Fact Check: Tim Walz Falsely Claims Conservatives Are ‘Banning Books’ from Schools

CLAIM: “So while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”

VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. Curating curricula for age-appropriate material is not the same as “banning” books.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz trotted out a claim often made by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which is that Republican states have been “banning” books.

What is actually happening is that some conservative school boards and state administrators are removing provocative, and often pornographic, content from school libraries and curricula.

Curating a curriculum for age-appropriate material is not the same as “banning” books.

It is also a fact that left-wing activists want students to be exposed to LGBTQ-themed books, and radical ideas such as Critical Race Theory. Conservatives do not want to “ban” these books, but want to limit sexual content, especially for younger children, and want to stop schools from becoming vehicles for radical political indoctrination. None of that should be controversial.

Research in 2023 showed that 74% of the books that Democrats claim had been “banned” are actually still in school libraries.

Moreover, liberal states and school districts also “ban” books from curricula. A school district in Seattle pulled Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in 2022, as did a district in Newsom’s own California (temporarily). And few public schools would dare to teach the Bible, even as literature: effectively, liberal policies have “banned” the Bible in school.

Left-wing censorship extends to academia and the private sector, too. Students at the University of Virginia tried to cancel an appearance by Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which documents the dark side of the transgender phenomenon among girls. Amazon also blocked ads for the book.

While there are cases of school districts going too far, and restricting access to books and authors that are probably good for children to read, these are debates about pedagogy, not attempts at censorship. Walz is simply wrong.

The separate claim that Minnesota was “banishing hunger” from schools has been dealt with in a separate fact check: Walz oversaw the largest COVID-era fraud in the country, as thieves stole $250 million from a child feeding program.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.