Struggle for control of public libraries in full swing across the Deep South

  No one used to envision libraries as battlefields. But in 2025, that’s what they have become.

  Across the South over the last decade, control of what happens on bookshelves has turned into a pitched battle, with white supremacist and Christian nationalist groups on one side facing off against an unlikely coalition of progressives, educators, Black leaders, and drag queens on the other.

  Just two months into a second Trump presidency and its scorched-earth policy against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the culture wars are heating up the stacks.

Congressional hearing examines threat of white Christian nationalism

  The House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held its seventh and last hearing on the threat of white nationalism last month.

  One principal focus was white Christian nationalism, which has driven anti-democracy extremism in recent years. The hearing was welcome as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project has monitored this threat with growing concern.

 As Amanda Tyler, co-organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, testified during the hearing: “Christian nationalism seeks to manipulate religious devotion into giving unquestioning moral support for its political goals.”

After Trump, Christian nationalist ideas are going mainstream – despite a history of violence

  In the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what’s known as “Christian nationalism” in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.

  GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Donald Trump loyalist from Georgia, told an interviewer on July 23, 2022 that the Republican Party “need[s] to be the party of nationalism. And I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

How ‘In God We Trust’ bills are helping advance a Christian nationalist agenda

  City vehicles in Chesapeake, Virginia, will soon be getting religion.

  At a meeting on July 13, 2021, city councilors unanimously voted in favor of a proposal that would see the official motto of the U.S., “In God We Trust,” emblazoned on every city-owned car and truck, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of US$87,000.

  Meanwhile, the state of Mississippi is preparing to defend in court its insistence that all citizens, unless they pay a fee for an alternative, must display the same four-word phrase on their license plates. Gov. Tate Reeves vowed last month to take the issue “all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court should we have to.”