Dalai Lama, a global symbol of Tibetan culture and resistance, turns 90 by The Associated Press

 DHARAMSHALA, India — The Dalai Lama turned 90 on Sunday surrounded by thousands of followers, who thronged the Himalayan town of Dharamshala, where the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has been living in exile since fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959.

 

Sitting before a packed audience that included hundreds of red-robed monks and nuns who braved incessant rain to see him, he said: "When I look back on my life, I see that I have not wasted it at all."

"I live my life in the service of other sentient beings," he added.

Dressed in a traditional robe and a flowing yellow wrap, the Dalai Lama was escorted to the temple courtyard by a group of monks, as Tibetan artists beat drums and played bagpipes while senior lamas struck cymbals in his honor. The head of the democratically elected Tibetan government-in-exile, Penpa Tsering, raised the Tibetan flag as the musicians played the Tibetan anthem.

 

Recognized worldwide in his red robes and wide smile, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, describes himself as a "simple Buddhist monk." But millions of Tibetan Buddhists worship him as living manifestations of Chenrezig, the Buddhist god of compassion.

Celebration capped a week of birthday events

The birthday party capped a week of celebrations, during which the Nobel Peace Prize winner said he plans to reincarnate after his death, ending years of speculation that he might be the last person to hold the role. He also said that the next Dalai Lama should be and recognized as per past Buddhist traditions.

On Saturday, the Dalai Lama said he hoped to live until the age of 130.

 

In the past, the Dalai Lama has said his successor will be born in the "free world" — outside China. Many exiled Tibetans, however, fear China will name its own successor to the Dalai Lama to bolster control over Tibet, a territory it poured troops into in 1950 and has ruled ever since.

China, which views the Dalai Lama as a separatist, has repeatedly said that it alone has the authority to approve the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. It also says it will reject anyone chosen without Beijing's consent.

 

World leaders and celebrities sent wishes

Dignitaries including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sent their wishes to the Tibetan leader.

Modi said the Dalai Lama has "been an enduring symbol of love, compassion, patience and moral discipline," while Rubio said the Buddhist spiritual leader "continues to inspire people by embodying a message of unity, peace and compassion."

The celebration was also attended by hundreds of followers from around the world including Hollywood movie star Richard Gere.

"He is the most extraordinary man to ever walk on this planet," said Gere, as the crowd broke into a rapturous applause.

In a birthday message on his website on Saturday, the Dalai Lama reiterated that he was "just a simple Buddhist monk" and that he will "continue to focus on my commitments of promoting human values religious harmony."

 

Celebrations were also held in Kathmandu, Nepal, where hundreds of Tibetan refugees, monks and foreign diplomats marked the day with Buddhist prayers, chanting and dances.

The Dalai Lama was thrust onto the Tibetan throne in 1937. Soon after, Chinese troops swept into his homeland in the 1950s and crushed a failed uprising, forcing him to escape with thousands of his followers to India where he established a government in exile.

Since then, he has spent more than seven decades in exile and sustained a nation in exile by managing to build a community that's kept the Tibetan culture and identity alive. The Dalai Lama has also become one of the world's most recognizable figures while leading a Tibetan diaspora through their struggle for autonomy and opposition of China's control of Tibet.

Why some see the dollar's drop as a sign America is losing its financial might By Rafael Nam

 There's perhaps no better symbolic representation of America's financial might than the U.S. dollar. And right now, the world's top currency is taking a big, mighty punch.

 

The dollar has slumped more than 10% this year, posting its worst decline in the first six months of a year since 1973, back when President Nixon shocked the world by detaching the dollar's value from gold.

The decline reverses a long stretch of annual gains for the dollar — and it's especially confounding given that the U.S. economy is still doing well.

"America was already great," says Kaspar Hense, a senior portfolio manager at RBC BlueBay Asset Management.

"We are coming from a very strong dollar level where U.S. exceptionalism was what everybody was speaking about in financial markets," he adds.

 Many investors now fear the decline could reflect a new reality for the U.S., just after the country celebrated its 249th birthday.

A series of chaotic policies and statements by Trump — from tariffs to attacking the Federal Reserve — has shaken some of the confidence investors around the world had long held in the U.S.

 But it goes beyond that. The country's debt is ballooning — and will grow even more with the GOP megabill that was passed by Congress last week. Meanwhile, there are real concerns about what the deep political divisions will mean for the U.S.

The big question now is: Does this re-assessment reflect a long-term shift or just a momentary blip?

The case against the American dollar

Whether one agrees or disagrees with President Trump, one thing is clear: His second term is shaping up to be quite different — and it's unnerving many investors, both in the U.S. and abroad.

The chaotic rollout of tariffs has led to widespread uncertainty across businesses in the U.S. and around the world.

But President Trump has also disregarded other norms. He's picked a fight with the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell over interest rates, for example, upending a tradition upheld by most American presidents not to interfere with the independence of the central bank.

 

And at a time when there are already serious concerns about the country's finances President Trump on Independence Day signed a massive bill passed by Congress last week that will rack up trillions of dollars in additional debt.

Of course, the U.S. debt load has been rising significantly for years ever since President Clinton and Congress managed to balance the budget in the 1990s.

Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, and now a professor at Harvard, says those years of inaction to deal with the rising debt levels are contributing to the dollar's decline.

"How much do investors want to be overweight in dollars when they can sort of see this slow-motion train wreck coming?," he asks. "While I wouldn't read too much into the dollar's fall this year, there is no question that there is this broader underlying trend of moving away from the dollar — and Trump's been an accelerant."

 

Foreign investors have indeed responded — by selling American stocks and bonds, which has pushed the dollar sharply lower. That's because when a foreign investors dump shares in a company for example, they then effectively sell the dollar and convert it back to their home currency.

A widely followed survey by Bank of America of fund managers around the world reflects this selling quite starkly. Fund managers had preferred U.S. stocks over international stocks for most of the past two decades — but that's changed this year.

 

But the latest survey out in mid-June showed a startling statistic: Only 23% now preferred U.S. stocks.

That's amply reflected in how stocks around the world have performed this year.

Yes, the S&P has just hit record highs, recovering from steep losses earlier this year, helped by a good performance in sectors like technology. But consider this: Even with the most recent gains the S&P 500 — representing the biggest 500 companies in the U.S. — is up more than 6% this year.

 

However, that compares to both Germany's DAX index and Hong Kon's Hang Seng Index, which are up nearly 20% this year as of the end of last week. Several other international stock markets have also gained significantly.

The case for the American dollar

Not everybody is convinced that the dollar's decline is an alarming trend.

Under this thinking, the U.S. has gotten used to outperforming global markets for years, so a months-long reversal is not necessarily catastrophic. It's just a re-adjustment that had been coming.

And then there's a long-held market adage: TINA, as in, There Is No Alternative.

The dollar is by far the most widely-held currency in the world, used by everybody from governments to multinational companies to drug cartels.

And there's no bigger and more diverse market than the U.S., whether it be stocks or government bonds.

 

There are also benefits to a weaker dollar.

Yes, a weaker dollar makes it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad, but it's good domestic tourism, while exporters like Apple, which earns a substantial portion of its revenue from countries abroad.

And American companies that have long faced cheaper imports would get a bit of a boost. The weaker dollar would make foreign products a little more expensive — even more so when tariffs kick in — giving domestic manufacturers a major leg up.

 

There's a temptation for a lot of people to think of the strength of your currency as some sort of national virility symbol," says Kit Juckes, the Chief FX Strategist at Societe Generale. "It really isn't."

"You shouldn't expect to have a super, super, super strong currency forever," Juckes adds, citing the impact on workers in sectors such as manufacturing or agriculture that become less competitive when the dollar is strong.

Currencies like the euro or yuan could challenge the dollar' dominance

So then, what's next for the dollar? That, as it turns out, is the trillion-dollar question

 

Despite the dollar's steep decline this year, few analysts are willing to make sweeping judgements about what it symbolizes for the U.S. At least, not yet.

But the concerns remain about whether the dollar's decline is a reflection of a long-term reassessment of the U.S. financial standing in the world — and a sign that the overwhelming dominance of the dollar might be coming to an end.

Rogoff, who recently authored the book "Our Dollar, Your Problem," says the U.S. has long depended on foreign investments as a critical source of capital, investments that have helped make the dollar the world's reserve currency.

 

But as the U.S. faces entrenched problems like surging debt levels, perceptions about the U.S. could change.

"The dollar franchise isn't gone, but it's weakening materially," he says.

Rogoff believes that over the next 10-20 years the world will see "a more tri-polar system" as the euro, the Chinese yuan, and even crypto currencies, emerge to challenge the dollar's dominance.

"The dollar's reserve currency status has been fraying at the edges for at least a decade," Rogoff says. "And the process is accelerating under Trump."

 

Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk by Tim Reid, Pilar Olivares and Leah Douglas

By Tim Reid, Pilar Olivares and Leah Douglas

OXNARD, California (Reuters) -Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the area's fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump's migration crackdown, have frightened off workers.

 

"In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone," she said in an interview. "If 70% of your workforce doesn't show up, 70% of your crop doesn't get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don't want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust."

In the vast agricultural lands north of Los Angeles, stretching from Ventura County into the state's central valley, two farmers, two field supervisors and four immigrant farmworkers told Reuters this month that the ICE raids have led a majority of workers to stop showing up.

That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time, they said.

One Mexican farm supervisor, who asked not to be named, was overseeing a field being prepared for planting strawberries last week. Usually he would have 300 workers, he said. On this day he had just 80. Another supervisor at a different farm said he usually has 80 workers in a field, but today just 17.

 

BAD FOR BUSINESS

Most economists and politicians acknowledge that many of America's agricultural workers are in the country illegally, but say a sharp reduction in their numbers could have devastating impacts on the food supply chain and farm-belt economies.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said an estimated 80% of farmworkers in the U.S. were foreign-born, with nearly half of them in the country illegally. Losing them will cause price hikes for consumers, he said.

"This is bad for supply chains, bad for the agricultural industry," Holtz-Eakin said.

 Over a third of U.S. vegetables and over three-quarters of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The state's farms and ranches generated nearly $60 billion in agricultural sales in 2023.

 

Of the four immigrant farmworkers Reuters spoke to, two are in the country illegally. These two spoke on the condition of anonymity, out of fear of being arrested by ICE.

One, aged 54, has worked in U.S. agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work.

"If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again," he said.

 

The other worker in the country illegally told Reuters, "Basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem - many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported."

To be sure, some farmworker community groups said many workers were still returning to the fields, despite the raids, out of economic necessity.

The days following a raid may see decreased attendance in the field, but the workers soon return because they have no other sources of income, five groups told Reuters.

Workers are also taking other steps to reduce their exposure to immigration agents, like carpooling with people with legal status to work or sending U.S. citizen children to the grocery store, the groups said.

 

CE CHILL

Trump conceded in a post on his Truth Social account this month that ICE raids on farm workers - and also hotel workers - were "taking very good, long-time workers away" from those sectors, "with those jobs being almost impossible to replace."

Trump later told reporters, "Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers." He added, "They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be great."

He pledged to issue an order to address the impact, but no policy change has yet been enacted.

Trump has always stood up for farmers, said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly in response to a request for comment on the impact of the ICE raids to farms.

 

"He will continue to strengthen our agricultural industry and boost exports while keeping his promise to enforce our immigration laws," she said.

Bernard Yaros, Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics, a nonpartisan global economics advisory firm, said in a report published on June 26 that native-born workers tend not to fill the void left by immigrant workers who have left.

"Unauthorized immigrants tend to work in different occupations than those who are native-born," he said.

ICE operations in California's farmland were scaring even those who are authorized, said Greg Tesch, who runs a farm in central California.

 "Nobody feels safe when they hear the word ICE, even the documented people. We know that the neighborhood is full of a combination of those with and without documents," Tesch said.

"If things are ripe, such as our neighbors have bell peppers here, (if) they don't harvest within two or three days, the crop is sunburned or over mature," said Tesch. "We need the labor."

Ford workers told their CEO ‘none of the young people want to work here.’ So Jim Farley took a page out of the founder’s playbook

 By: Sasha Rogelberg

 

• Ford CEO Jim Farley learned from older employees that some young workers at the carmaker were taking shifts at Amazon to make ends meet, he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Farley said he drew on founder Henry Ford’s decision to raise factory wages to $5 a day in 1914 to make temporary workers into full-time employees. Young people have previously eschewed manufacturing jobs due to low wages.

Some economists credit carmaker Henry Ford for jump-starting the American middle class in the 20th century when, in January 1914, he hiked factory wages to $5, more than double the average wage for an eight-hour work day.

More than 100 years later, facing the reality of many employees “barely getting by,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said he took a page out of the founder’s playbook.

 

The carmaker’s chief executive recognized the need to make a change in his workplace when he spoke to veteran employees during union contract negotiations and learned young Ford employees were working multiple jobs and getting inadequate sleep due to low wages, Farley said in an interview with journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Friday.

“The older workers who’d been at the company said, ‘None of the young people want to work here. Jim, you pay $17 an hour, and they are so stressed,’” Farley said.

Farley learned some workers also held jobs at Amazon, where they worked for eight hours before clocking in to a seven-hour shift at Ford, sleeping for only three or four hours. As a result, the company made temporary workers into full-time employees, making them eligible for higher wages, profit-sharing checks, and better health care coverage. The transition was outlined in 2019 contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW), with temporary workers able to become full-time after two years of continuous employment at Ford.

 

“It wasn’t easy to do,” Farley said. “It was expensive. But I think that’s the kind of changes we need to make in our country.”

Ford’s own decision to double factory wages in 1914 was not altruistic, but rather a strategy to attract a stable workforce, as well as provide a stimulus for his own workers to be able to afford Ford products.

“He said, ‘I’m doing this because I want my factory worker to buy my cars. If they make enough money, they’ll buy my own product,’” Farley said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way.”

 

Trouble attracting young trade workers

Farley, a proponent of growing U.S. manufacturing productivity to support the essential economy, has advocated for young workers to have strong trade experiences.

“Our governments have to get really serious about investing in trade schools and skilled trades,” he said. “You go to Germany, every one of our factory workers has an apprentice starting in junior high school. Every one of those jobs has a person behind it for eight years that is trained.”

 

Despite the U.S. seeing 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs by 2033, according to Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, the younger generation of workers has largely turned away from the career path. Gen Z enrollment in trade schools is on the rise, but the newest generation entering the workforce is largely eschewing factory jobs, citing low wages, according to a 2023 Soter Analytics study. U.S. manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have an average $25-per-hour wage—about $51,890 per year—falling short of the average American salary of $66,600. 

American carmakers like Ford may be trying to make it appealing for young workers to embark on manufacturing careers, but they are still not immune to workers’ grievances over wages. In 2023, thousands of UAW members, including 16,600 Ford employees, went on strike before reaching a contract deal in October of that year, which, beyond increasing wages, also further decreased the period of time necessary for a temp worker to become full-time.

Farley called the strike “completely unnecessary” from management’s perspective and maintained the onus of improving trade workers’ wages isn’t just on Ford.

“We’re not just going to hope it gets better,” he said. “We have the resources, and we have the know-how, after 120 years, to solve these problems, but we need more help from others.”

 

 

This could be the summer of economic hell by Analysis by Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

 

In the face of higher tariffs on virtually everything the United States imports, plus a Middle East crisis, the United States economy has, remarkably, held its ground. Inflation has mostly held steady, while the unemployment rate remains near historic lows. Stocks, meanwhile, hit fresh record highs last week.

That could soon change as crucial deadlines near.

The first is July 9, which marks the end of President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on what he termed as “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of America’s trading partners. Unless those countries reach trade deals with the US, they could potentially face much higher tariffs. 

 

Then, just around the corner from that is the so-called X-date, when the government could default on its debt obligations. That will occur at some point in August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a recent letter to congressional leaders. The consequences of the US defaulting on debt, which has never happened, are grave and would likely cause global economic upheaval. That’s why Bessent argued lawmakers need to raise the debt ceiling before Congress’ one-month recess starts on August 4.

The president has essentially pressured Congress to raise it by July 4. But complicating that effort is the fact that raising the nation’s borrowing limit is just one of several measures included in his “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which is what he really wants to sign into law by then.

Another pressing situation that could overturn the current calm is the fragile ceasefire Trump brokered between Iran and Israel. It could quickly become undone and cause oil prices to surge at a time when inflation from his tariffs may already be picking up.

“We know it’s coming. There’s a lag between changes in tariffs and when they show up in prices you and I are paying,” said Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics.

And there are other cracks in the economy that could rapidly evolve into fault lines, such as the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits hitting a four-year high and consumers reining in their spending.

One big, ugly tariff question

Trump has demonstrated over the first few months that there’s no limit to how high he’ll raise tariffs — whether across a country’s goods or across all imports of a particular product. For instance, the US had taxed Chinese goods at a minimum 145% rate, but a deal that was reached on May 12 brought that rate down to 30%.

Other tariffs currently in place include 50% on steel and aluminum, 25% on cars and auto parts, and a 10% minimum tariff on virtually every country’s goods.

While Mexican and Canadian goods are exempt from certain tariffs if they comply with the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Trump on Friday said he will levy new tariffs on Canadian goods over the country’s refusal to ditch a new tax set to take effect Monday.

In April, after his trade policy rocked markets, Trump announced a 90-day pause, ostensibly to buy more time to work on “bespoke” trade deals with impacted countries, he said. Since then, there have only been two trade deals inked, with the United Kingdom and China.

Trump noted Friday that it was unrealistic that 200 countries that have been aiming to ink trade deals with the US would have them finalized by July 9.

“At a certain point, over the next week and a half or so, or maybe before, we’re going to send out a letter. We talked to many of the countries, and we’re just going to tell them what they have to pay to do business in the United States,” he told reporters from the White House press briefing room.

“We have a lot of great things going, and we’re getting along with countries, but some will be disappointed because they’re going to have to pay tariffs,” Trump added. 

 

Trump administration officials have floated potential extensions for countries “negotiating in good faith,” without specifying what that means or which countries that applies to.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday in a CNBC interview: “There are probably another 20 countries where they could go back to the reciprocal tariff (rate) of April 2 as we work on the deal. Or, if we think that they are negotiating in good faith, then they could stay at the 10% baseline.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick re-upped the possibility of a regional tariff strategy on Thursday, while also claiming that 10 trade deal announcements were imminent.

“You’ll have South American deals, African deals… We will put these people in their proper buckets on July 9,” he said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

That could mean some nations end up facing higher tariffs compared to the April levels just based on where they’re located. For instance, Vietnam was set to face 46% tariffs, while its neighbor Malaysia was going to face a 24% tariff.

Or, come July 9, tariff policy could just come down to picking a number out of a hat. As Bessent said, “It will all be up to President Trump.”

“Whether or not the July 9th deadline spells trouble for the economy depends on how the Trump administration handles trade policy,” Matthew Luzzetti, chief US economist at Deutsche Bank, told CNN.

“If he were to reinstate the historically elevated tariffs announced on ‘Liberation Day,’ (April 2) this would bring back fears of an economic slowdown that were prevalent in April,” he said, adding that it didn’t seem like a strong possibility. “More likely, we get a mix of extensions, trade deals and threats of increased tariffs on specific countries or sectors. If that is the outcome, it could leave the economy in its current holding pattern for a bit longer until uncertainty clears.” 

 

Already, Luzzetti’s team of economists is anticipating higher prices in the coming months. Reinstituting more tariffs come July 9 could only add more fuel to that fire, he said.

Similarly, Olu Sonola, US head of economic research at Fitch Ratings, said, “Regardless of the outcome of these deadlines, we expect (Consumer Price Index) inflation to trend higher towards 4% at the end of the year. If ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs return, we’ll likely see inflation higher than 4%.” The latest CPI report from May showed prices rising at a 2.4% annual rate.

Another 11th-hour debt ceiling standoff?

Sweet says he expects lawmakers won’t allow the US to default on its debt and will ultimately raise the debt ceiling in the 11th hour. “This is essentially a very bad movie that we’ve seen before, so we know how it ends.”

He said there may be more time before the US defaults compared to Bessent’s estimates. (It’s incredibly difficult to make precise predictions on when that is.)

“But each passing week you naturally get a little bit more nervous, because you don’t want to imagine the unimaginable,” Sweet said. “I just don’t think that’s a very likely scenario, because I think lawmakers know that it would be political and economic suicide not to raise the debt limit.” 

 

Trump administration aims to slash funds that preserve the nation’s rich architectural and cultural history by Michael R. Allen

 

President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2026 discretionary budget is called a “skinny budget” because it’s short on line-by-line details.

But historic preservation efforts in the U.S. did get a mention – and they might as well be skinned to the bone.

Trump has proposed to slash funding for the federal Historic Preservation Fund to only $11 million, which is $158 million less than the fund’s previous reauthorization in 2024. The presidential discretionary budget, however, always heads to Congress for appropriation. And Congress always makes changes.

That said, the Trump administration hasn’t even released the $188 million that Congress appropriated for the fund for the 2025 fiscal year, essentially impounding the funding stream that Congress created in 1976 for historic preservation activities across the nation.

I’m a scholar of historic preservation who’s worked to secure historic designations for buildings and entire neighborhoods. I’ve worked on projects that range from making distressed neighborhoods in St. Louis eligible for historic tax credits to surveying Cold War-era hangars and buildings on seven U.S. Air Force bases.

I’ve seen the ways in which the Historic Preservation Fund helps local communities maintain and rehabilitate their rich architectural history, sparing it from deterioration, the wrecking ball or the pressures of the private market.

 

A rare, deficit-neutral funding model

Most Americans probably don’t realize that the task of historic preservation largely falls to individual states and Native American tribes.

The National Historic Preservation Act that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law in 1966 requires states and tribes to handle everything from identifying potential historic sites to reviewing the impact of interstate highway projects on archaeological sites and historic buildings. States and tribes are also responsible for reviewing nominations of sites in the National Register of Historic Places, the nation’s official list of properties deemed worthy of preservation.

However, many states and tribes didn’t have the capacity to adequately tackle the mandates of the 1966 act. So the Historic Preservation Fund was formed a decade later to alleviate these costs by funneling federal resources into these efforts.

The fund is actually the product of a conservative, limited-government approach.

Created during Gerald Ford’s administration, it has a revenue-neutral model, meaning that no tax dollars pay for the program. Instead, it’s funded by private lease royalties from the Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas reserves.

Most of these reserves are located in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. Private companies that receive a permit to extract from them must agree to a lease with the federal government. Royalties from their oil and gas sales accrue in federally controlled accounts under the terms of these leases. The Office of Natural Resources Revenue then directs 1.5% of the total royalties to the Historic Preservation Fund.

Congress must continually reauthorize the amount of funding reserved for the Historic Preservation Fund, or it goes unfunded.

 

Despite bipartisan support, the fund has been threatened in the past. President Ronald Reagan attempted to do exactly what Trump is doing now by making no request for funding at all in his 1983 budget. Yet the fund has nonetheless been reauthorized six times since its inception, with terms ranging from five to 10 years.

The program is a crucial source of funding, particularly in small towns and rural America, where privately raised cultural heritage funds are harder to come by. It provides grants for the preservation of buildings and geographical areas that hold historical, cultural or spiritual significance in underrepresented communities. And it’s even involved in projects tied to the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026, such as the rehabilitation of the home in New Jersey where George Washington was stationed during the winter of 1778-79 and the restoration of Rhode Island’s Old State House.

Filling financial gaps

I’ve witnessed the fund’s impact firsthand in small communities across the nation.

Edwardsville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, is home to the Leclaire Historic District. In the 1970s, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The national designation recognized the historic significance of the district, protecting it against any adverse impacts from federal infrastructure funding. It also made tax credits available to the town. Edwardsville then designated LeClaire a local historic district so that it could legally protect the indelible architectural features of its homes, from original decorative details to the layouts of front porches.

Despite the designation, however, there was no clear inventory of the hundreds of houses in the district. A few paid staffers and a volunteer citizen commission not only had to review proposed renovations and demolitions, but they also had to figure out which buildings even contributed to LeClaire’s significance and which ones did not – and thus did not need to be tied up in red tape.

 

Edwardsville was able to secure a grant through the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office thanks to a funding match enabled by money disbursed to Illinois via the Historic Preservation Fund.

In 2013, my team created an updated inventory of the historic district, making it easier for the local commission to determine which houses should be reviewed carefully and which ones don’t need to be reviewed at all.

Oil money better than no money

The historic preservation field, not surprisingly, has come out strongly against Trump’s proposal to defund the Historic Preservation Fund.

Nonetheless, there have been debates within the field over the fund’s dependence on the fossil fuel industry, which was the trade-off that preservationists made decades ago when they crafted the funding model.

In the 1970s, amid the national energy crisis, conservation of existing buildings was seen as a worthy ecological goal, since demolition and new construction required fossil fuels. To preservationists, diverting federal carbon royalties seemed like a power play.

But with the effects of climate change becoming impossible to ignore, some preservationists are starting to more openly critique both the ethics and the wisdom of tapping into a pool of money created through the profits of the oil and gas industry. I’ve recently wondered myself if continued depletion of fossil fuels means that preservationists won’t be able to count on the Historic Preservation Fund as a long-term source of funding.

That said, you’d be hard-pressed to find a preservationist who thinks that destroying the Historic Preservation Fund would be a good first step in shaping a more visionary policy.

For now, Trump’s administration has only sown chaos in the field of historic preservation. Already, Ohio has laid off one-third of the staffers in its State Historic Preservation Office due to the impoundment of federal funds. More state preservation offices may follow suit. The National Council of State Historic Preservation Officers predicts that states soon could be unable to perform their federally mandated duties.

Unfortunately, many people advocating for places important to their towns and neighborhoods may end up learning the hard way just what the Historic Preservation Fund does.

“School Librarians Are the First and Perhaps Only Line of Defense in a School for Students’ First Amendment Rights”

 By Kelly Jensen

 How South Carolina school librarians are rising to the challenge of statewide book bans and why they retain hope in these challenging times.

 Three U.S. states have provisions in their state law that allow for removal of books from all public schools under certain circumstances. These are South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Tennessee has yet to trigger this, though given how broadly school districts in the state have been banning books, it’s likely we’ll see this sooner than we think. Meanwhile, both Utah and South Carolina have been engaged in these state-wide bans since implementation.

State sponsored book bans in Utah and South Carolina work differently from one another. In Utah, a book is banned from all public schools if it has been banned from three public school districts or two public school districts and five charter schools statewide. The bill went into effect July 1, 2024, and it started with 13 titles on it. Utah’s bill is retroactive, meaning that titles which met the state’s guidelines prior to the bill’s start date were included on the list. Right now, there are 18 titles on the list. 

 

South Carolina’s law allows anyone in the state who has children in a public school district to raise objections to a title to their local school board and then onto the State Board of Education. This means they can bypass decisions and/or appeal the decision made at the school district level right to the state. Right now, South Carolina leads the country in state-sanctioned banned books at 21 titles total. Nearly all of them come from one parent who didn’t get her wishes granted in Beaufort County Schools. Read that again: one parent in the whole state of South Carolina has been responsible for nearly all of the books no students in public schools have access to. So much for “local control.”

Ten of the 21 books banned in South Carolina landed on the list in May 2025. 

 None of the book bans in either Utah nor South Carolina have gone down without a fight. In South Carolina, because the battle happens in state-level committee and then the full state board of education, the public pushback has been visible, documented, recorded, and shared widely. This is important for many reasons, including the fact it has become easy for far too many people to simply believe that red states and their access to knowledge and books doesn’t matter the same way it does in “good” blue states.

 

The fact is, there are dedicated, devoted champions of intellectual freedom in every single U.S. state. Frankly, those on the ground in red states have had longer and harder battles; writing off states for their historic voting records, which have always been complicated by gerrymandering and voter suppression, is writing off fierce advocates and activists–the very people who deserve to be given bigger, louder megaphones.

Several groups in South Carolina have been at the forefront of fighting book bans. One of them is the South Carolina Association of School Librarians. I’m honored to bring an interview with two members of the organization’s leadership, president Jamie Gregory and current president-elect Tenley Middleton. This conversation is a poignant reminder of the necessity of listening to those on the ground and the devastating realities of being a school librarian right now in America and in a state where library workers have some of the largest targets on their backs for simply doing their jobs of meeting the needs of all students. 

 

Jamie: Regulation 43.170 was created by the SC State Board of Education and automatically went into effect August 1, 2024, after it failed to receive a vote in the SC General Assembly. It establishes a pathway for citizens to appeal a school district’s review committee decision directly to the SC State Board of Education. The Instructional Materials Review Committee (IMRC), comprised of 5 members of the state board, receives submitted complaints and votes to recommend retention, restriction, or banning. The full State Board then votes to adopt the IMRC’s recommendation, thus establishing a way to ban books (and any other instructional materials) from every public school in the entire state. Local school districts can also choose not to consider locally-submitted complaints and instead send those directly to the IMRC for consideration. (This option is described in very positive language, as if the state board is helping districts lessen their work loads by removing the local democratic process.)

There are a few crucial components of the regulation that are important for people to be aware of. The regulation only concerns what it attempts to define as age inappropriate sexual conduct, which directly conflicts with SC obscenity law (16-15-305). It also does not provide any consideration for the variations in appropriateness between a kindergarten student and a high school senior. The IMRC does not require itself to read the challenged work in its entirety. Rather, it relies on excerpts and other information provided by the complainant. As such, the work as a whole is not considered, so there can be no exceptions made for literary merit. However, SC Code of Law 16-15-305 does allow for literary merit to be considered. In this way, the IMRC and state board of education can ban a book from every public school in the state simply because of one phrase. We are still confused why this regulation can be implemented while simultaneously conflicting with established state law.

 

The “need” for this regulation was manufactured by SC Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver (who has direct, public ties to Moms 4 Liberty) under the guise of an absence of a “uniform process for local school boards to review and hold public hearings on complaints raised within its district.” In other words, supporters of the regulation didn’t like that local school districts have control over which instructional materials are available in school libraries, so they dubbed this local control as “confusing” since districts may have different local policies and procedures. It’s important to note that the impetus for this regulation originated with Ellen Weaver and her outside legal counsel with ties to the Federalist Society (who was paid over $40,000 of taxpayer money), not the SC State Board of Education.

Many people are aware of the 97 books challenged in Beaufort County in 2022, which after much time and thousands of dollars, the review committees ultimately returned all but 5 of those titles to school library shelves. The people who supported banning those 97 books decried that decision as undemocratic simply because they didn’t get their way, even calling the review committees “biased” because they were comprised of more educators than parents. The result is that now, book challenges are considered by only five members of the state board of education who do not read the books.

 

Where and how has the South Carolina Association of School Libraries been involved in pushing back against this law? What other on-the-ground groups or organizations have you been collaborating or allying with? 

Jamie: Statewide anti-censorship efforts began in 2021 when Governor Henry McMaster tasked then-SC Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman to “investigate” how a book like Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe could end up in South Carolina public school libraries. South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL) leaders were invited to collaborate with Spearman to develop a model school library selection and reconsideration policy that districts could choose to use to ensure they had a policy in place. We were pleased with this result and grateful for the collaborative opportunity. However, other challenges were rapidly popping up across the state.

In October 2022, SCASL President Tamara Cox and Josh Malkin from the ACLU recognized a need to bring together various organizations and groups with similar goals across the state. They started the Freedom to Read SC coalition with the goal “to defeat unconstitutional efforts to ban books from school and public libraries.” Of course our challenges aren’t just restricted to book banning, but broader issues such as defending students’ rights, public education, and the rights of all parents. Creating a statewide coalition allowed for parents, religious leaders, community organizations, and other local decision makers to network and to support each other, particularly when censorship continues to happen at the local level and in differing ways.

SCASL also showed up as an organization during the 2023-2024 year when the state board was creating the regulation and were part of efforts to get some key amendments added before the final version was passed, and we’re very proud of that.  Initially, the regulation was much more restrictive and damaging. There were no restrictions on the number of challenges a person could submit each month, and any citizen could submit a challenge as opposed to only parents/guardians with students in the school district. The original proposed form also would have banned any instructional materials containing words which would be censored on broadcast television. We spent so much time attending state board meetings and writing letters as did our partner organizations and countless concerned citizens.

SCASL was proud to partner with Freedom to Read SC this year to begin a virtual book club which was open to any SC citizen who wanted to learn more about book censorship. We read two books which were banned by the state board this year, Flamer by Mike Curato and Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. Curato was also a featured author at the Read Freely Fest which was hosted by the Richland County Library in Columbia, SC. This type of advocacy seeks to provide folks with the opportunity to learn more about the targeted books and authors. In other words, as professional school librarians, we know that providing education is the key to combating censorship.

Tenley: Several grassroots organizations have formed to oppose the censorship being imposed by the State Board of Education. We do not coordinate their efforts, but we appreciate their support.

Something that’s been impossible to not see is that there is a big difference in response to book censorship and attacks on libraries from state library association to state library association. Why is there such a difference? As folks in a state where censorship and attacks are among the highest in the country, it has to be frustrating to not see that same level of engagement–proactive anti-censorship advocacy included–mirrored in every state-level association. 

Jamie: I think it just comes down to the volunteers who are part of each state school library organization. Yes, we are all volunteers! The members of our board all work full-time jobs in addition to fulfilling their SCASL board duties. I initially accepted the offer of SCASL leadership back in the fall of 2022 before anyone knew this regulation was on the horizon. Now, people are agreeing to volunteer with the full knowledge of the deep level of opposition we’re facing, and it’s not for everyone. We interact with people who are ideologically opposed to the very idea of what we do as a profession, who have publicly cut ties with our organization, who have publicly attacked us professionally and personally. Many school librarians can’t be as involved as they’d like to be because they rightfully fear retaliation from their school districts and communities. It’s simply not easy work.

We’ve also faced even more opposition in South Carolina because at the very beginning of Ellen Weaver’s tenure in 2023, she abruptly decided to sever ties with SCASL, effectively ending what was a 50-year partnership between SCASL and the SC Department of Education. She utilized her political positioning to publicly attack our organization which has more than 1,000 members statewide, which has simultaneously encouraged some of us to become even more involved in fighting back but also difficult for some because of her position and influence.

The same strategies are also not necessarily going to work in each state because each state legislature and state board of education can function differently. At the same time, some state superintendents of education are connected through their national political groups and other ties, such as South Carolina and Oklahoma, so it would be beneficial to have stronger ties across states. Another obstacle we face on that front is that of course the individuals serving in leadership roles change each year in our school library associations, making it difficult to achieve long-term collaboration.

But I am willing to bet that South Carolina is the foremost leader in intellectual freedom advocacy in the entire nation because of the extraordinary networks that have developed across the state since 2021. It’s all thanks to the efforts of a few individuals who have worked tirelessly to connect as many like-minded people as possible so that when an issue arises, the network can show up and speak out. We’ve had some victories in our state in individual school districts because of our state’s organized efforts, which has been so encouraging to watch especially this past year. I’m simply amazed at how many people in this state have become involved in this hard work and how willing they are to work as part of an organized movement. We inspire each other, we hold each other up, we know we don’t do this work alone; this camaraderie ensures the future strength and growth of our movement.

How has this law impacted school librarians? In what ways has it emboldened hate and harassment toward library workers? 

Tenley: I recently spoke at an event that a grassroots organization hosted. Afterward, the local Moms 4 Liberty Group posted on Facebook that we had been discussing porn for kids. We also had a speaker at the April State Board of Education meeting make public comments calling librarians “porn pushers.” Certain individuals have found that they can make defaming or libelous statements with little to no consequences.

Jamie: People who support the regulation have started to use more targeted rhetoric against us. Some suggest that because we advocate against the regulation, we must support having sexually explicit materials in school libraries. Making audacious claims such as this is demoralizing and as Tenley said can cross the line to defamation. Some simply don’t think twice about accusing us of felonies such as distributing pornography to minors. Some of us have been publicly attacked by elected officials such as state representatives and senators, leading to people calling our schools and complaining about us, making us fear for our jobs.

We all know how easy it is for rumors to spread through social media. We’ve had school librarians who no longer feel welcome or even safe in their communities because of comments that have spread. That’s the kind of consequence that can’t be taken back or erased. 

I think in general, it has caused a widespread feeling of disturbance that Superintendent Weaver and the state board are targeting our work when we in fact provide fundamental services to our students, teachers, and parents, including teaching people how to access information and use it safely and ethically, as well as teaching people to love reading in part by providing inclusive and diverse reading materials. That our profession can be reduced to simply whether or not we provide access to sexually explicit materials is frankly dumbfounding and confusing particularly when our state ranks toward the bottom in educational achievement. We know it’s a political talking point, but again, we’d rather not be the ones paying the price for someone’s political ambitions. 

Where and how have you seen the law fuel quiet/silent/self censorship in school libraries? Do you have any sense of the scope of such censorship in school libraries? 

Jamie: Quiet censorship is perhaps the most insidious side effect of this regulation (and of Ellen Weaver’s leadership more broadly). Members have reported to SCASL leadership throughout the year how individual school districts decided to broadly censor many books before the school year even started in an effort to avoid controversy. These actions are described as “quiet” because students and parents don’t even know it’s happening. When school librarians are given a list of titles and asked to remove them, they often don’t have much choice except to comply. Even though regulation 43.170 is limited to censoring materials for sexual content, many officials more broadly censored any materials it deemed potentially controversial, including on topics related to Black and BIPOC history and LGBTQ+ topics, which constitutes viewpoint discrimination.

Similarly, the type of environment created by Superintendent Ellen Weaver and regulation 43.170 causes some school librarians to deselect the purchase of materials that could be viewed as controversial, which is self censorship. We remind people that the regulation focuses solely on sexual content. We also relay the message that self censorship can be a form of simply trying to preserve one’s position, which is understandable. Sometimes school librarians are forced into these decisions; we are not trying to judge people who self censor. However, we try to encourage people to be mindful of their actions, not to interpret the regulation beyond what it actually states, and to have conversations with their school administrators to lessen the impacts of the paranoia and confusion caused by the regulation. We also advise school librarians to reach out to others in the community who can be more vocal on their behalf.

It was widely anticipated that the State Department of Education would ban 10 books in April, but that meeting, it sounded like several members of the committee were questioning what the point of such bans were–some going so far as to question why they were driving once a month across the state to do so. That shift in tone reversed in May, when those 10 books were then banned. What do you think it will take to see actual change going forward?

Jamie: I think it’s a victory in and of itself simply to have witnessed the discussion which took place during the April meeting. We were so heartened to hear a thoughtful, reflective discourse, but feeling heartened was also sad because that should be the norm, not the exception. Dr. David O’Shields shared information he received from the school librarians in his district! He collaborated with them to get facts! No one else on the state board has done this most basic of actions. 

Now that one school year has passed for us to observe how the state board has implemented the regulation, we continue to encourage parents whose children are directly affected to be in touch with the state board members as well as their state representatives and senators. We also continue to point out how arbitrarily the regulation has been implemented, which opens the board up to legal action. SCASL repeatedly offers suggestions to amend the regulation which so far have not been taken up by the board. But we know the majority of people across the state do not agree with the regulation or how the board has implemented it. It’s a matter of impressing upon the board and Superintendent Weaver how unpopular it is, and getting members of the state legislature to understand how much of a legal problem this regulation is. It also seems to me that district superintendents and school board members could advocate against the regulation directly to Superintendent Weaver and the state board members because they do often work together. That level of support would go a long way to boost school librarians’ morale.

 

Ultimately, the state school board members are the ones who have the power to reverse the damage being caused by this regulation by amending or repealing it. We will continue to exercise our rights as citizens to dialogue with them, to present facts and testimony, and to encourage them to exercise their leadership responsibilities by eliminating such a harmful practice and get back to the real issues facing South Carolina’s students.

Something that should be emphasized here is that books which have been banned at the state level have been titles challenged by TWO adults in the entire state. That’s two adults who have been given so much power that their complaints–cherry picked passages from the banned texts–led to books being banned in every single school. When and how does the actual public push back against this? Do they even know? Where and how do you get parents and public school advocates to spread the message that some random person on the other side of the state has been given the power to determine what happens in *their* schools . . . especially as those parents were denied their requests to ban the books in their own local schools? 

Jamie: One part of our advocacy and outreach work is to educate the general public about what has been happening this school year. We all know how difficult it is to keep up with current events and issues in society, and sometimes people want to be informed and even get involved but simply are overwhelmed and cannot keep up on their own. SCASL leadership sends out an email to members after each IMRC and full state board meeting, providing summaries, email addresses for officials, and suggested talking points. Many people have told us how helpful these emails are to keep them informed. Local and state news outlets have also been providing coverage for this issue, and several have given us the opportunity to represent school librarians and students, which we greatly appreciate. 

It is certainly the case that many, many individuals and organizations have been speaking out across the state over the past year. People are certainly staying informed and are making their voices known to their elected officials. I suppose at some point it’s the age-old problem of elected officials actually listening to their constituents instead of simply following their own political ideology. 

What is the impact of these bans on students? What are you hearing from them? 

Tenley: At the end of the school year, I was shifting the collection to create more room for graphic novels and manga, and several students voiced concerns because they thought we were removing books. Students are aware of the regulation. High School teachers across the state have restricted access to or entirely removed their classroom libraries because of the requirement to catalog their books and follow the regulation guidelines. 

Jamie: Although I work at an independent school and am therefore not affected by the state board’s actions, I know that my students are aware of what’s happening because they will ask me questions. It baffles them to think about why the state board thinks these books are “harmful” enough to ban given everything else they face in society today, especially in terms of technology. While they realize that their rights at my school are not at risk, they still are very much concerned about the wider implications. 

Students pay attention, and they hear what is being said about them. Consider how damaging it is for a young person who identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community to continually hear legislators and state board members talk about their community as if it is too inappropriate or dangerous to be represented in school libraries. Stakeholders need to stop sexualizing entire minority groups. All students have the right to attend school in a safe environment that provides equal and inclusive access to representation regardless of officials’ personal beliefs.

Where and how does the state–currently ranked 40th in education nationally–plan or consider addressing the inequities they’re putting onto their students? How can students in South Carolina be competitive academically to peers in other states when it comes to college admissions, to advanced placement tests, or similar when they’re denied access to books that those peers have? (I suspect you’ll cover it here, but $$$$, obv.)

Tenley: I am very concerned about the impact the regulation will have on students’  preparedness for higher education.

Jamie: Unfortunately, the book banners argue that they are not banning books, they are simply removing inappropriate materials. They also argue that students and parents can still check out these books from public libraries or buy them from Amazon or the bookstore, so therefore they aren’t banning books. Superintendent Ellen Weaver also decided in June 2024 to disallow any school districts to offer the AP African American Studies course because it’s too “controversial.” Weaver and her allies have created an atmosphere that is, I would say with confidence, hostile to higher education, which aligns with the efforts of other nationwide organizations and political movements. Thus, they are not concerned that their unconstitutional actions will harm students’ abilities to achieve academically; rather, they think they are providing sacred protections against evil which will illogically make them stronger students by eliminating “liberal indoctrination.”

To be more specific, Superintendent Ellen Weaver hired Dr. Mark Herring as the Education Associate for school libraries and librarians in the state department of education, and there has been rhetoric from the department criticizing USC’s iSchool program. I won’t provide a link to his “writings,” but he has written pieces claiming that the American Library Association is a far left-leaning radical institution, and even includes higher education institutions in this evaluation. It is troubling to read his attacks on higher education given his new position. He also has never worked as a school librarian (similarly, Ellen Weaver has never worked as an educator). So we do see the book banning as just one part of a strategy to devalue and create distrust in current higher education institutions in this state.

When, where, and how does this end? Is it when there’s a state-wide voucher program allowing taxpayer money to be used to send wealthy kids  to private schools so they don’t need to be near books their parents deem “inappropriate?” Is it when there are no public schools? Is it when there are so many books banned that keeping a list of acceptable books is shorter and easier? In other words, what is even the path forward at this point? 

Jamie: Once the regulation was passed last summer, we knew it would take time to reach a point when the tide would turn. We endured this first year of the regulation’s implementation and now have a better idea of how the board intends to utilize the regulation although it is still very much a guessing game as they pick and choose which types of sexual content are age inappropriate (from the board: “descriptions require enough ‘explanatory detail’ to form a mental image of the conduct occurring”). I’m not sure how Dr. Christian Hanley, chair of the IMRC, expects me to know what types of mental images he’s forming as he’s reading the excerpts provided by a complainant.

The South Carolina legislature is very much interested in bolstering a statewide voucher program, and recently passed new legislation with this very goal in mind (last year’s attempt was struck down by the state supreme court, but of course that didn’t stop the Republican-controlled legislature from simply trying again). Ironically, though, this push toward private schools means no government oversight or control; the school library in a private school is not controlled by Superintendent Ellen Weaver.

We need people who are normally swayed by the rhetoric surrounding vouchers to realize the reality of utilizing private schools on a mass scale. Private schools do not necessarily provide the resources needed for learning differences, students with severe disabilities, students who need assistance through free or reduced-cost meals, language support, transportation, and more. There aren’t enough private schools to replace the public school system. Teachers are generally paid less than through the state system and are not required to have professional certification or continuing education. Charter schools are not a panacea either; what happens when the authorizer’s structure fails, forcing them to close? It may only be when there aren’t enough public schools open, and a private school isn’t an option, that working parents finally understand they’re being lied to for someone else’s political gain.

In terms of book banning, it helps that one person can only submit 5 book challenges per month to the IMRC, and so far only two citizens have utilized the process. I’m confident that as advocacy efforts grow after this first year, and the board’s actions become ever more unpopular, there will be a point at which the board will have to reconsider the regulation’s purpose, which means reminding them of Ellen Weaver’s political agenda in creating it in the first place, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the over 750,000 public school students in South Carolina.

Also, Ellen Weaver is serving in an elected position. We look forward to meeting the people who will decide to run against her.

How do you keep yourself moving forward? How do you maintain hope? 

Jamie: This is a tough one because book banners have engaged in such personal attacks. But as often happens in times of trials, our organization is stronger than ever. For the second year in a row, we have over 1,000 members which is an incredible and humbling show of support and faith in what we do. We celebrated our 50th anniversary this year and were so grateful to have the support of so many past SCASL leaders and supporters. Our collaborators and colleagues let us know how much they support us and believe in us in so many ways which keeps us motivated to continue to advocate for students. We also know that intellectual freedom is the basis of our profession and of American society, and we are honored to be involved in this work. 

Many of us have endured personal attacks for the past three years, which has been a long time. Of course there are personal ups and downs, but in my really low moments, I try to remember all of the students I’ve had in my life who have shared how much I impacted their lives. I make sure I print out emails, save notes, take screenshots of lovely comments on social media, etc., and look through those during low moments. I also have notes, emails, messages, and memories from colleagues who have supported me from the very beginning. I wouldn’t know some of the truly exceptional people who are in my life now if it weren’t for the bad stuff. Ultimately, I actively make the decision not to allow the bad actors to control my life. 

I also try to remove myself from the situation and remember that book censorship has been part of American society since the very beginning. As Ibram X. Kendi said at the 2023 ALA annual conference in Chicago, the freedom fight chooses you. I may never know why it chose me, because there have been some truly deeply hurtful times, but I’ve been entrusted with this responsibility on behalf of my students. I won’t solve it, but I’ll do my part. And when enough of us are doing that, we will achieve victories and inspire future generations to continue the work as well.

What can South Carolinians do to protect access to books and school libraries? What about Americans who live in other states? Where and how can they support efforts to protect the freedom to read in South Carolina, in their own state, and nationally? 

Jamie: People who don’t work in libraries probably don’t realize how important it is to use the library! We rely on our checkout and usage statistics to make all sorts of decisions. If a book is labeled as “controversial,” read it yourself! Partner up with a school librarian who can explain what literary merit means and how we select books which fairly represent all types of people. Ask a school librarian to host an event at a public library to raise awareness of intellectual freedom rights in America. The public library is one of the original community meeting spaces!

We need everyone to speak up, especially on behalf of the school librarians who can’t be involved. Most people don’t realize that school librarians are the first and perhaps only line of defense in a school for students’ First Amendment rights. It’s a sacred, sacred profession and should be treated as such. Please contact your state representatives and senators, your representative on the state board of education, and your local school district board members. Make sure they know your name. Go to meetings regularly. Establish a presence so they know you are watching. And when I say “you,” I mean your network. Please join your state’s school library association and public library association. They will help you stay informed and let you know their goals and values in terms of talking points. 

The tide is undoubtedly turning against Moms 4 Liberty and other radical, extremist groups in terms of elected positions. Consider running for a position to add a balanced, moderate, educated voice to your local and state-level school boards. People who are invested in and who care about their local community are the ones who should be in leadership roles, not those with national political ideologies.

What is happening is not inevitable. In true American tradition, those of us who deeply care about democracy and intellectual freedom will continue to show up until this iteration of Ellen Weaver’s fascistic leadership has faded into the background. And we will remain as organized as ever, ready to ensure the rights of the freedom to read for the next generation. We’d love to have you join us.