Children’s biographies of trailblazing transgender public figures. An award-winning novel reflecting on what it is like to be Black in America. A series of graphic novels about the love story between a teenage gay couple.
Those are some of the 596 books that have been pulled from shelves in the Defense Department schools that serve military children as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to censor LGBTQ+ and racial issues from official government materials.
The full list was released by the order of a federal judge as part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense Education Activity’s implementation of President Donald Trump’s anti-diversity and anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders.
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“The amount of titles banned by the Trump administration is astonishing, and the list provided by DoDEA perfectly illustrates how the administration is putting politics above pedagogy,” Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in an emailed statement to Military.com. “Kids on military bases have the same First Amendment rights that we all enjoy, and that their parents swore an oath to defend. Yet the administration has forced schools to remove titles like ‘A Is for Activist’ and ‘Julian Is a Mermaid’ that reflect the vibrant and diverse world we live in. All 596 of these books must be returned to shelves immediately.”
“A Is for Activist” is an ABC board book about progressive terms and values, while “Julian Is a Mermaid” is a picture book about a boy who wants to become a mermaid.
Among his first acts in office, Trump ordered every federal agency to get rid of all policies and materials related to “gender ideology,” a right-wing term for being transgender, and the ill-defined concept of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
At the Pentagon, the orders spurred a widespread, sometimes erratic effort to scrub minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people from public websites and databases, some of which were restored after public outrage. Books were also pulled from libraries across the Defense Department, including at the service academies that educate future military officers and the DoDEA schools that serve military children in pre-kindergarten through high school.
In April, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a dozen DoDEA students and their families alleging that the book bans and other actions to implement Trump’s executive orders at the schools violate the First Amendment.
During a June hearing in the lawsuit, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Biden appointee in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, ordered the Trump administration to provide the full list of books removed from the DoDEA.
The Trump administration requested Giles reconsider her order, arguing that the list can’t be released because it is “pre-decisional” since officials are still deciding the final fate of the books.
But on Friday, Giles reaffirmed her order and released the full list.
The majority of books on the list appear to be related to LGBTQ+ themes and issues.
They include several biographies written for children about transgender icons, including actor Chaz Bono, director Lana Wachowski, actress Laverne Cox and former public health official Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate who has been a particular target of derision from conservative politicians and commentators.
“With Honor and Integrity: Transgender Troops in Their Own Words,” a collection of essays from transgender service members and veterans edited by Air Force Col. Bree Fram and Army veteran Mael Embser-Herbert, was also removed.
Also on the list are several volumes of “Heartstopper,” an acclaimed series of graphic novels that was adapted into an acclaimed Netflix series about two British teenage boys who fall in love. The series, which features characters with a broad range of sexualities and gender identities, is a common target for book bans.
A few books about the history of the Stonewall riots, which are considered the start of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and the history of which the Trump administration has been rewriting to remove transgender people; multiple study guides for Advanced Placement Psychology, which includes lessons on gender identity; and a couple of books to help kids going through puberty that online summaries show include references to gender identity have also been pulled.
Another sizable chunk of the banned books discuss race and racism in America.
One such book is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” a National Book Award winner that is written as a series of letters to his son reflecting on racism and being Black in America.
“The Talk: Conversations about Race, Love & Truth” by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson, a collection of short stories exploring conversations families have about race in America, was removed, as were the similarly titled “The Talk” by Darrin Bell, a graphic novel about police brutality, and “The Talk” by Alicia D. Williams, a picture book about a family’s advice to a young Black boy about how to navigate racism.
Also pulled were several books with titles that mention Black Lives Matter, white privilege and anti-racism, including Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds’ young adult novel “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You.”
Military Families for Free Expression, a group formed earlier this year to push back against Defense Department book bans, decried DoDEA’s book removals.
“This list reflects a sweeping effort to silence voices, particularly those centering on Black, brown and LGBTQ+ experiences,” Libby Jamison, the group’s spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. “These bans aren’t about protecting children; they’re about restricting what young people are allowed to know, feel and question.”
DoDEA spokesperson Jessica Tackaberry declined to comment on the list on Monday, citing the fact it is part of ongoing litigation, but said in an email generally that the school system “remains committed to providing a high-quality, standards-based education for all military-connected students and will continue to follow established procedures as the legal process moves forward.”
Pentagon officials have previously maintained that removed books have not been banned and are in the process of being reviewed for a final decision on their fate. Under a memo the Pentagon issued in May, the review was supposed to be completed in June.
A Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to a question about the status of the review by Military.com’s deadline Monday.
Trump administration administration officials have also argued that banning books is not a First Amendment violation.
“Government speech is immune from scrutiny under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause because when the government engages in speech, it is constitutionally permissible for it to select the message it wishes to convey,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a motion last month seeking to have the lawsuit against the bans dismissed.
The full list of banned books is included in the court documents below:
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