Prairie State Wire

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is celebrating disallowing local control over what books are located in public schools and libraries.

“Illinois became the first state in the nation to ban book bans earlier this year,” Pritzker said on X.

“2022 had the most attempted book bans on record for the ALA. It was time for us to act.”

“Unlike Republicans, I want our children to read as much as they can and to read different perspectives.”

Earlier this year Pritzker took aim at concerned Illinois parents who are seeking to have animated pornography restricted or removed from publicly funded libraries.

The law promised to remove public funding if bans such as that enacted in mid-2022 by the Harlem School District 122 Board of Education, based in Machesney Park.

District 122 made the decision to remove the book “Gender Queer” and several other animated titles that feature illustrations of characters in vivid sex acts from its libraries after parental upheaval.

“It’s porn,” Lynette Hofman said, according to WIFR, Rockford Sun reported. “We’re talking incest, molestation and pedophilia.”

It is unclear if the state has moved to rescind funds from District 122 libraries in the wake of the legislation being signed by Pritzker.

Pritzker, however, called the movement to restrict animated porn in schools as “white nationalism.”

“Book bans are about censorship, marginalizing people, marginalizing ideas and facts. Regimes ban books, not democracies,” Pritzker said in a video of a speech posted on X.

“Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, the Taliban’s Afghanistan. We refuse to let a vitriolic strain of white nationalism coursing through our country determine whose histories are told. Not in Illinois.

While Pritzker invoked the threat of censorship, he himself has been active in censorship efforts.

In Illinois, during the 2022 campaign, Pritzker was able to effectively muzzle opponents by threatening media outlets.

LGIS’s own publication run, including print editions of the Lake County Gazette, was briefly halted after the Pritzker campaign threatened the Daily Herald, which is the owner of the press that was printing the newspapers.

Pritzker also intimidated NBC and WGN into pulling a Beverly Miles campaign advertisement who accused Pritzker of terminating her for political reasons.

Miles, who challenged Pritzker in the 2022 primary, was one of nine black women who ran for governor in 2022.

The move to prevent books from being removed from local libraries comes after nearly two years of protests by parents over animated pornography, such as “Gender Queer”, increasingly found in school and public libraries.

Terry Newsome, a parent from Downers Grove South High School in Illinois, who has been vocal about his objections to explicit materials in the school’s library, has requested a congressional investigation into the “weaponization” of the FBI against parents and school board activists.

Newsome, who has since been elected as a Republican precinct committeeman, has faced attacks on social media and in his professional life, continues to advocate for the removal of pornographic materials from the libraries of schools in Downers Grove.

He has been portrayed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a far-right extremist, which he disputes, stating that his concerns are focused on removing obscene books from public institutions, according to DuPage Policy Journal.

SPLC has faced criticism for its mislabeling opposition groups with hate group designations.