Along with other shocks that are bombarding us daily while the current regime thrives on cuts, insults, inaccuracies, and political power grabs, we are faced with some cuts that we should be paying attention to and resisting. Those cuts are aimed at our culture as a national community, our legitimate history, and our beloved literature.
Many of us grew up loving books like Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, the Dr. Seuss classics, Charlottes’s Web, and Wrinkle in Time, along with Katherine Patterson’s Young Adult stories. These books for children, and many others, are now banned in various venues, sometimes for ridiculous reasons.
Charlotte’s Web was apparently removed because it referred to death and talking animals who had interesting things to say. A Wrinkle in Time was taken off shelves because it “opposed Christian belief,” according to censors. Other books for young adults used profanity, or supported kids who had same sex parents, or told stories of people of color who had overcome prejudice, or had different cultural practices than white Americans. Organizations like Pen America who track such things have amazing lists of what has been culled for youth readers.
Censorship is not new, but it is escalating and mutating. PEN America found that more than 10,000 books had been banned during the 2023 – 2024 school year that led to more than 4,000 titles being removed. Most of those books were for young adult titles, and for picture books for young readers.
“Book bans are a bellwether for rising educational censorship,” Pen America says. They also reveal a range of venues that are experiencing censorship, including “a range of institutions, including public libraries, colleges and universities. The policy changes…are designed to suppress education about certain viewpoints, identities, and histories,” especially if they concern people of color, LGBTQ people and sex. “This broad campaign uses falsehoods, fear, and hatred to dehumanize, dismiss, and diminish important voices in the public sphere, reshaping American public education.”
In 2025 the American Library Association tracked 4,2335 titles that were challenged. That was the second highest ever documented by the organization. And during National Library Week in April this year, ALA released data documenting attempts to censor books and materials in public schools, and academic libraries.
Censoring literature for adults has happened throughout history and masterpieces have been banned for various reasons. In recent times classic works of literature have amazingly been banned. Among them are Lolita, because of perceived obscenity, and perversion, and The Grapes of Wrath for “communist” sympathies and alleged obscenity, according to PEN America. So too has Beloved, by Toni Morrison, because of its depictions of slavery and sexual content.
Since our president returned to office, adult literary works have been banned or removed via federal directives, including executive orders. The Handmaid’s Tale was widely banned for its perceived political themes and exposure to patriarchal governance. Literary works have faced intensive censorship. Among them are To Kill a Mockingbird, and 1984, for explicit political context, and socialist themes.
But books are not the only thing that the Trump regime insists need to be controlled. Museums are taking big hits too. Since Mr. Trump was elected for a second time his administration has repeated a narrative that claims museums are “centers of ‘woke’ activism and anti-American information.
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has come under fire, along with its Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch, and other staff. According to the Yale Law Journal the president “has accused the Institution of ‘historical revision’ by portraying the nation as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Even an exhibition honoring Dr. Anthony Fauci’s career was maligned in a White House newsletter claiming that the exhibit about the revered doctor was an example of the Smithsonian “rewriting our Nation’s history.” Other exhibits have been taken down if they are deemed to “divide Americans based on “race or ideology.”
The Smithsonian is not the only cultural institution to be targeted since Trump’s second term. Since the president has been in office again there has been an excessive focus on slavery and an improper ideology review. Exhibitions that share major events and eras in American history have become subject to executive orders that eliminate place names, signage, and photographs, denying us a truthful history aimed at undermining democracy’s values. It’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
As George Orwell warned us in 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
The National Coalition Against Censorship expressed outrage when a White House report attacked the Smithsonian, citing its threat to the independence of the 21 museums that make up the Smithsonian, citing its threat to free expression in the United States. Lee Rowland, executive director of the Coalition, stated that “the government’s attempts to strong arm a revered private institution violates the values of open discourse and our First Amendment. It is deeply un-American.”
On July 4th as we celebrated our 250th anniversary another White House report called “Saving America’s Story” condemned the Smithsonian for “trading settled truths and basic history for political activism and division,” as a July New York Times story reported, citing the accusation that the Smithsonian fosters “anti-white activism, supporting ‘illegal aliens,’ and embracing transgender people.” There you have it in a nutshell. We must bring back books, autonomous museums, truthful history and diverse cultures before it’s too late.
