PEN America's "Banned in the USA: The Normalization of Book Banning" tallied 6,870 instances of school book bans during the 2024-25 academic year, affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles across 23 states and 87 school districts. [1] The total since 2021 is now nearly 23,000. Florida, Texas, and Tennessee account for roughly 80% of the new total — 2,304, 1,781, and 1,622 instances respectively. [2] Senate Resolution 443, a non-binding measure introduced last fall calling on local governments and school districts to protect the freedom to read, has been in Senate Judiciary since October. The committee has not scheduled a hearing.

The paper's Apr 29 standard read the American Library Association's parallel report as evidence of coordination — same titles pulled in matched language across districts that share no governance relationship. [3] PEN America's index is the larger dataset. The 2024-25 figure is down from 2023-24's 10,046 — a year that included Iowa's bulk pre-emptive removals — but is roughly double the 2021-23 average of 3,000 per year, which is what the report calls a "disturbing normalization."

What is missing is the federal-register answer. S.Res.443 has 30 co-sponsors and no movement. Its companion legislation in the House sits in Education and the Workforce. The Senate Judiciary chair has neither held a hearing nor publicly explained the absence of one. [1] PEN America's policy team filed a follow-up letter in March; no committee response is on the public record.

The press-freedom-wartime thread tracks federal silence as a category — the FCC's eight-station ABC review on day one, the Stars and Stripes ombudsman firing on day four, the CBS Radio sign-off at 21 days. The 22,800-ban dataset belongs in that company. The committee desk where it sits is a documentable artifact, not an absence.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York