Book bans move to center stage in the red-state education wars

The escalating red-state efforts to ban more books mark a new stage in the struggle to control the educational experience of America's kaleidoscopically diverse younger generations.

Since 2021, more than a dozen Republican-controlled states have passed laws or approved executive branch policies that restrict how public school teachers can talk about race, gender and sexual orientation, as in the case of the bill critics call "don't say gay," which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last week. But now, even as National Library Week arrives this week, the attempt to limit what materials are available to young people is spilling out from the classroom into the library.

Though battles over access to controversial titles traditionally have been fought district by district, and even school by school, Republican-controlled states including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas are now pushing statewide rules that make it easier for critics to remove books they dislike from school libraries in every community.