Florida Book Bans

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, and Stephen King are just a few of the authors whose books have been banned from Florida public school libraries because of the censorship laws passed by extreme Republican politicians.

President Eisenhower once warned: ``Don't join the book burners.'' ``Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.''

According to the Florida Department of Education, more than 700 books were banned from libraries in public school districts last year after Governor Ron DeSantis signed Florida's extreme book ban law.

There is nothing Americans hate more than politicians who want to take away their freedoms.

Yet Republican politicians want to take away the freedom of women to get an abortion. They want to take away the freedom of gay and lesbian Americans to marry their partners. Now, they want to take away freedom at the library.

Banning books is not just an attack on personal freedom. It is an attack on American values that we all believe in. People of all ages ought to be able to access the world of knowledge that comes from reading, including from those books that some may find controversial. Reading controversial books is part of how we challenge ourselves and each other to grow and strive and to create.

Book banners will claim that their goal is to protect people, but what they really want is to control people. That is not America.

``Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose [what to read] is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me,'' said children's author Judy Blume, another author whose name appears on the book ban list.

We must reclaim the freedom to read from the extreme politicians trying to turn back the clock for our kids, our country, and our future.

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