038: MAGA’s War on Free Speech feat. Kelly Jensen

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
There's free speech and then there's hate speech and there is
no place, especially now, especially after what happened
to Charlie, in our society. Do you see more law enforcement
going after these groups who areusing hate speech and putting
cuffs on people? So we show them that some action
is better than no action. We will absolutely target you,

(00:23):
go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate
speech, anything. And that's across the aisle.

(01:00):
Welcome back to posting Through IT, I'm Jared Holt.
And I'm Mike Hayden. We have got a jam packed episode
for you guys. We're going to be talking about
the rights attack on free speech.
But before we get started, we got to give a shout out to some
of our supporters on Patreon. We skipped last week because of
the the nature of the episode and all the sort of heat on

(01:23):
critics of Charlie Kirk. We didn't want people to get
caught up in it. But who have we got to shout out
this week, Mike? If I get anybody's name wrong,
please shout at me. In the executive tier, Daniel
Reed Miller, Luke. Vertaler, Mikhail Al Salser.
In the Platinum tier, Desiree Irby.
Susan Taper, Misty Scott Trickle, Christie Kilgore.

(01:48):
Christover, Michael. Bozeko, Jeff.
Just Jeff. David Ickes.
Turquoise. Period Revisited.
Michelle Henning, thanks for signing up.
It's actually been a really busyweek for our Patreon and I'm I I
couldn't be more excited about it. patreon.com/posting through

(02:08):
it. The link is in the description.
So like I said, this is an episode about right wing
censorship. Despite claiming, insisting
really, that they represent the party of free speech.
Republicans have spent decades and a whole lot of money trying
to quiet or silence the voices of people who they disagree

(02:29):
with. The free speech for me but not
for thee. Thinking of the GOP has been on
display front and center since Charlie Kirk was shot and killed
on September 10th. But the right censorship agenda
goes back much further and is entrenched much deeper than
Kirk's murder. We're going to talk about that

(02:50):
and then share an interview Jared conducted with Kelly
Jensen. She's a former librarian who is
now writing heavily about what'shappening to books in this
country. I wasn't able to participate in
that interview because I was travelling.
I had to sort of pick one or theother.
And what I picked was our premium episode, which was

(03:11):
focused on a number of things, but mostly on Erica Kirk, the
widow of Charlie Kirk. I would urge everybody to go
back on our Patreon and listen to that.
If you're curious about where she came from.
Jared and Kelly talked about therights efforts to ban books from
libraries. It's a really important
conversation. I thought it was amazing.

(03:31):
Let's first talk about what happened since Charlie Kirk was
killed. This is going to be a long
episode, but it is all important, particularly for your
First Amendment rights. With the September 17th post on
Truth Social, Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organization,
his post read. I am pleased to inform our many

(03:54):
USA patriots that I am designating Antifa a sick,
dangerous, radical left disasteras a major terrorist
organization. I will also be strongly
recommending that those funding Antifa be thoroughly
investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and
practices. Thank you for your attention to

(04:17):
this matter. Well, I mean, I think the first
thing that comes to mind, of course, is that he already did
this in in June of 2020, right? I remember at the time he did
it, I was, I believe at my parents house.
It was in the immediate aftermath of that clamp down on
Washington, DC in which there were gassing protesters.

(04:39):
And I remember thinking completehorror at that time like this,
that this is this is sort of the, the, the, the, an
inflection point, a moment wherethey would start putting people
like me in jail, etcetera, etcetera.
And unsurprisingly, now, as we knew, we know more about the
Trump administration, nothing happened in that respect.

(05:01):
That doesn't mean that eventually something isn't going
to happen, Jared. Yeah, I mean, you've talked
about on previous episodes, you know, the second Trump
administration, if there's something very clear that
differentiates it from the firstone, is that I think what you
said exactly was the time for mean tweets is over, right?

(05:23):
Like, like their lesson from 2020 post Capital riot was not
wow, that was bad. Maybe we should rethink things.
They were like, we were not organized and we did not plan
enough to to be able to enact all this stuff.
So the specter of them acting onthis, I think is a much realer

(05:44):
possibility than it was in 2020.And that's not to say they
didn't do anything in 2020. I'm, I'm remembering that anti
fascist in the Pacific Northwestthat they just straight up
gunned down, right. This person had been accused, I
think filmed shooting a far right event participant.

(06:08):
I, I don't know the exact details.
I I did at one point, but I justdon't remember them of whether
that was like self-defense or whether it was an aggravated
attack or or whatever. But then they just showed up and
giant swarm of officers just gunned them down I believe
outside his apartment. So it was a big, it was a big,
it was a big and, and under our discussed moment.

(06:30):
Yeah, but but in terms of like what they are doing, I talked to
the New York Times for a piece that they wrote about this.
But to it's just like something Hannah pointed out to us in a
group chat where it is that likemajor terrorist organization is

(06:50):
not a designation. And then there's also the fact
that Antifa 1, I don't know a whole lot of people still flying
that as their flag in 2025. But also in terms of an
organization, there isn't reallyone to speak of.
So. So we're already starting in
fantasy. You know, I think the concern is

(07:11):
just like, if if they are designating this organization,
which is not really an organization, a terrorist group,
what what are they going to claim?
Who who are they going to claim is attached to it?
Because they claim that everybody from your black bloc,
you know, genuine, you know, anarchist St.

(07:33):
Protesters to people like you and me, people like our
listeners, they're all antifa. An antifa cell is basically like
6 people from different parts ofthe country on a Signal chat,
you know, sharing screenshots ofAndy.
No, and like closing up on it totry to figure out whether he had
surgery on his chin, which, you know, I am AI am a chin surgery

(07:57):
truther, you know, and making and writing laugh my ass off and
like other things and like, Oh my God, like imagine if he got
hit with a dildo. It's it's it's really not
exactly gang warfare, nor is it any kind of dues paying thing.
And you see the people who like push the the propaganda line
about antifa. It's like he was an antifa
member, right? It's Andy.

(08:19):
No, it's Jack Pozobic who wrote an insufferable book about it in
which he included the Dayton shooter is like an example of a
of an antifa terrorist. And the guy was like, basically
it was just like a family dispute.
I think something like that. Jared.
I don't want to traumatize Jaredby bringing up the Dayton
shooter again for people who don't know that Andy know and
other people trying to suggest that the Dayton shooter was

(08:40):
influenced by Jared because he like retweeted him once.
But. Ridiculous.
Yeah, anybody who? Happened antifamatory if that
had actually if that had actually like resulted in any
sort of damage to my life or reputation, if these guys
weren't already like discreditedshit bags, that would have been

(09:02):
I don't know I don't know I. You wouldn't been working hard
for the Patreon, you'd be sitting pretty right now all.
I'll say, is that like I talked to a couple lawyers around the
time? Yeah, of course.
And, and we kind of were sittingaround waiting to see how far
they would take it. This is all this, this is all to
say that that Antifa is not an organization.

(09:23):
It is a style of protest, you know, and, and even even if you
sure went to try to go after anarchists or whatever, I mean,
good luck trying to figure out who everybody is or whatever.
I mean, who would, you know, black bloc is also a style of
protest for people who are unfamiliar with that.
That's like the all black look. You've seen them on the streets

(09:44):
in conflicts with the Proud Boysand things like that.
What I guess I would say is thata lot of this hinges for me
around a thing I bring up a lot here, which is whether we're
going to have free and fair elections.
And if we have free and fair elections, anybody can come to
me and say, Mike, you made a bigthing of this and that and it

(10:05):
was totally fine. And I will be like, great,
that's fantastic. But I have a lot of reason to be
concerned based upon the other symptoms going on in this
country. And you don't have to look
around too far. Like if you look at the the El
Salvadorian torture prison, you look at the boat incident, you
look at Alligator Alcatraz, etcetera.

(10:27):
Everything looks and smells likea fascist regime.
And to me, if they are not having a great run of things in
the midterms were especially in 2028, I could very easily see
efforts to limit the vote in such a way that would make it

(10:47):
impossible for, you know, the opposition to win.
And and the reason why I bring that up is I'm sure they wanted
to round all of us up and put usin jail in June of 2020, but
Trump had to go to face the public in an election against
Joe Biden after that, if everybody recalls.

(11:09):
And I don't think that rounding up a bunch of Americans for
their speech is particularly popular with anybody but the
most die hard mega shithead on X, right?
Like like with captive Dreamer or one of the other people we've
covered on this podcast, they'd be rooting for it like you
wouldn't believe. But you know, the average person
wouldn't like it very much if they're beyond that.

(11:30):
If they're ready to really just control power by force and deny
people the right to a democracy,then I could imagine them much
more eager to kind of use this made-up distinction in such a
way that bends the law, because at that point we don't even have
any law. Yeah, and it all goes into this

(11:53):
sort of broader attack on free speech, which is what we're
talking about today. At the top of the episode, I
played a clip of Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, a comment she
made about going after people for hate speech in wake of
Charlie Kirk's death. But in the interest of fairness,

(12:15):
Pam Bondi, after getting some pushback from some conservative
figures, people like Mike Cernovich and Megyn Kelly of all
people did try to block back hercomments she wrote on X.
Free speech protects ideas, debate, and even dissent, but it
does not and will never protect violence.

(12:36):
Obviously. No shit Pam, that was the
problem with your comments is that you took it beyond that.
You know this also comes from the same person I should note
that said she had the Epstein list, the rumored Epstein list
on her desk for review and then had to backtrack it.
So, you know, but, but that's just one thing, you know, the

(12:57):
State Department said it was going to revoke visas for people
who they believed were celebrating Kirk's
assassination. JD Vance, sitting in to host
Kirk's radio show last week in in wake of his death, said when
you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, called him out

(13:19):
in hell, called their employer. Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's the, it's
the whole monitor in chief here.Yeah, do you?
Remember when they said they like they remember that little
meme that they would share to you like like like Jared Holtz,
a whole monitor. And it was like a fucking like
that. What?
What cartoon was that from? I can't even.
Remember that was from what was it the character's name was I

(13:40):
think Frantal or or something, but yeah.
It was just like the idea he waslike taking notes or whatever.
I will say one thing, Jared, about this, which is they are,
you know, unconsciously like giving the left more juice than
it ever had. Because it's like, I mean, the
whole thing that made being MAGAsort of a sexy thing in the

(14:02):
culture sort of was that they were like the, they were like
the outlaws. It was like the liberal hall
monitors and they were kind of finger wagging and sorting,
saying you can't say that you can't say something racist and
stuff like that. They'd be like, Oh yeah, well,
how about this? And then they would post or
whatever they're, they're makingbeing left like a sort of like a
very taboo thing. And I, I, I warned them, do not

(14:25):
do that. That's not a smart move because
I think people are going to find, you know, start to, you
know, could could potentially start siding against them in
larger numbers. So this is one of the lamest
statements I have ever heard from an elected official.
It's so thin skinned, right? I just, it's whenever I hear
it's like Trump or JD Vance or or Stephen Miller, who we'll

(14:47):
talk about in just a second, roll over and pretend to meet
these victims. Why are people saying all these
mean things about us? I just think, you know, in the
executive branch, you get to make the call of like whether
the most powerful military on earth kills people and you never
have to face consequences for any of it.

(15:07):
That is one of the features, defining features even of being
president. And if you have that kind of
power and you're like, like whatyou're crying about at night is,
you know, people like Jimmy Kimmel being mean to you.
It's just pathetic, dude. I, I, it, it's like beneath

(15:29):
contempt. It's just so sad to me.
One quick thought about this also, which is as we covered on
the premium episode about Erica Kirk.
You know, Charlie Kirk was just a grifter, basically.
Yeah, and they're treating him like he was a head of state,
like Dolson Mandela, when he wasjust a click bait guy.
Yeah, he's some grifter to help Erica Kirk collect rings and and

(15:52):
and and necklaces. And The funny thing is that
they're they cannot seem to findany kind of like really amazing
quotes to back up their thought that he was some sort of MLK
figure. They just, you can't, you don't
has anybody seen any quote wherelike, oh, that's the one they're
settling on the previous. It's just like him just
muttering about he was like, oh,what about trans people?

(16:14):
Like, it's the usual bullshit. They don't have anything to make
him look like a genius 'cause hewasn't a genius, he was just a
grifter, quite literally. That's it.
In fact, they're relying, as we also covered on that episode on
AI to try to make him sound morepoetic with these, like, fake AI
speeches about him. So if you don't show proper
deference to this fake guy, thiskind of fake hero, then like

(16:37):
it's like the emperor has no clothes type thing.
It's like, yeah, it's like if you don't do that, then we're
going to go. We're going to call the movie
theater at which you work and get you fired.
It is some of the most cringe sad soy boy shit I have ever
seen. Yeah, yeah.
Because, you know, for the criticisms that like people like
me or, or people like you were hall monitors.

(16:58):
One of my things in reporting, and it's something I continue to
try to maintain, is the idea of like always punching up, right.
Even when I was doing my reporting, that like led to some
deep platforming and stuff, which, you know, through the
years, I don't. I've mixed feelings about in

(17:20):
terms of that as a tactic. But like, it was always about
like public figures, major figures.
It wasn't like breaking news guywho works at the gas station
posted something I thought was mean.
But what they're doing, what shitty Vance is like signing on
to is just random ass people whosaid something they didn't like,

(17:40):
they think should have their lives flipped upside down.
But again, this, this goes so much broader.
The White House, according to some reporting in the New York
Times, is looking and trying to figure out how they want to
approach trying to suppress their critics.
This is a quote from a story they ran.

(18:01):
The goal, they said, was to categorize as domestic
terrorism, left wing activity that they said led to violence.
A continuation of existing efforts by federal agencies to
try to punish liberal groups they have accused of funding or
otherwise supporting violent protest. 1 tactic has been to
target the tax exempt status of non profits that are critical of

(18:23):
Mr. Trump or conservatives. An administration official said
officials would be investigatingpeople behind the recent burning
of Tesla's in apparent protest of Elon Musk and assaults
against immigration agents and would be looking to draw links
between those episodes and organized liberal groups.
And this is what Stephen Miller,you know, is sort of the shadow

(18:45):
president, top policy guy in theWhite House had to say along
these lines with God as my witness.
We are going to use every resource we have at the
Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this
government to identify, disrupt,eliminate and destroy this
network and make America safe again for the American.

(19:05):
People Stephen Miller who has not taken a comfortable shit
like in his entire adult life. What a fucking tight ass
miserable human being. You know, imagine talking like
this. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have his
power or whatever money he has. I wouldn't, I would, I wouldn't.
I literally would trade nothing in my life to be this disgusting

(19:26):
pig. Republicans in Congress are
joining in on this too. Something that caught our eyes
was Representative Clay Higgins sent a letter to Blue Sky, the
Twitter alternative that a lot of us are using these days, and
other big social media companieslike Facebook, threatening
basically to subject them to investigations if they didn't

(19:48):
take down post that they felt were too critical or or, you
know, otherwise distasteful towards Charlie Kirk.
What kind of simpering sad sack is scared of blue sky?
I really, I need to know. Imagine that so you it's so the
the the the discourse around blue sky is really funny to me.
It's hilarious. No, it's, but it's on one hand,

(20:11):
it's like it, it, it's, it's like people like, you know, the
sort of the sort of centrist types who who get made fun of on
blue sky and and they're like, look, it doesn't have any reach
at all. It's completely useless.
It's whatever. And it's like, oh, it's
completely useless. It's it, it doesn't reach
anybody. It's failing.
And it's like, at the same time,like, Oh my God, we need to shut

(20:33):
down the entire country. You know, somebody is making fun
of JD vans on Blue Sky. Like give me a fucking.
Break out of one side of their mouth, they'll say this.
This platform's dying. It doesn't do anything.
It's been pretty good for this podcast, I think.
But like you don't there it is both a dead website and also a
boogeyman, right? It's it's like a threat to them.

(20:56):
And I suspect that a lot of commentators, you know, the
centrist types at least that have been commenting about blue
sky along those lines, are mostly just like still holding
out on X and are kind of frustrated that the only people

(21:16):
that seem to be responding to them are like crypto Bros and
weird racist people with swastikas in their eyes.
Yeah, everybody, anybody who's made fun of Ezra Klein in the
last week on Blue Sky is going to be after report to the
Department of Justice A. Couple more things that we'll
talk about here. There is also been some

(21:38):
reporting chatter about the FBIDOJ national security
organizations experimenting or exploring ways of applying the
sort of apparatus that I'll say existed.
It's been severely Hanford by the the Doge project Elon Musk

(22:00):
LED, but what remains of that tolook at domestic extremism.
It's seems that some conservative places like the
Heritage Foundation and whateverare trying to come up with a way
to expand the scope of the FBI on those grounds to target
transgender people. So I wanted to make sure that we

(22:23):
mentioned that Mike and I are watching that closely to see
what might develop there. Right now it seems to be a lot
of chatter and it seems like they are exploring this.
But as we learn more, we'll cover that on our podcast.
But we want to make sure that wehave something solid to say and
something solid to report. Yeah, what I would say to that

(22:46):
is from the heart. I mean, people should be willing
to go to jail over this if it gets bad.
Yeah, these are our brothers andsisters.
They have been through hell overthe last five to 10 years.
You know, they've been a lot of games for trans people, but, you

(23:06):
know, this has been really, really brutal.
And they are at the, you know, the, the sort of the tip of the
spear is going directly at them.They're the easiest scapegoat
and obviously protect the dolls,protect our trans brothers.
This is not, this is not a game,so to speak.
And if we don't speak up with itgets bad for trans people.

(23:28):
Obviously you're next, but the that shouldn't be enough.
That shouldn't be enough. You should do it for them and,
and they deserve it. And they and, and this business
of portraying trans people as violent is the most Craven,
disgusting thing I've ever seen.Yeah, you're totally right. 100%
agree with you, Mike. But the big thing that has folks

(23:50):
stirred up this week is Jimmy Kimmel, which I, I saw a crank
tweet that said something about to the effect of like, there's
something just so demeaning about this Trump administration.
Like, like you, you have to get mad about Jimmy Kimmel getting
pulled off the air by ABC over comments he made about Charlie

(24:14):
Kirk, which were incredibly benign, you know, under threat
of the FCC. But it's also like Jimmy fucking
Kimmel, dude. Like, like I, I have to be mad
about Jimmy Kimmel. This is kind of kidding me.
This is kind of boomer wars in many ways because it's like
there's these mag of people who are like falling asleep watching

(24:36):
TV and then Kimmel's on, and then there are other boomers who
are falling asleep watching TV and they like Jimmy Kimmel.
Like. And it's sort of like it, this
is sort of like, you know, this is like this is, this is like
the, the highest level of shit posting between two political
groups. And it's just boomers trying to
silence other boomers. It's like I'm going to take your
TV away. So Brendan Carr, who is the head

(25:01):
of the FCC, threatened retaliatory action against ABC
after Jimmy Kimmel made a statement that he believed
misrepresented the beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the suspect they
have in custody for killing Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said something to the effect of they want us to
believe he was some left wing guy, but he was one of theirs,

(25:25):
which which I don't think is really based in anything, you
know, it's. Maybe you can extrapolate that
just to mean that he was a gun guy and that that he had this.
I mean, it isn't a very good, itisn't a very smart joke.
You know, on on Jimmy Kimmel's worst day.
He's a child of God. So, you know, I think he

(25:46):
deserves at least another chanceof swinging this, But that's
just me. So I, I guess the administration
started Saber rattling toward ABC.
Brendan Carr said something to the effect of, you know, we can
do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.
Basically, you know, threateningto use the FCC to punish ABC

(26:08):
over Jimmy Kimmel's remark. And ABC responded by suspending
Kimmel indefinitely. So a whole lot of comedians, a
whole lot of other, you know, big media figures, the cable
networks and stuff are, you know, casting this as a direct

(26:29):
attack on, on free speech in this country.
And they're right. Last thing I want to say about
Brendan Carr is that somebody onX posted something to the effect
of like, this was in Project 2025, by the way, which people
will remember is the blueprint cooked up by the Heritage
Foundation for the second Trump administration that the Trump
campaign denied being connected to?

(26:52):
And then once they won, basically just said, OK, yeah,
we lied, right? But a lot of mainstream media
outlets allowed them to have that plausible deniability.
And he responded to that post Brendan Carr did with a GIF of
Jack Nicholson nodding. Sure, if you're online, you've

(27:12):
seen this before in some contextof the basically smiling,
grinning, statistically nodding.Yes, yes.
You know, so that's crazy. But but what I wanted to say
about the Kimmel thing is that we've been seeing stuff like
this all throughout society, culture, business, which is just

(27:34):
that the threat of retaliation is enough for giant companies
and institutions to roll over and play dead for mega.
You know, they don't even have to do anything direct.
Just rattling the Sabre toward these companies has been enough

(27:55):
to get them to eject people. The Washington Post fired Karen
Atia for quoting Kirk's own words denigrating black women as
another example. Right, that's that's just
disgusting. And you know, I couldn't be
happier to not subscribe to thatpaper.
I just want to inject one thing about the the Jack Nicholson GIF

(28:18):
here. I believe it's from anger
management. First of all, did, did these
guys just, like, just figure outwhat GIFs were?
Because all of a sudden they're just starting to use them all
the time? I don't, I don't know if you
noticed that. So it's sort of like, oh, this
is how you post. It's like a like, like, like
some sort of alien kind of kind of trying to figure out what
it's like to be a normal human. And then the, the next thing is

(28:39):
I have, yeah, I, I, I have used that Jack Nicholson GIF a bunch.
I have never used it in a way that didn't imply something like
menacing, right? The whole point is he looks
evil. He's giving like an evil smile
and he's like, yes, I'm going todo something horrible.
And it's like, what fucking country is this where we have a
government officials who are like, I'm going to do something

(29:01):
evil to you. They're like, what has happened
to this country? Really.
Like you just like stand back and you don't even think about
like party or ideology where it's just like, yes, I'm going
to just go harm some American citizens and delight in it.
It's just, you know, just to stand back and look at this
moment in history with the idea that we maybe we survive all
this crap and someone is kind ofwriting about it in the future.

(29:25):
Like, what are they going to sayabout it?
Because it is really it, this isreally something like, I don't
know how we even piece this backtogether.
I mean, we have government officials making policies and
being like, yes, this will harm you.
It makes me feel totally insane,right?
And then I try to talk to somebody like my dad about this,

(29:49):
right? And my dad is just like very
passively follows politics. He's a, you know, conservative
ish guy, you know, really like small government, low tax kind
of guy. And it, you just feel like a
crazy person trying to explain this stuff.
But it's real and it is crazy, and it's meant to make you feel
crazy. That's just why I'm glad we have

(30:11):
this podcast, you know, get in to talk to some of our listeners
and stuff. Makes me feel a little bit less
like I'm losing my marbles. Until they come in and like
remove us from. Until posting.
Riverside Broadcasting. Designated as a Antifa
organization or something. And I also just want to say it's
like both of us have worked in nonprofits that fall under the

(30:38):
general of remit of like countering violent extremism or
anti hate and the effect of these kind of threats.
You know, it's not just media institutions that are rolling
over. It's it's other other companies
and even these nonprofits that have historically taken up the

(31:00):
job of pushing back on this stuff.
They have been terrified. They are super, super shaken up.
What we're seeing is a whole lotof self censoring happening in
the field. A lot of organizations are
having discussions and have had been having discussions over the

(31:22):
last year or so about how to keep a low profile, how to kind
of stay, stay out of the sights of this administration or, or
what they can do. That's unlikely to cause a stir.
Right? Yeah.
Which is very sad. I understand.

(31:43):
I'd like, I'm empathetic. I really am.
I entirely disagree with that approach.
You know, part of the reason we rebooted this podcast is, is we
both had this feeling that like somebody needs to be saying
something, you know, like that perspective that mission needs
to carry out somewhere. And maybe it's a podcast, but

(32:06):
it's also just bleak, right? Because it's these organizations
that are supposed to be on the front line of this stuff are
essentially backing down and trying to figure out if their
whole operation is going to exist in a few years.
You know if they anger the wrongperson or get the attention of
one of these Trump administration officials posting

(32:29):
Jack Nicholson gifts. Right now, the media in general
has become so cowardly in the face of Trump's threats that I
never thought I'd be like, oh, support independent media guy.
And it's obviously very convenient for me now that I'm
an independent media guy. But I really, you know, I, I
think we had Marissa Cabas on, for instance, who does reporting

(32:50):
and stuff like that. There are a lot of people who
are taking risks to report and they are, you know, they don't
have the support of a major institution and the major
institutions are the ones who are kind of slinking.
Away. So last thing before we move on
to our interview with Kelly today is there was a piece in

(33:14):
the Wall Street Journal by Karl Rove who they said that these
right wing efforts to try to censor Charlie Kirk's critics,
to try to crack down on, you know, liberal nonprofits,
groups, whatever that are opposed to Trump or
conservatives was a disgrace to Kirk's legacy as a free speech

(33:38):
warrior. And I've seen this theme echoed
among conservative and centrist critics of these calls to crack
down on dissent. And I just want to give a shout
out. Madeline Peltz had a great piece
on her sub stack that essentially laid out the fact

(34:00):
that Charlie Kirk was not reallya free speech guy.
He gave the performance of free speech.
And I think what like as time has gone on and I've sort of
processed, you know, the Ezra Klein column that we talked
about on The Who the hell is Kurt?
Who the hell was Kirk episode? You know, it's I, I think that

(34:22):
is kind of what ended up happening.
One, it's class solidarity, straight up like major pundits,
whatever, sticking up for their own.
That's a big part of it. 2 I think they confused the
performance that Charlie Kirk gave with what he was actually

(34:42):
about. Right.
They wanted to be Kirk in so many words, even if it was not a
right wing version of it, whatever their branding of it
is. Like they're like, wow, look at
this apparatus, this guy, this guy built.
He's like bilking everybody all over the country.
Yeah, Madeline is another personI would recommend people check
out. And and yeah, Kirk, not only did

(35:05):
Kirk say a lot of racist things,which are coming out a lot and
you know, and and people are pointing out Tom Neheesy codes,
for instance, pointed out, but he was just not the he was the
opposite of a free speech advocate.
He really wanted to crush opposing voices in this country.
So some of the things that Madeleine highlighted in her

(35:26):
piece, I, I picked out a few of them.
It's it's very long, I'll put itin the show notes, but a few
bullet points she had. Kirk said that anyone on a
student visa should be deported if they participate in pro
Palestine protests. Kirk also said that any college

(35:48):
that doesn't treat us well at Turning Point USA, they have
their funding cut by the Trump administration.
Kirk has advocated for arrestingand prosecuting lawyers who
defend immigrant clients. He said Republican attorneys
general should raid Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood and

(36:09):
George Soros over their speech. He repeatedly advocated to
defund PBS and NPR because he didn't like what they did with
their programming and then celebrated it when that
happened. And he would chastise the
mainstream media for focusing onChristian nationalism because,

(36:30):
quote, Islam is a fundamentally political ideology that aims to
conquer US militarily or demographically.
I I I love that Christianity is not a fundamentally political
ideology by that measure. Yeah.
On that note, I am really excited for your interview with

(36:52):
Kelly because for so long the right has framed this issue of
the 1st Amendment. I mean, just for for as long as
people can remember the Trump era, particularly, and, you
know, in the background, it has,they have rapidly made it an

(37:12):
issue for us and for by us, I mean, everyone who is in part of
this, this sort of MAGA fascist movement.
So I'm. Yeah, I'm just really excited to
listen to it, Jared. Yes, for our interview this
week, I sat down and spoke with Kelly Jensen.
Well, the topic of our conversation book bands is not a

(37:33):
feel good discussion. I really enjoyed getting to talk
to her. Kelly was a recommended guest
from one of our Executive Club tier supporters on Patreon,
Brandon, who I've also traded books with.
Very cool guy, very smart guy who I've enjoyed connecting
with. So we can take a look at the
national news cycle. And I wonder how horribly all of

(37:57):
this will play out, because it most certainly will play out
horribly. But we can't ignore what's
happening in so many of our own backyards concerning the rights
attack on free speech. We talked about book bans, we
talked about attacks on public institutions and so much more.
You're not going to want to missthis.
Blood in the mouth because I've been buried in my tongue all

(38:20):
week. I keep on talking trash but I'll
never say anything. I'm here with Kelly Jensen.
She's a former librarian turned award-winning writer and editor.
You can read her work in Book Riot, which is a news website

(38:44):
covering all things printed on dead trees.
She's been celebrated for her work covering library
censorship, and we're thrilled to have her on today to talk
about that topic. Exactly.
How's it going, Kelly? Hanging in there, How about you?
Yeah, hanging in there is a goodway to put it.
So before we really start unpacking book banning library

(39:07):
censorship, how this just how itkind of reflects, you know, a
broader environment of censorship that's been popular,
especially on the right today. First, I just want to address
the fact that the people who push for book bans, if you
confront them about it and say why are you trying to ban books,
will say, well, we're not. No, no, no, no, no, we're not

(39:31):
banning books. We would never do such a thing.
They just say they want the books removed.
Not banned, just removed. Right?
Yeah, that sounds like bullshit to me so.
But I think you certainly will be able to explain it to
listeners better than I can. You're spot on.
One of the things that has been really curious and I, I guess

(39:53):
I'll back up a little bit. So book banning really took hold
in early 2021. It's always happened.
It's been part of American history since the start, but
this current wave is really picked up since.
I want to say like April 2021 iswhen it started to really like
take hold. And early on that was the phrase

(40:17):
we kept hearing over and over again.
We're not banning books for simply removing them is 1 take.
The other take is we're curatingcollections.
But that one I particularly likebecause it sounds like they're
doing something when really they, you know, they're, they're
not far off. They are curating collections
just to their taste. Sounds very artisan, you know.

(40:37):
Right. Yeah, yeah.
Book bidding really took off at that time because it was aligned
with some other things we were seeing happening.
There is a push to, quote, reopen the schools that began in
fall 2020. The schools were open.
We know that. They just were virtual.
That gave way to my kids are notmasking in schools, which gave

(41:01):
way to my kids are not getting vaccinated in schools.
And that, you know, tied in so nicely with my kids aren't going
to be able to have access to books I don't like in schools.
And that was also tied with the trans panic that we've seen take
hold in the schools. All these issues are wedges that

(41:23):
really have helped the right take a strong position in
determining what public education and what public
institutions like libraries havestarted to look like over these
last five years. At this point, and again, since
the beginning, they've said thatthey're not banning books, but
that is very much exactly what they're doing.

(41:43):
They are demanding books be pulled from the shelves.
These are books that they don't like.
These are books that feature topics that they have sought to
just simply outlaw, including topics related to critical race
theory, comprehensive sexuality education.
And that's not wrong. They call it sexuality
education. And then the third big topic is

(42:06):
social and emotional learning. They streamlined those phrases
over these last few years, you know, really play testing them
to their audience. And now we've got the more
simple DEI books, gender ideology books, and then quote
UN quote inappropriate books. Yeah, you know who who hasn't
gone in a elementary school library and seen, you know, the

(42:28):
volumes of work about critical race theory pushed on to
children? It's it's so ridiculous, but it
sounds like it's very polished at this point.
I mean, it's almost a machine initself.
We keep saying they, they are using these terms, they are
pushing the books. There's a lot of organizing
behind these efforts, but we should define they for our

(42:52):
listeners here. Who is they?
Who are, you know, to reference a a bit from the Matt Iglesias
episode we did a couple weeks ago?
Who are the groups, the groups? Who's the groups?
Yeah, So there are a lot of them, but I I'll talk about a
couple of key groups that listeners of your show are
probably pretty familiar with. We've got Moms for Liberty.

(43:13):
They're one of the largest. They are a quote UN quote
grassroots parental rights groupout of Florida.
They are not grassroots. They have ties to some pretty
big money. But they were founded by a
couple of former school board members who lost their election,
were angry about losing their election, and then decided that
they were going to do all they could to take back school boards

(43:35):
across the country. And one way that they were doing
this is through pointing out books that they felt were quote
UN quote, inappropriate and theyfell within those topics of
critical race theory, sexual education and social emotional
learning. That's one of the groups.
One of the other groups is no left turn in education and and a

(43:56):
very similar mission. They are under the belief that
education has gone to left and so their mission is to right
side it. They aren't the only ones.
There are a lot of local level groups.
Many of them take their format, take their plans from these
larger groups and work at the local level.

(44:18):
I should say that Moms for Liberty has been really
effective because they work at the county level.
So they have a national group, but their groups are founded and
formed at the county level across the country so that they
can look like they really are grassroots and are focused on
local issues. Same thing with no left turn in
education. They go on the county level as

(44:40):
well. Because this is often, you know,
if you want to remove a book, you've got to go to the school
board, right? So, so this is local
governments, but some of these groups have also sought to lobby
state level governments, right? Yeah, so it really, it began at
the local level. They were happening, you know,
at the school board level. I'm going to take Moms for

(45:01):
Liberty as an example because there's the way that they did
this kind of explains how they've been so successful at
the local level where the group is founded.
They would choose their titles that they were targeting, bring
them to the school board, and ifthey were successful at the
school board, the next county would then try to get those same

(45:22):
titles removed and we would see success by those local groups.
We'd sometimes see misses by those local groups because what
happens in one county by one school board isn't necessarily
going to be replicated by the same or by a different county
and different school board, which is part of why they want
to take over these school boards, that their ideology is
the same school after school. Really.

(45:43):
That was 2021 and 2022 and even a good portion of 2023.
It was really happening at the local level like that, but since
about 2023 we've seen this shiftand it's become a state level
situation. We've seen where members of
these groups and politicians whose views align with these
groups have sought to put laws into place at the state level

(46:07):
that then dictate the sorts of materials that are available in
public schools and to some extent in public libraries as
well. We've seen this in Florida.
We've seen this in Texas. But they're not alone.
In 2024, we saw this happen in Idaho.
We saw this happen in other states like Iowa and this takes

(46:28):
away that so-called local control that the same groups
advocate for. They don't ban books.
They're just making sure that the books, you know, represent
what they at the local level believe in, what the values and
morals are at the local level. But they've now pushed these to
the state level, which revokes that local control.

(46:51):
Two really good examples I can give here.
We're we're up to 2025 at this point.
Just to be clear, both Texas andFlorida have done some really
interesting things when it comesto book bands this year.
In Florida, we have seen their state education folks demand
schools remove a list of 55 books, and if they don't, they

(47:12):
threaten them. So we've seen schools like
Hillsborough County remove thesebooks.
No question. This goes against their own law,
which says that those books haveto be reviewed at the local
level. But now they're being threatened
by members of the state education department.
And So what do they do? They removed the books.
I believe eight other schools did the same thing in Florida.

(47:35):
And this was right at the time when a federal judge told
Florida that their law about thebooks to be removed was against
the Constitution and that they they couldn't do that hasn't
mattered at this point. The state has refiled that,
filed for appeal. And so we're continuing to see
schools remove those books without review.

(47:58):
And these are books that they'redeeming obscene even though
there is no obscene content in any of them.
That's Florida. In Texas, they have tried to
pass really interesting and restrictive laws.
One of them is the Texas Reader Act, and that's tied up in the
courts, but that would involve having a rating system for the
books and school libraries. Since that's on hold,

(48:21):
legislators have tried to pass some other laws that would
restrict the content in schools.And one that they succeeded on
this year, I think it's state Bill 13 is what it's called,
Senate Bill 13. And this one puts the power of
books that can be in a school library into the hands of either
the school board or what they'recalling like review committees.

(48:43):
They're Slacs, and I can't remember off the top of my head
what it stands for. The slack committees are
parental groups that get to review the books and decide
whether or not they're going to be available in the schools.
So the school boards get to decide what they want to do
here. Do they want to be the ones
responsible for making these decisions, or do they hand this
responsibility over to this committee?

(49:04):
Even if they decide they're not going to have the committee, If
50 people petition for a committee in that school
district, they have to have thatcommittee.
Really interesting. 50 is all. 50, yeah.
It seems like you could get thatoutside of Walmart on like any
given day. You could.
You could, yeah. At the same time, you know, you
start to wonder at this point, this deep end, will they?

(49:28):
Right. Yeah.
We can think of some districts in Texas that, yeah, that's
probably possible, but those arethe districts that have probably
already decided they're going that route instead of keeping it
at the school board level. It's just easier for them.
It's leaning into this idea of parental rights a little bit
more. They also kind of get to pass

(49:49):
the buck, right? They get to be like, well, well,
you know what? It's out of our control folks,
you know? Yeah, and that, that's exactly
what I was going to say too, is it takes that local control away
again, right? If you've got a slack made-up
of, you know, 2 Moms for Libertymembers and then one of their
friends and then somebody who's on one of those packs that's

(50:12):
pouring money into these school board elections, what do you
think's going to happen? Those schools aren't going to
get any new books is what's going to happen.
So I want to ask you about some of the reasons that book banners
give for taking these books out of the library.
It seems to me and I certainly haven't watched as closely as

(50:33):
you have, but it's it seems the coverage I've seen at least
through the years, it seems to capitalize on various sort of
manufactured right wing panics the.
Critical race theory stuff. The gender identity, sexual
orientation stuff, of course, DEI being sort of a catch all

(50:55):
for a bunch of that stuff now, But what else do they claim?
Because, you know, in terms of you mentioned some of the terms
they use about, you know, it's curation, It's, you know,
removal, It's not bands. This is all very, you know,
finessed almost PRPR style to tosound less repelling perhaps

(51:20):
would be the fairway to put it. Because if you look at public
opinion polling, libraries are one of the same thing, one of
the few public institutions thatpeople are like, yeah, that's a
good thing. Yeah, we should, we should leave
them alone and just let them have books out.
What's the problem with the library?
So 2 parents who aren't familiarwith this or have, you know,

(51:42):
share that same kind of attitudeof thinking like, what's the
problem with the library? They kind of have to massage
these claims about what the books have for the issues that
need, you know, this ostensible problem that needs to be solved
to try to get them on board. How do they do that?
What does that look like? So books make a really great

(52:03):
target because the amount of investment you have to make into
reading the thing in order to understand it is a lot right?
So groups like Moms for Liberty,No Left Turn in Education and
several others have created these review sites where they
will choose however many books at that time, read them and

(52:24):
write up reviews so that other parents can quote UN quote,
understand what's going on in these books.
And what you end up seeing is a list of cherry pick passages
from these books that sure, may have a sexual scene in them, may
talk about racism in them, may talk about police violence,
systemic racism. They may talk about things like

(52:45):
climate change. You know, these are teased out,
put in a big list. So you might see a book.
I'm going to use The Hate U Giveby Angie Tom Thomas as as my
example here. You know, you might see 2 pages
of quotes about racism and aboutprejudice and about police
violence teased out of context. And then you see beneath that a

(53:08):
little count of all the inappropriate words in that
book. And you'll see naughty words.
Not all the naughty words. Yeah.
And then you will see a rating on there because they've created
rating systems to determine whether a book is appropriate or
not for readers. And remember, these are being
written by people with no background in education or

(53:30):
literacy or librarianship. These are people who do not have
a background in child development.
You know, these are volunteers for these groups who are reading
and teasing out these quotes. So it makes for a really great
opportunity for them to perform then that there are
inappropriate things in these books because they can go to a
school board meeting armed with this list of, you know, passages

(53:51):
from the book pulled out of context and say, wow, why are
you allowing books like this with this much bad stuff in it
to be in the library? And what that ignores is the
other 350 pages of the book thatexplains why that line is in
there or why that passage is in there or why this topic is being
covered. And I always like to talk about
that because what has been shownis when the schools, the school

(54:16):
board to get these complaints read the books, the outcome is
very different than when they rely on just these passages
they're being fed. Minute Maine is a really good
example. They had numerous challenges to
genderqueer, which is one of themost banned books in the
country. But when those school boards
read the book as part of the review process, they kept the
book on shelves because those salacious, you know, there's

(54:39):
like 7 panels in there that get blown up and shared at school
board meetings. Those seven panels from the
comic do not represent the other250 pages in the book.
And when you look at the passages in context, there's
nothing inappropriate or obscenein there.
Are there parents who might not want their children to read
that? Sure.
But that's their job as a parentto tell their kid, hey, I don't

(55:00):
want you to read that book. Or if you're going to borrow
that book, like we're going to read it together and talk about
it. So to come back to your
question, what they have really done is gone around the
prevailing standard of what obscenity is in America.
We have what's called the Millertest.
It's a three prong test to determine whether or not

(55:20):
material is quote, UN quote obscene.
It comes from a Supreme Court case in the 1970s and there's
about 65 words in there. One phrase that's used twice in
there is as a whole, so passagescan't just be teased out and
called obscene. You have to look at those
passages within the context of the whole work.

(55:41):
So what they're doing is ignoring that whole part of the
work, the other. Thing Yeah, because because this
is like what's the difference between a porno and a movie with
a sex scene right does that feellike a fairway of.
Of yeah, it isn't. It isn't right, because one of
the parts of the Miller test is whether the material has

(56:05):
scientific or artistic merit to it, right?
Could pornography be artistic? In theory I.
Guess I mean right, It's the context of it.
Yeah, yeah. And so I'm not saying that in
terms of like books available for children, there's not
pornography for children. It doesn't exist.
That doesn't get published, it doesn't get shared.

(56:26):
So we've got that Miller test piece.
The other thing that I've seen pop up more and more, and this
is something that has happened in Florida, is that legislators
have gone to this different standard of evaluating material.
They call it. It's from a Supreme Court case.
Ginsburg versus New York, I believe is what it is.

(56:47):
And that one was in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
And it puts a little piece in determining appropriateness of
material when it comes to that material being available for
minors. And so they're turning to this
as a means of ignoring the Miller test and ignoring having

(57:07):
to look at something as a whole instead arguing that, well, when
we think about it being available for children, then
it's not appropriate. That's like, well, that's not
really how that works. But you're using this court case
in a way that makes it sound sound reasonable when it's not
really the standard. So I was reading a few of your
newsletters before our conversation.

(57:29):
And one thing that jumped out tome, just because I, I am a huge
AI skeptic, is, is one of your newsletters also mentioned that
in these efforts, there is now AI powered book banning software
to help the process of reviewingthese books, which as you

(57:53):
pointed out, could be 300 pages long.
You know, who's got time for that?
It's not what we're here for. The we're going to use, you
know, some equivalent of ChatGPTto look at the book.
Can you tell me about that? Because that feels very
dystopian that you're like, the chat bot will decide what is

(58:14):
right for our children. This is a question that I'm like
dying to talk about, so I'm going to talk about it in two
parts. The first part being what we saw
happen in it was 2022 or 2023, Iowa passed a don't say gay
bill. And one portion of it was that
no school could have books with sex acts in them.

(58:35):
Those books had to be removed from shelves.
And so sex acts is a very specific term used in Iowa code.
So what we were seeing is that at least one district went to
ChatGPT, put in there their catalog, and was like, do any of
these books have sex acts as it pertains to the Iowa Code?

(58:56):
And that was how they were able to go through their collection
to be in compliance with the state.
Not great, right? Yeah, listeners can't see it,
but I'm shaking my head right. Now, yeah, you're shaking your
head and and I'm like, I grippedmy teeth on this one because I
also understand why that choice was made.
If they have a deadline of threemonths to be in compliance, like

(59:18):
where do they start? They can't read all these books.
And so, you know, I I feel for the administrator who had to do
this because they had no other choice, right?
I don't excuse it, but I see whythey made that decision.
So that's what's put that in thepast part of book planning.
Let's move to the new part. So this is piece to there is a

(59:38):
company out there who has created software using AI that
teachers and librarians and those who are serving in either
role in schools can put a book into this database and see if
it's been banned anywhere in thecountry or if it's been
challenged somewhere in the country.

(59:58):
And use that as their determination of whether they
keep the material or they check it out to a student or whether
they don't do that the software.Has been making its way into
Texas schools specifically because it's a Texas based
software company and basically what it does is exactly what any

(01:00:20):
library program would do that allows you to check out books to
patrons, except it's an extra step that then can ping.
Oh, this book was banned in you know, Katy Independent School
District in 2022. Here's why, And it will list
some of the reasons why that is supposed to help the person
checking out the book decide whether to keep the book or

(01:00:43):
whether that student who wants to borrow the book is allowed to
borrow that book. Because parents can say, oh, I
don't want Johnny checking out any books that have to do with
gender. And so if it pops up that way,
you know, Johnny can't check outthe material, that the librarian
or the person who's working in the library at that time would
then not allow Johnny to check out that material.

(01:01:08):
That is bleak. It's bleak and the software is
proprietary. So I've asked them before.
How do you have your banned books list?
Like where did you get it from? I know of one list that has been
compiled by somebody that I've worked with closely for years
and years being the only list that is as comprehensive as

(01:01:29):
possible of banned books. Want to know where they get
theirs? Some of the information in there
is not correct. Somebody has suggested that that
has been the basis of some really weird challenges that
have popped up through the stateof Texas because information was
incorrect in there. But we're seeing this software
show up more and more. And specifically, we're seeing

(01:01:51):
it show up in some of the smaller districts in Texas where
they don't have the staff, they don't have the trained
librarians to do the job, So they're, you know, offloading it
onto the software. So zooming out a little bit,
what has the last year of the book banning scene looked like?

(01:02:12):
I think a lot of people who listen to the show will remember
seeing stories about book banning, especially around that
period. You were talking about
20/21/2020. Two, but this is still going.
The foot is still on the gas, right?
Oh yeah, and even harder. Honestly.
You know a lot you. Think so like like even more.

(01:02:34):
Yeah. And I think a big reason for
that is that it's happening in different ways now than it was
before. We are seeing it at the school
board level now, we're seeing itat the state level.
And we're also seeing stories hit the federal level here,
right? So one of the first things that
happened in this administration when it came to book bans is we

(01:02:56):
saw the Department of Defense demand that nearly 600 different
titles be banned from their education activity school.
So the military schools around the the world, this is because
there is a direct connection between the Department of
Defense and those schools. There's not other layers in
between. So, you know, if you were to

(01:03:16):
hear from, say, the Department of Education saying that 600
books had to be banned, there's a lot of steps in between the
Department of Education and the school board at the school
level, at the city or county level before that could happen
in the Department of Defense. It's a straight line.
So they can make that demand. We saw the Naval Academy have

(01:03:38):
their library completely ransacked.
And I want to, I want to go backfor a second to those Department
of Defense education activity bans.
Because it's important to point out that one of the other things
that has happened, especially inthe last two years, is we've
seen a huge increase in the number of lawsuits happening
when these stories start to makethe news.

(01:03:59):
The ACLU filed A lawsuit againstthe book bans at the Department
of Defense Education Activity, but we've seen lawsuits
happening elsewhere as well. The ACLU filed A lawsuit with
some families in Greenville, SC,where the Public Library banned
any books covering gender for anyone under the age of 18.

(01:04:22):
That seems like a lot of books. It is a lot of books, yeah.
And that policy is one that several other public these are
we're the Public Library now several other public libraries
have tried to also make happen in South Carolina.
You know, instead of going titleby title, what we're seeing are

(01:04:43):
entire topics being targeted. There was a library in Tennessee
that tried to do this as well recently, but failed three times
to pass this policy in their Public Library because it is not
a popular policy for reasons that seem pretty obvious to us.
But it doesn't matter. They're still attempting to

(01:05:08):
remove entire swaths of books from both public libraries and
public school libraries. We saw this year a Supreme Court
case semi related to LGBTQ plus books in Mamu VS Taylor.
In that case, a small group of religious parents in Montgomery

(01:05:29):
County, Maryland were upset thatthe school had created this
curriculum and included some books that positively portrayed
queer people. Right.
These religious parents who really emphasized that they
could not afford private school for their children.
I want to, I want to put a pin in that because we're going to
come back to that in a second. They were upset because the

(01:05:51):
school had initially allowed them to opt their students out
of these lessons. And then the school, seeing what
a disruption this was becoming, said, no, you know, we're not
going to allow the opt out here.And so the lawsuit happened,
made its way up to the Supreme Court and there were many, many
media outlets calling this a book banning lawsuit.

(01:06:12):
It was not a book banning lawsuit.
These books are not being banned.
Instead, what the Supreme Court said was that these parents in
this county could have an opt out for books that positively
portray queer people. It's not a nationwide mandate.
It will be applied nationwide. We'll see other schools offering
this as a way to protect themselves.

(01:06:33):
But I bring this lawsuit up because one of the things that
he's really stood out when it iscome to book bands is that this
isn't about the books. It's never been about the books.
It's about the systems that are there.
Public schools and public libraries are institutions of
democracy, right? They are community spaces.
They serve a whole community. And in this era, attacking

(01:06:57):
public schools and public libraries has helped serve the
mission of pushing private schools and private school
vouchers into a more mainstream way.
And so attacking these books andtalking about educators and
librarians in the way that we have seen them be talked about,

(01:07:18):
called groomers, called people trying to indoctrinate, you
know, children, is part of the process of building a nationwide
voucher program of defunding these public schools, of
rerouting taxpayer money going to these public institutions
into the hands of private interests.
It's a little bit more of a straight line in the public

(01:07:40):
schools, and it is in public libraries.
But there was a really great story couple weeks ago that
talked about how many communities are figuring out
libraries are a great place to steal money from when the budget
is tight or when you have competing interests.
So for example, Menominee Falls,Wisconsin, this year cut their

(01:08:03):
Public Library budget by $300,000 so they could give
their police a raise. We saw that happen in, I think
it's East Baton Rouge, LA. They had budget issues so that
they can help pay for their policing.
And This is Money that's coming out of public libraries that are
already poorly funded and going to other parts of the community.

(01:08:26):
One of the reasons that public libraries are a target, besides
having books that some people disagree with, is that they're
public institutions, so they have to serve everybody.
Their goal is to serve everybody.
They want to serve everybody. But by taking money away from
public libraries and really making them hurt, there's a real

(01:08:46):
capitalistic opportunity here tocome back to subscription
libraries, which were the first sorts of libraries we saw in
America, where people who have money can pay for access to
libraries and pay for access to libraries that have been curated
by those with a specific interest or passion or topic.
And doing that does exactly whatcreating voucher schemes for

(01:09:10):
education does. And it hurts the most vulnerable
people in this country. It hurts the very people whose
books are being targeted by bookbans, people of color, queer
people, people who don't have economic means to buy the books.
You know, one of the really popular rallying cries by the
we're not banning books, we're simply removing them crowd, is

(01:09:32):
that the kids could just buy thebooks.
They're available at the bookstore.
They're available on Amazon. Nobody's stopping that except
they are. The point here is that access is
being cut off from people who don't have the means to access
this material. You know, I don't know how many
teenagers, you know, who have aneasy, you know, who have an

(01:09:53):
Amazon account with a credit card and can quickly go spend
$20 on this book that they want.The number is very small.
And for those who can do that, that's great, but most people
can't. And, you know, I, I go back to
my experience as a librarian here and I think about the kids
that I used to serve as a teen librarian.
And these kids don't have accessto anything.

(01:10:14):
You know, they're at the librarybecause this is their place to
be in the community. It is the one of about two
spaces that they could exist in as teenagers and not be judged
or asked to spend money. Those are the kids who are being
hurt here. The kids whose stories are being
banned are the same kids who will be most hurt when their

(01:10:37):
Public Library or their public schools are no longer there to
serve them. Yeah, because you said something
to this effect earlier, but I think it's totally right.
It's what the library is. It is the democratization of
knowledge of, in the case of fiction entertainment.
It makes that kind of material accessible to everybody.

(01:11:01):
Anybody who wants to go find it,anybody who makes the visit.
For a lot of elderly people or people that don't have very much
money, that may be how they use the Internet, how they go apply
for jobs online, how they print things out.
It serves such a vital resource,not just to the community

(01:11:23):
generally, but among the most vulnerable people in a
community. It can be a real lifeline for
them. So undercutting it is, you know,
as gross as it may make me feel,there's a whole host of people
out there that could be just impacted way harder than I

(01:11:43):
would, right? Where is this?
Going Kelly, I mean, what what is the end here is when they ban
the thousandth book, are they going to hang up the hat or like
we're talking about these attacks on institutions and and
sort of how this fits into the broader project.
But where is this going next? I mean, what is on the horizon

(01:12:04):
in terms of book banning and attacks on libraries and, you
know, public information like this?
So I think that we are going to see a whole bunch of things
happen as we move forward. You know, some of the things
that we couldn't imagine in 2021have happened.
And so it's hard to like really take a long range like view of

(01:12:25):
what this is going to look like.But some of the things that I
feel fairly confident we can look forward to include, you
know, we're going to see continued attacks on books, but
they're going to be in broader categories as opposed to, you
know, specific titles. So, you know, 1 area that I'm

(01:12:47):
particularly worried about is what's going to happen to
romance novels, romance novels written for adults, especially
as there is a big interest in a big response from the publishing
industry for really spicy romance novels, for lack of a
better way to put it. They're selling huge.

(01:13:07):
They're doing well. Readers want that.
One of the things that we know is that 80 some percent of
romance readers are women. So by banning romance novels or
even specific subsets of romanceromance novels, the target isn't
the romance novels. The target is women.
And so, you know, we have seen marginalized groups bear the

(01:13:29):
brunt of these book bands. It's going to continue.
It's going to continue to be marginalized groups.
But I think in ways that maybe aren't being spoken of quite as
bluntly, that's one thing. We're going to continue to see
lawsuits, and I think that for now, that is the best way
forward. Whether or not people follow the

(01:13:50):
outcomes of those lawsuits remains to be seen.
But there's a really interestingcase out of the 5th Circuit,
Little versus Llano County. Layla Little was is a patron of
Llano Public Library in Texas, and the library board removed a
number of books from the shelves.

(01:14:12):
She and several others filed A lawsuit saying that their First
Amendment rights were violated by the board removing these
books. Most of the books are about
butts and farts. Like, that's what I want to say
because it's ridiculous, right? Like, these are kids books, fart
books. Yeah.
And so they sued, and they had success in the courts up until

(01:14:32):
they went to the Fifth Circuit. And the 5th Circuit said that as
Public Library patrons, they do not have First Amendment rights
to the materials available in the library.
So that ruling applicable to Texas, Louisiana, and
Mississippi basically says that library boards could curate

(01:14:55):
collections in whatever way theywant to.
So if the library board is very conservative, they can get rid
of anything that they disagree with, and that's fine.
That's perfectly legal for that ruling.
I think we're going to see that one make its way up to the
Supreme Court. I can't guarantee that it will,
but I think that that would be ahuge, a huge ruling on what the

(01:15:16):
role of the Public Library is across the nation.
So there's two pieces of that. The third piece I want to talk
about is one that depending on when you're listening to this
episode, you know the story is going to change a bit.
And that is that one of the things that Trump did when he
entered into the office is he called for the dismantling of

(01:15:37):
the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
IMLS is the acronym for that. They're the only federal agency
that overseas public libraries and public museums.
They kind of serve in this role where they are given a budget
and then they distribute that budget to institutions at the
local level. So in a lot of places, how this

(01:16:00):
looks is that IMLS presents whatthey call grants to states.
State libraries get X amount of money that they then use to
distribute to libraries across their state.
So this could look like this is not how it works here in
reality, but it's like the best example I can give.
Illinois might get $12 million to the state library from the

(01:16:22):
IMLS, and then they use that $12million to fund database access
to library statewide. They may then make available,
say, a database of Chicago news to everybody in the state
through their Public Library. And that's how they use that
money. They may use that money to
offset costs for things like interlibrary loan or borrowing

(01:16:44):
books from libraries that you don't belong to.
They may use it to purchase subscriptions to digital
materials. So if you use Libby through your
library, some of that might be funded through Imls money
databases and digital materials and costs for things like
shipping are much cheaper when you go in as a big group versus

(01:17:07):
as individual libraries. So that's why the state likes to
use that grant money to secure like the best contracts for
everybody and ensure that, you know, the well funded Chicago
suburban library doesn't have everything and leave their more
rural libraries with nothing andinstead creates equitable access
for all. So, you know, folks who live in

(01:17:29):
a community of 300 have access to the same databases that their
suburban neighbors with more texts money to use at the
library would have. So in mid March, Trump guts the
IMLS and fires everybody, installing one of his own as the
acting director. This is a small department.
I believe it's like 70 people. This is not a huge agency.

(01:17:53):
In terms of federal agencies, that's like a a corner of a
floor of a building somewhere. And you know, just to, to throw
a number, it's like .005% of thefederal budget, like that's it's
tiny, right? And so since then, there have
been 2 lawsuits filed against this decision, which anyone

(01:18:13):
listening knows that that's what's been happening, right?
Like Trump makes a decision, lawsuits follow.
It's not I'm going to follow thelaw.
It's I'm going to do the thing and then see what the law says
about it. So 2 lawsuits took place.
One, the decision at the end wasthat it was filed in the wrong
court. So I don't know.
What process thing? Yeah, a process thing.

(01:18:33):
You know, the second one has seen success several times.
And right now, as it stands in that lawsuit, which is 21 state
attorneys generals filed a lawsuit against Trump for
dismantling the IMLS. As it stands right now, he
cannot do any further damage to the department.
He cannot fire people who've been brought back.

(01:18:54):
He cannot like shrink the work that they're doing anymore.
As of last week, the Trump administration appealed, asking
for a stay in that preliminary injunction and they were
delivered an L on that one. So we're still like, you know,
still at the can't do anything more.
But also don't know what the future looks like because as

(01:19:16):
this is happening, as has been the case in literally every
aspect of the federal governmentright now, Trump wrote in his
fiscal year 2026 budget that he was just going to defund the
IMLS and sunset the whole agency.
So as we are going through budget negotiations now, the
good news is that both the Houseand the Senate wrote the budget

(01:19:39):
back in for the IMLS. So we'll see what happens.
We're staring at the deadline. Deadline is September 30th.
And a lot of agencies or libraries across the country
right now are hurting, one, not knowing if they're going to have
a budget next year, but two, at the end of their budget year.
So they're already at the point of what do we do now?

(01:20:00):
Yeah, they're already already looking under the couch cushions
and stuff trying to figure figure out how to get people
paid. Yeah, in Florida, there are
three counties that have alreadyhad to throw out their
interlibrary loan. They can't afford it.
So we'll see. We'll see what happens from here
on out. But like, as of what this is
September 15th, we don't know what the future of the IMLS is.

(01:20:23):
One thing we do know is that Trump and Sonderling are using
it a bit as a propaganda machine.
A story I I wrote last week was this announcement they made over
something called Freedom Trucks.The IMLS gave money to America
250 4/6, what they're calling Freedom Trucks.

(01:20:44):
These are mobile exhibits to showcase American history in
honor of the 250th birthday of America.
That money was stolen from the IML s s budget that was meant to
go to leadership grants for library and museum workers
across the country. It is now being sent to this
Commission instead for what willessentially be a whitewashed

(01:21:06):
history of America. Yeah, we don't have to speculate
on that. You, you know, I'm, I'm sure you
remember as well as anybody earlier this year when the Trump
administration went through all the federal websites and, you
know, started scrutinizing the Smithsonian for being, you know,
too mean about American history,which I used to live in DCI.

(01:21:28):
Cannot you have to have a brain rot to go into the Smithsonian
museums and be like, wow, these are really critical of America
instead of just being like. Did you know the the car was
invented here? That's epic.
It is like, come on, dude, come on.

(01:21:48):
Like, I would just roll my eyes at half of these exhibits.
So as we're closing down here, get us back on track.
You were a librarian. Yeah.
Something else I think people have heard a lot about in the
news is that in some of these more extreme cases, you know,
we've we've heard all kinds of things about local officials,

(01:22:10):
public officials receiving a higher volume of threats and
harassment and and bullying thenthey have, you know, every
recorded since it's been recorded.
Librarians are in that group of people that these activist
groups and the people that support them have decided are
the bad guys, the bad girls, etcetera.

(01:22:31):
And I imagine have also been subjugated to all kinds of hate
and harassment for doing their job of trying to make books
available to people. From your experience as a
library and like, can, can you just to help me understand a
little bit better about like thekind of impact that has on a
librarian's ability to do their job or to decide whether they

(01:22:54):
want to keep their job and stuff?
You know, I don't think anybody,you know, drives around the
northern suburbs of Chicago looking at these huge houses and
being like, damn, all the librarians must live here.
You know, you know, this is a this it's truly like, you know,
and so many public service rolesare like this, but a librarian
is truly like you do it because you care, not because you're, it

(01:23:19):
is going to make everybody love you and you get to buy the, you
know, three story house in Glencoe or whatever.
I'm laughing because I'm also, I'm a Chicago suburban dweller,
so I know exactly what communities you're talking about
too. But, you know, librarians have
been under attack by folks, you know, since since this all

(01:23:44):
began. And I think a thing that the
general public doesn't understand is that librarians
have consistently been the people who have had to serve
roles that they are not preparedfor, that they are not trained
for. And yet these responsibilities
fall on them. As the social safety net
continues to be cut in communities across the country.

(01:24:05):
Libraries have become everything, you know, They are
institutions of knowledge and access.
They provide information and entertainment.
You know, these are their core, core roles, right?
But they've also become heating centers.
They become cooling centers. They've become distribution

(01:24:25):
Centers for just about everything.
When COVID was in its early years, it was libraries that
were distributing tests and protective equipment because for
the most part, libraries didn't shut down.
Some did, but in cities like Chicago, libraries were open the
whole time. These anti mask people should

(01:24:46):
have loved the library. Yeah.
You know, librarians were putting their own well-being on
the line to be in those places. You know, they have become where
we're seeing more social services being provided.
Many public libraries now will have, like, a social worker on

(01:25:06):
staff to help people. There are fewer and fewer
resources in communities small and large that meet the needs of
the community. And so as these things are cut,
the library steps in to take take on what they can.
As a result, library workers arestretched, then their budgets

(01:25:28):
aren't growing, and yet they're doing so many more things than
they used to. You add to that the constant
threat of harassment from people.
You know, I think people would be shocked to hear how much
harassment happens in libraries.And that's because when somebody
comes into a library, they're looking at another person,

(01:25:50):
right? And so whether or not they
intend to, like, target that person, that person still takes
on that, you know, frustration or rage or become subject to
like, whatever comes out of thispatron's patron's mouth or
demands. And so, you know, we get to this
moment where now librarians are seen as groomers and that

(01:26:14):
language is just tossed around so carelessly.
You know, it is hard. I can't blame librarians for
being burned out and tired and unable to, you know, speak out
about what's happening because they also have to keep
themselves fed. They have to pay their mortgage.
And it's not the mortgage in Glencoe, you know.

(01:26:36):
Yeah, it's a lot of things, you know, coming together at once
and creating this. I I don't use this term lately,
and I'm going to use it. But when I say it again, don't
mean it. Lately, there really is a mental
health crisis in the world of libraries.
There's so much stress and anxiety.

(01:26:57):
There are so many librarians whoaren't getting the support that
they need to do their job well, and yet they are expected to
take on so much in their own community and serving their
public. And so many do it because they
feel responsible to do it and because they really care, but

(01:27:18):
it's often at the detriment of their own well-being.
One of the things that I had predicted for this year that I
thought we would see in the world of censorship and attacks
on libraries is that more and more people who've been doing
this job for a long time and hasbeen deeply invested in the
future of libraries deciding to to leave, that it's not worth it

(01:27:39):
anymore. That, you know, the meager
paychecks that they make, just, you know, it's time to take
those skills somewhere else. And, and we've seen that happen.
I fear that we're going to continue to see it happen.
And there's so much lost when folks who've been in the field
lead the field. And it leaves this real gap of

(01:28:01):
knowledge and experience for newcomers who come in.
You know, I remember when I first started in libraries, I
was like, who would ever want toleave?
This is such a great job while you're in there.
It's a public service job. It's tough, you know, And I was
doing this before we were in this moment.
I can only imagine how much moredifficult it is now.

(01:28:24):
It's hard to, because one of thethings you had said earlier is,
you know, why would anybody attack the Public Library?
Most people agree that it's likeone of the best things out
there, and that's true. But that sense of everybody
loves the library. It's the greatest, you know, way
we spend our tax money. That's why people don't show up
and vote in support of the library, because they assume

(01:28:44):
nobody would want to hurt the library.
And because they assume nobody would want to hurt the library,
they're not speaking up for the library, which means then that
the folks who are pushing their partisan beliefs about the
library are able to succeed. It's not because they are the
minor majority. It's because the majority
doesn't show up. The majority is not showing up

(01:29:06):
to board meetings. The majority is not voting in
favor of their libraries. The majority is not, you know,
writing a letter and say it, youknow, to their local newspaper,
to the regional newspaper, to the board of the library or to
the City Council, whoever, and saying, damn, I love the
library. They did all these things, all
these programs this week. They have books available that I

(01:29:26):
want to read. There's a human being sitting at
a desk that I can go ask a question to and know that I'm
going to get a truthful answer, an answer backed up by research
and resources so that I can makebetter decisions in my everyday
life. Yeah, yeah.
So instead, you know, these local meetings, these parent

(01:29:46):
groups, many of which are fundedby these big foundations that
would love to enrich their friends in the private school
industry, would love to, you know, enrich, you know, funnel
money towards all kinds of capitalist endeavors that would
that would like to replace or modify.
These public services end up being the only voices in the

(01:30:08):
room, even though they don't represent the broader opinion.
I think that is a a good place to wrap this up today.
My wife is an avid reader and when I told her that we were
going to have you on, she said you have to ask her what book
she's loving right now and what she's looking forward to on the

(01:30:31):
horizon. Like what's coming now?
What? What are you?
What are you? What are you jonesing for?
This is such a horrible question.
I hate this question, and I hateit because the answer.
So there's this theory in psychology that like, when you
know something really, really well, are you really, really
passionate about a thing? There's so many connections in

(01:30:52):
your brain that it's hard for you to come up with an answer
because you don't know which wayto like shoot the signal, right?
And so that's the problem when I'm asked about books I'm
excited about or like want to talk about, it's like, there's
so many. How do I pick like 1 to go with
right? Yeah, yeah, that's the problem.
When I record this podcast and Istumble over my words, I'm too
smart is what's going on. I mean really into like, like,

(01:31:14):
look, I'm not making that up, but I wish I can remember the
name of it. But like that's.
You know, that's a real thing. So there's a book I read this
year. I have to look up the author of
it. That's why I'm like typing here.
OK, so I read this really, really funny book called BLOB a
Love Story. It's by Maggie Sue and this is a

(01:31:36):
book about a woman who finds a sentient BLOB outside on the
sidewalk in the small college town in the Midwest where she
lives. She decides to take this BLOB
home and ends up having a romance with this BLOB.
It is as ridiculous and as amazing as it sounds.
That's one that I read recently.It's really just like bizarre

(01:31:57):
fiction has been such a wonderful place to be when the
world around you is as challenging as it is.
There's something about like reading about a woman who finds
this BLOB and it's like, wow, I'm going to like this BLOB just
grew legs and arms. Like how cool is this?
This BLOB is like a whole being going this, this is the world I

(01:32:18):
want to be in right now, not thenot the actual world I'm in.
So that that's one that I read recently.
And right now I'm reading a bookcalled The Scammer by Tiffany D
Jackson, and it is about this black girl who her parents
wanted her to go to, I think it was Yale, for college, and she

(01:32:39):
decides she's going to go to a historically black college
instead. She gets there, she's vibing
with her roommates, everything seems good, and then one of her
roommates drops this bomb that her brother is being released
from jail and he's going to hangout with them for a little bit
while he gets his feet under him.
Turns out what he is doing is not just hanging out, he is
recruiting people for his cult. And so again, another like, why?

(01:33:06):
Why am I reading such like chilling stuff, such weird
stuff. Well, it feels more reasonable
than the world we are in right now.
That's more than fair. I'm going to turn the question
back on you. Like what?
What are you reading? Right now I am finishing a book
called The Battle of Loud or theNo, The Birth of Loud, which is

(01:33:29):
about the invention of the electric guitar.
I'm a guitar player, so very into that.
And then our listener who pointed me your way and
recommended that we do this interview, sent me this book.
This is what I have coming up next.
It's called Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers.

(01:33:49):
If Brandon's taste is as good inbooks as it is in guests, I
think that'll be a real treat. So.
Yes, we have a friend in common and I'm going to actually I'm
going to if you're cool with me bringing up one more book.
The reason I'm bringing it up isbecause it's one I recommended
to our our mutual and it's one that I can't stop thinking about

(01:34:10):
and think that your listeners would be super into.
It's called Algo speak, how social media is transforming the
future of language. And it's by Adam Alexic.
And it's a book about the ways that we have changed how we
speak to appease and or subvert the algorithms online.

(01:34:31):
And there's a chapter, I think it's chapter 6, that I can't
stop thinking about and don't know what to, like, do with that
information. But it's, you know, been sitting
in my head. And he writes about how there's
been this tendency for media to talk about Gen.
Z slang and just like the words that Gen.

(01:34:52):
Z is using and what it means. And what he ends up pointing out
is that this quote UN quote, Gen.
Z language is actually in cell language that has managed to
burst from online in cell groupsthrough the algorithm to a more
mainstream audience, which is then transformed into Gen.

(01:35:14):
Z speak. And like, given everything in
our world right now, especially as we're recording right now, I
just like that. It gives me chills to think
about that, right? How easily we are overlooking
like the origins of some of the trends in how we speak and how

(01:35:35):
how many dark places some of that language comes from.
Well, cool. Well, Kelly, thanks so much for
joining. I really enjoyed this
conversation. Like all of our guests, I asked
Kelly to send us some links to stuff that folks can read or
places they can go to check out her work.
And in true former library and fashion, I got a proper reading

(01:36:00):
list. So that'll be down in the
description of this episode. Kelly, the reporting you've done
on this subject and your attention to it is incredible.
We need 1000 Kelly's out there in the world.
So I just want to say thank you so much for for caring about
this and for using your voice tobring attention to it.

(01:36:23):
Thank you for having me. And, you know, in this last
second, I just want to say, you know, they're so many groups on
the ground doing really, really good work right now.
And for any listener who is passionate on this topic, find a
group, see what they're doing, get involved.
If you don't see something, there are incredible resources
out there to get you started. You know, and that goes

(01:36:46):
especially hard for folks who are in states like Florida or
Texas where it can feel like youare alone.
You are not. In fact, some of the strongest,
loudest, bravest activists in support of books and in support
of libraries and public schools are in your state.
There's a pretty young thing in front of you and she's real

(01:37:09):
pretty and she's real into you, and then she's sleeping inside
of. You.
Well, I really enjoyed that. Thank you.
And we will see in a couple dayseverybody we are going to for
the premium show. We are going to be looking a
little bit at Dave Rubin and also the sort of quick history

(01:37:33):
of that archetype, the liberal turn conservative grift.
It's it's an episode focused on a, on a very, very familiar
grift, Jared. Yeah, that was also another
listener recommendation from ourour Patreon.
And I kind of say the suggestions we're getting are

(01:37:54):
great ideas. Dude, I'm, I'm really excited to
tape that one. But yeah.
I'm I'm, I'm, I'm biased, but I love our listeners.
Bye everybody, have a great. Week.
See ya. I don't blame you.

(01:38:19):
I do the same thing. I get lonely too.
Then you're bad news. My friend told me to leave you.
You're bad news.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}038: MAGA’s War on Free Speech feat. Kelly Jensen

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038: MAGA’s War on Free Speech feat. Kelly Jensen

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