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Books, News

1,100+ Banned Books Across 26 States: Report Shows ‘Shocking’ Censorship

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“What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity, and success,” said the director of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education program.

A report published Thursday by the free expression group PEN America details an “alarming” and unprecedented surge in book banning across the United States, with 86 school districts in 26 states prohibiting more than 1,100 titles in classrooms and libraries over just the past eight months.

“Book challenges in American schools are nothing new, but this type of data has never been tallied and quite frankly the results are shocking.”

Titled Banned in the USA, the report finds that districts representing 2,899 schools with a combined enrollment of more than 2 million students banned 1,145 unique book titles by 874 different authors, 198 illustrators, and nine translators between July 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022.  

In total, the new report documents 1,586 instances of individual books being banned as a right-wing censorship campaign and broader war on public education sweeps the country, prompting pushback from libraries, students, and local residents. Some book bans have been reversed in recent months thanks to student resistance.

The top three banned titles, according to PEN America’s analysis, are “centered on LGBTQ+ individuals or touch on the topic of same-sex relationships: Gender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe banned in 30 districts, All Boys Aren’t Blueby George M. Johnson, banned in 21 districts, and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evison, banned in 16 districts.”

“Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, a love story between a Black teenage boy and a Mexican-American girl set in 1930s Texas, was also banned in 16 districts,” the report notes. “The Bluest Eye by the late Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison is the fifth most banned book, in 12 districts.”

PEN compiled a list of the books subject to bans here.

Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education program and lead author of the report, said in a statement Thursday that “book challenges in American schools are nothing new, but this type of data has never been tallied and quite frankly the results are shocking.”

“Challenges to books, specifically books by non-white male authors, are happening at the highest rates we’ve ever seen,” said Friedman. “What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity, and success.”

“Because of the tactics of censors and the politicization of books we are seeing the same books removed across state lines: books about race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and sex most often,” Friedman continued. “This is an orchestrated attack on books whose subjects only recently gained a foothold on school library shelves and in classrooms. We are witnessing the erasure of topics that only recently represented progress toward inclusion.”

According to PEN America, Texas—where the state legislature is dominated by Republicans—leads the country with the most documented book bans at 713. Pennsylvania ranks second with 456 bans, followed by Florida with 204.

“A probing look at the surge in book bans across the country exposes an alarming pattern of mounting restrictions targeting specific stories and ideas and the widespread abandonment of established procedures aimed to safeguard the First Amendment in public education,” said Suzanne Nossel, PEN America’s CEO.

“By short-circuiting rights-protective review processes,” Nossel added, “these bans raise serious concerns in terms of constitutionality, and represent an affront to the role of our public schools as vital training grounds for democratic citizenship that instill a commitment to freedom of speech and thought.”

PEN’s report also raises concern over state legislators’ increasing introduction and approval of “educational gag orders to censor teachers, proposals to track and monitor teachers, and mechanisms to facilitate book banning in school districts.”

The group notes that 175 educational gag order bills have been introduced in 40 U.S. states and 15 such measures have become law in 13 states.

“Parents and community members deserve a voice in shaping what is taught in our schools,” Nossel said Thursday. “But the embrace of book bans as a weapon to ward off narratives that are seen as threatening represents a troubling retreat from America’s historic commitment to the First Amendment rights of students.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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News, Observation, Politics

What’s at stake as Supreme Court appears intent on overturning Roe v. Wade – 3 essential reads

A leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito suggests the Supreme Court is on the brink of overturning two rulings, including Roe v. Wade, that guarantee the right to abortion in the U.S.

The Supreme Court confirmed that the document, obtained and first reported on by Politico, is real, but said “Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

The opinion is due to be issued later in the year. The leaked document indicates that a conservative majority in the court is on track to end a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, opening the door for states to enact bans.

Although a seismic development in the long-running legal battle and social debate over abortion rights, the development is not entirely unexpected. In recent years, pro-abortion rights advocates have been ringing alarm bells over threats to Roe. Legal scholars, health experts and sociologists have helped explain in The Conversation U.S. what is at stake and what it would mean for American women should the historic ruling be overturned.

1. How Roe changed women’s lives

A lot has changed in the nearly 50 years that separate the constitutional enshrining of the right to abortion in the U.S. to the brink of ending that right.

Constance Shehan, a sociologist at the University of Florida, provides a snapshot of life for women prior to the landmark case. In 1970, the “average age at first marriage for women in the U.S. was just under 21. Twenty-five percent of women high school graduates aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college and about 8 percent of adult women had completed four years of college,” she notes. But today, she says, “roughly two generations after Roe v. Wade, women are postponing marriage, marrying for the first time at about age 27 on average. Seventeen percent over age 25 have never been married. Some estimates suggest that 25 percent of today’s young adults may never marry.”

How much of this change in the experiences of American women is due to Roe? And if it is overturned, will the trends be reversed? Such questions are difficult answer. But there is evidence that carrying through with an unwanted pregnancy may have a detrimental effect on a woman’s education – and that, in turn, has an impact on career opportunities and income, writes Shehan. “Two-thirds of families started by teens are poor, and nearly 1 in 4 will depend on welfare within three years of a child’s birth. Many children will not escape this cycle of poverty. Only about two-thirds of children born to teen mothers earn a high school diploma, compared to 81 percent of their peers with older parents.”

Medical abortion isn’t the only option for young women seeking abortion. As Shehan notes: “With the availability of a greater range of contraception and abortion drugs other than medical procedures available today, along with a strong demand for women’s labor in the U.S. economy, it seems unlikely that women’s status will ever go back to where it was before 1973. But Americans shouldn’t forget the role that Roe v. Wade played in advancing the lives of women.”

2. Who might be affected?

“One important group’s voice is often absent in this heated debate: the women who choose abortion,” writes Luu D. Ireland at UMass Chan Medical School. She notes that 1 in 4 American women have the procedure at some point in their life, yet because of the perceived stigma involved, their perspective is largely missing. As an obstetrician/gynecologist, Ireland does, however, hear on a daily basis stories from women who opt for an abortion.

She notes that while abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care for many, and women of all backgrounds choose to end their pregnancies, unintended pregnancies are more common in certain groups: poorer women, women of color and those with lower levels of formal education.

“Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as white women,” she writes.

The reason women opt to terminate a pregnancy varies. The most common reason is that the timing is wrong – it would interfere with education, careers or caring for family members. The second most cited reason is financial – the women seeking an abortion just can’t afford the associated costs of raising a child at that time. One impact of abortion restrictions, research has shown, is that women unable to get one “are more likely live in poverty or depend on cash assistance, and less likely to work full-time,” Ireland writes.

More than just financial risks

Financial problems are one result of restricting safe, available access to abortions. Another is a jump in the cases of pregnancy-related deaths. Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist at University of Colorado Boulder, looked into what would happen should the U.S. ends all abortions nationwide.

To be clear, this is not what would happen should the Supreme Court overturn Roe – rather, it would allow states to implement bans based on the ending of a constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion. Nonetheless, Stevenson’s research gives context as to risks involved for women who may find themselves in states that do not allow abortion, and who lack the means to get to a state that does.

She notes that staying pregnant actually carries a greater risk of death than having an abortion.

“Abortion is incredibly safe for pregnant people in the U.S., with 0.44 deaths per 100,000 procedures from 2013 to 2017. In contrast, 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births occurred in 2019,” she writes. Stevenson estimates that “the annual number of pregnancy-related deaths would increase by 21% overall, or 140 additional deaths, by the second year after a ban.” The jump in deaths would be even higher among non-Hispanic Black women.

Matt Williams, Breaking News Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

Why a warming climate can bring bigger snowstorms

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Above: Photo by Josh Hild from Pexels

The blizzard that buried Boston under nearly 2 feet of snow in January 2022 was historic, but not a surprise. Over a century of reliable weather records show many of the Northeast’s heaviest snowfalls have occurred since 1990 – including seven of the top 10 in both Boston and New York.

At the same time, winters in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have warmed by approximately 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 C) since the late 1800s.

How can the spate of big snowstorms be reconciled with our warming climate? I’m an atmospheric scientist. Let’s look at an important law of physics and some theories that can help explain the changes.

Warmer air, more moisture

First, warmer air can hold more moisture than cold air.

Think of the atmosphere like a sponge. Air holds about 4% more water vapor for each additional degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature (that’s about 7% per degree Celsius). The physical law that explains this relationship is known as the Clausius-Clapyron relation.

This increased atmospheric moisture is helping to intensify the water cycle. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have become wetter – not just in winter, but in spring, summer and fall, too. In addition to more total precipitation over a season and year, the additional moisture also fuels extreme events, like more intense hurricanes and flooding rains. The Northeast has seen an increase of more than 50% in the heaviest precipitation events in recent decades, the largest increase of any region of the U.S.

In the early 1900s, winters across the Northeast typically averaged around 22 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, 26 degrees is the official new “normal” temperature, defined as the average over 1991-2020. A few recent winters have been over 30.

In the Northeast, then, we have an environment that has warmed yet is often still below freezing. Put another way, regions of the world that are cold enough for snow have warmed enough to now be visited by storms capable of holding and dropping more moisture. Rather than intense downpours like Louisiana has been seeing lately, the region gets heavy snow.

The warming ocean plays a role

The January blizzard was fueled by ocean waters in the western Atlantic that are warmer than normal. That’s also part of a consistent pattern.

The oceans have been absorbing more than 90% of the additional heat attributable to rising atmospheric greenhouse gases from human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels. The oceans now contain more heat energy than any time since measurements began six decades ago.

Scientists are studying whether global warming may be driving a slowing of the ocean conveyor belt of currents that transport water around the globe. Satellite imagery and ocean measurements show that warmer waters have “piled up” along the East Coast, a possible indication of a slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Moisture evaporated from ocean water provides much of the energy for both tropical and mid-latitude extra-tropical cyclones, known commonly as nor’easters.

The Arctic influences the snow pattern, too

While tropical storm systems are fueled primarily by warm water, nor’easters gain energy from sharp temperature gradients where cold and warm air masses meet. The frequency of cold air outbreaks is another aspect of climate change that may be contributing to recent increases in extreme snowfall events.

Recent research has suggested that a warming Arctic, including declines in Arctic sea ice and snow cover, is influencing behavior of the polar vortex, a band of strong westerly winds that forms in the stratosphere between about 10 and 30 miles above the Arctic every winter. The winds enclose a large pool of extremely cold air.

When the Arctic is relatively warm, the polar vortex tends to be weaker and more easily elongates or “stretches,” allowing extremely cold air to dip south. Episodes of polar-vortex stretching have markedly increased in the past few decades, leading, at times, to more severe winter weather in some places.

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What is the polar vortex? NASA explains.

Arctic amplification, the enhanced warming to our north, may, paradoxically, be helping to shuttle cold air to the Eastern Seaboard during polar vortex disruptions, where the cold air can interact with warmer, moisture-laden air from the warmer-than-normal western Atlantic Ocean. The most recent stretched polar vortex event helped to bring together key ingredients for the historic blizzard.

What’s ahead?

Global climate models project an increase in the most extreme snowfall events across large areas of the Northern Hemisphere with future warming. In some other parts of the world, like Western Europe, intensification of the hydrological cycle will mean more winter rain than snow as temperatures rise.

For the east coast of North America, as well as Northern Asia, winter temperatures are expected to still be cold enough for storms to bring heavy snow – at least through mid-century. Climate models suggest that extreme snowfalls will become rarer, but not necessarily less intense, in the second half of the century, as more storms produce rain.

The sharp increase in high-impact Northeast winter storms is an expected manifestation of a warming climate. It’s another risk the U.S. will have to prepare for as extreme events become more common with climate change.

Michael A. Rawlins, Associate Director, Climate System Research Center, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation by Michael A. Rawlins, UMass Amherst under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tests positive for Covid after banning masks

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Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor for Texas tested positive for Covid-19. The news comes in the middle of the legal battles over banning vaccination and mask mandates in the state, despite opposition from both local officials and school districts. 

According to NBC News, Abbott is fully vaccinated, there are reports he also received a 3rd booster shot and is currently receiving Regeneron’s antibody treatment (usually exclusive to those with compromised immune systems). Per his communication’s director, he is “in good health, and currently experiencing no symptoms.”

“Governor Abbott is in constant communication with his staff, agency heads, and government officials to ensure that state government continues to operate smoothly and efficiently”

-Mark Miner, the governor’s communications director

Perhaps a “bit” hyprocritcal?  Abbott has access and benefits from any and all possible medical services necessary. Unfortunately the same privilege is not available to most ordinary Texans, where currently the state is experiencing a surge of new cases and hospitalizations

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