also titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” was created in response to the “previous administration[s]… censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms… such as social media companies, to moderate, de-platform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.” Created in early 2025, this order was essentially a political sound horn to inform everyone, especially Democrats, that past administration-made efforts will not be supported throughout the current Tr*mp Administration’s term. A more infamously known order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” Executive Order 14190, is a pushback on intellectualism in American public schools of all places and was subjected to ongoing legislative battles as a judge found it unconstitutional to pursue book banning. While Executive Order 14190 is meant to target radical thought within public schools, this is a policing of young people’s bodies. According to the order’s overview, radical indoctrination is happening in public schools to “young men and women [who] are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body.” The matters surrounding the privacy of “young men and women” shouldn’t be discussed by our state representatives, period; but it seems like our American government would rather make those decisions for us instead of reaching out to minorities. Such book-banning efforts are even found within military schools as “the Tr*mp administration has begun to restrict access in US military schools to books covering topics such as immigration and psychology.” Such efforts to ban knowledge books strongly suggest that there is an agenda behind not allowing students to learn about past historical events that impact African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. The educational impacts from these legislative actions are also significant in ensuring that the past events inflicted by the government should be remembered as a reminder of how much our current government still wants to control numerous aspects of our lives. However, legislative groups aren’t the only ones challenging book accessibility. Individuals like Bruce Friedman discussed in a The Times article “I am the ‘Michael Jordan of book banning.’ This is why I do it,” are taking book banning into their own hands. Friedman “is about protecting children from what he describes as a surge in books promoting ‘corrupting’ ideologies, from critical race theory to gender identity. ‘They serve no good function except to promote chaos…and destroy the nuclear family,’ he says.” The flaws found in Friedman’s opinion of certain books promoting “corrupting” ideologies are based on his absurd fears of race and gender-related conversations between him and his seventeen-year-old son. Understandably, while most parents have anxiety discussing topics that they have never considered, challenging the accessibility of books for all Florida residents emphasizes Friedman’s fears of living in the same state as queer individuals and people of color. How such fears are discovered and why they continue to let that fear affect them is beyond me. Still, I do believe the government has fascist undertones that directly affect minorities, women, and those within non-Christian religions because people like Friedman would uphold any ideologies to ensure comfort within their lives and the lives of those they care about. This isn’t everyone.

Some individuals are working and willing to preserve the educational, cultural, historical, etc. values books provide for readers. Ella Creamer’s article titled “Publishers sue state of Idaho over library book bans” is a defiant reminder that writing and reading communities are the most determined to reject the book ban as the article states that “the ban extends to classics and bestsellers, including The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Game of Thrones by George RR Martin and nonfiction books such as The ‘What’s Happening to My Body?’ Book for Girls by Lynda Madaras.” People working within writing and reading enclaves are ready to push back firmly and courageously to support local libraries.

Guerilla Archivists, composed of students, librarians, and researchers in the U.S., have begun seriously organizing to fight against the Tr*mp Administration’s push for book banning and data erasure of important information. The Guerilla Archivists are taught how to properly archive content, thus securely preserving the “official statements on anthropogenic, or man-made, climate change [that] vanished from governmental websites.” Although the Tr*mp Administration is actively working to prevent the American people from gaining important knowledge about anything not selectively westernized or cis-gendered. The pushback on book banning from students, librarians, and researchers seen within the article is a major indicator of inspiration that emphasizes the importance of the rights of the people. The American people deserve to be included in the preservation of governmental rights and bills as these roles are increasingly becoming more predominantly minority, LGQTA+, and gender-fluidity inclusive. In the midst of witnessing awful discriminatory practices of the Tr*mp Administration, I’m hopeful that these spaces will welcome different perspectives of people and cultures allowing us all to communicate with each other more effectively, thus creating a better world that inhabits the pursuit of knowledge and not the push for misinformation spread or anti-intellectualism.

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