I'm really getting tired of nonsense regarding race and/or gender. There has been historic and systematic discrimination of all women and men of color. Pointing that reality out is not the problem -- the sexism and racism is the problem. Addressing this discrimination is a needed fix to a system that has oppressed and discriminated for years. This week, Laphonza Butler became my state's new US senator. I'm happy about it. Gavin Newsom, the governor, appointed her to fill Dianne Feinstein's seat. Some people are still having a fit. Like THE LOS ANGELES TIMES writer Mark Z. Barabak:
But my problem with Newsom goes beyond his serial appointments.
I think he royally mucked up this whole process, starting with his ill-considered promise back in March 2021 to appoint a Black woman to replace Feinstein.
Fine intention, badly executed.
Here's why: Whenever someone promises to appoint a Black woman, or a Latino or pudgy white guy with a bad comb-over to some political position, a not-insignificant number of people will assume the only reason that person was chosen was because they were a Black woman, or a Latino or a white guy with a bad comb-over.
Newsom could have just appointed Butler, or another Black woman, and extol his selection based on her merits.
But if he hadn't made that promise he wouldn't gotten have the credit he wanted or tamp down the anger of Black voters — unhappy with the selection of Padilla — whose support he needed as he faced a threatened recall.
They point to instances where transgender Medicaid recipients were denied coverage for hormone therapy after the June ruling and comments from the agency’s secretary warning of possible further action against Medicaid providers for violations of the state’s rule.
The state has appealed Hinkle’s ruling. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has not paused the lower court’s judgment, so it remains in effect as the appeal continues.
“Defendants have thus acted as if this Court’s decision is a legal nullity that they can simply ignore on their whim,” the motion says. “That is not how our legal system works, however.”
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) lead a new poll measuring voter preferences ahead of the 2024 U.S. Senate race in California, but a plurality of likely primary voters in the state are still undecided.
In a Berkeley IGS poll released Thursday, Schiff led with 20 percent support among likely voters, Porter followed with 17 percent support, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) had 7 percent support and Democratic tech executive Lexie Reese had 1 percent support. Among Republican candidates, James Bradley received 10 percent support and Eric Early received 7 percent support.
Kevin McCarthy has been toppled in a right-wing revolt - the first time ever that a US House of Representatives Speaker has lost a no-confidence vote.
The final tally was 216-210 to remove the congressman as leader of the Republican majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
Hardliners in his party voted against him after he struck a deal with Senate Democrats to fund government agencies.
There is no clear successor to oversee the House Republican majority.
Though an interim speaker was named, the fact that Republicans joined in with their opposition to take down McCarthy reiterates a strong underlying message:
While Trump would be eligible to become speaker since House rules do not require the position to be filled by a member, he has previously indicated that he is not interested in the role.
If the former president were to accept his nomination and managed to become the next speaker, it would represent an extraordinary turn of events as he campaigns to regain the presidency in 2024.
Trump has been indicted four times in the past six months. He is facing charges in two federal cases—one related to the classified documents held at his Mar-a-Lago estate and the other in connection to his election interference efforts, culminating in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
He has also been indicted in Manhattan in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star and in Georgia in a case involving efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results there. In total, he's been charged with 91 felony counts, many of which carry sentences greater than two years of imprisonment.
Over the last year, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, what has been most striking is the pivot of censorship advocates from books in school libraries to books in public libraries.
"Last year, about 16% of demands to remove books involved public libraries," Caldwell-Stone says. "This year, to date, it's 49%."
Town by town is taking you to Agawam, Springfield and Chicopee.
It’s day two of banned book week at the Agawam Public Library with displays of challenged and banned books over the past 50-plus years.
“Let Freedom Read” is the official 2023 campaign from the American library association and the Agawam Library is encouraging visitors to learn about banned books and what it means to have the freedom to read.
Kyle Lukoff, the author of “Call Me Max” and the Newbery Honor book “Too Bright to See,” among others, said the national publicity did little to nothing to improve sales of “Max.” Instead, it introduced his work to people who want to remove it from bookshelves in their local schools and libraries.
“I’ve had this said to me many times — ‘I wish my book would get banned because that’s the best way to get it on the best-seller list,’” Lukoff said in a phone interview. “That certainly never happened for me.”
Lukoff hasn’t yet earned royalties from “Call Me Max” or the other two books in its series, he said. His advances were $2,500 per book, and he won’t earn those royalties until all of them earn the money back.
Lukoff’s experience — and the experiences of hundreds of authors whose books have been banned in the last school year — contradicts a common refrain among some authors and anti-censorship proponents that banning a book results in a sales surge.
“When books get banned, even when authors do see a spike in sales, it is much more devastating for careers in the long run,” Lukoff said. “If your book is kept out of libraries and schools in entire states — that does translate to a long-term consistent drop in sales.”
Phil Bildner, a children’s book author and advocate for fellow writers, said that “having a book banned is not a badge of honor.”
“I still don’t think most people grasp just how financially devastating this book banning era is to queer authors and authors from marginalized communities,” said Bildner, who runs the Author Village, a group that represents authors and illustrators for school visits. “And I know most people don’t grasp the emotional toll it’s having on the authors in the crosshairs.”
Up until recently, a list of banned books was a blend of the usual suspects — “The Catcher in the Rye,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Bluest Eye” — and newer favorites like “The Hate U Give” and “Thirteen Reasons Why.”
But book bans have surged in the last year. PEN America, an organization that supports and protects First Amendment rights for writers, journalists and other communicators, reported that more than 3,300 books were banned in the 2022-2023 school year, a 33% increase from the previous school year. These bans “overwhelmingly” target books about race and racism, as well as books with LGBTQ characters, PEN America said in its September study on school book bans.
There are concentrated efforts from groups like Moms for Liberty and LaVerna in the Library, an offshoot of Utah Parents United, to ban dozens of books at once. These groups compile comprehensive lists of books that contain what these groups point to as objectionable material. Websites like Rated Books and BookLooks grade books based on their content and highlight potentially objectionable paragraphs on their sites, posting entire pages out of context.
Vocal individuals have also had immense power in banning books: The Washington Post reported in May that 60% of book challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people.
Oprah Daily spoke to Isabel Wilkerson about book bans, including that of Caste, which has been removed from some libraries. A film version of Caste, titled Origin and directed by Ava DuVernay, premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month.
How did you find out that your book was banned?
My name came up in social media when The Washington Post ran a piece last spring about a library system in Texas that shut down all its libraries, and when the libraries reopened, Caste had “mysteriously vanished.”
How did it make you feel? What did you do? Is there anything you can do?
I was saddened but not surprised. These bans only affirm the forewarnings in the book. We’re in a period of backlash and retrenchment, which the book attests to and foreshadows. The only thing I can do is to keep pressing forward in my work, knowing that we can’t run from history and that the truth will win out in the end.
Putting aside your own work, what do you think of the situation overall?
In writing Caste, I had to do a tremendous amount of research into India and Germany during the Nazi era. The Nazis studied the United States’ Jim Crow laws in creating the Nuremberg laws. We are coming perilously close to the spirit of what they were doing in another century with the banning of books. It’s revisiting a past that we should never want to experience again.
This is coming at the worst possible time for us as a nation. We have an existential crisis in our demographics, politics, policing, and women’s reproductive rights. We’re a country on parallel tracks, and from responses to my books (The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste), I can see that some people are hungry and thirsty to understand the history of how we got here and what we can do. Then you have another segment that’s closing the door as quickly as others are pushing it open. It becomes yet another symbol of how deeply divided we remain and how these enduring divisions have managed to intrude upon us in this century. As we’re looking back at previous centuries to understand this one, we are, at the same time, replicating much of what we thought was in the past.
One of my favorite readers, LeVar Burton is the Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week. I listen faithfully to his podcast where he reads a short story. Some years ago, I had the privilege of hearing him live doing a wonderful reading from a local author. He is a reading advocate, writer, and television and film star
Now, for the main event-the list of banned books. Some of the books I have read and enjoyed. As I said before, I was in shock and even saddened because I don’t think these books should be banned. I will list mine here but to get the whole list visit the American Library Association’s website.
My Books on the List
1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Challenged for depiction of sexual abuse, EDI content, claimed to be sexually explicit
2. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Banned due to themes of death and the fact that the main characters are talking animals.
3. Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
Banned mostly in regard to passages that were considered “sexually offensive,” as well as for the tragic nature of the book, which some felt might be “depressing” for young readers. The passages in question regarded Anne describing her anatomy, sexual feelings, and homosexual descriptions of her friend.
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