Librarians Are Mad As Hell At The Trump Administration. They Think You Should Be, Too.

Alana Phelan, a former librarian in New Jersey who’s a full-time author now, spoke to the essential services libraries provide to communities. 

“For people without cars, without printers, without computers, a library can be the closest and most inexpensive way to take care of so many needs, all this while maintaining patron confidentiality,” Phelan said. “Reference can help finding aid for almost any situation. Online services help those who are homebound.” 

For students, libraries offer summer reading programs, early literacy development and grade-level reading programs. For job seekers and returning veterans, there’s employment assistance. For those with visual impairments, collections of Braille and talking books are invaluable. 

“I think many people in this country don’t realize what happens at their local library beyond taking out books and story time,” Phelan said. “I have former co-workers who have created makerspaces and taught kids how to code. It’s more than just books.” 

After years of right-wing pressure campaigns to ban books, there’s a predictability to the Trump White House targeting libraries, said Chelsea Heinbach, a teaching and learning librarian in Las Vegas and one of the creators of the resource site The Librarian Parlor.

We tend to take them for granted, but there’s something quietly radical about even the idea of a library and the intellectual freedom these local institutions inspire, she said. 

Public libraries are critical cornerstones of democracy, equipping people with critical thinking and information literacy skills while ensuring equitable access to information and education. 

“Providing these services with no upfront cost to all citizens regardless of their race, gender, citizenship status, or other demographic has become an inherently radical act, and it is for that reason that libraries are being targeted,” Heinbach said. 

Librarians we spoke to were also peeved that the Trump administration has tried to claim there’s never been a right-wing book ban push. Over the past few years, local news channels have broadcast the heated rhetoric at community meetings where parents and school boards lobby to censor and control decisions on library materials.

Since 2022, the American Library Association has seen an “unprecedented” number of book bans and challenges of books, including classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” books about the Holocaust like “Maus,” picture books about diverse families, and more.

In February, the Department of Defense circulated a memo to parents of students at DOD-operated schools that said it was examining library books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics.” 

Even “Freckleface Strawberry” may not be immune. The actor Julianne Moore claimed that her 2007 children’s book ― about a girl who learns to stop hating her freckles ― had been targeted for the potential ban at schools serving U.S. military families. 

Jones knows that these banning efforts are happening; she and her fellow librarians have been personally targeted and harassed as part of such campaigns. Jones even received death threats for speaking out against such censorship. 

“As a school librarian who was already reeling from these book bans, it feels completely like gaslighting to have the U.S. Department of Education put out that social media post about the ending of the alleged ‘Biden Book Ban Hoax,’” she said. 

“The public needs to wake up before our libraries are gone,” she added. 

Here’s what you can do to help your local library.