Starting in 2021, there have been thousands of books banned or challenged annually in parts of the United States, a sharp increase over previous years. Most of the targeted books have to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Unlike most book challenges in the past, whereby local parents or other stakeholders in the community engaged teachers and school administrators in a debate over a title, mass challenges begin with national advocacy organizations that then support and mobilize local parent groups. Challenges in this era have also been more likely to involve legal and legislative measures rather than just conversations in local communities. Journalists, academics, librarians, and others commonly link the coordinated, often well-funded book challenges to other efforts to restrict what students should learn about systemic bias and the history of the United States. Hundreds of books have been challenged, including high-profile examples like Maus by Art Spiegelman, New Kid by Jerry Craft, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

The American Library Association (ALA) documented 1,269 demands of book censorship in 2022. It was the highest the organization had ever recorded since it began collecting censorship data more than 20 years prior. Challenges peaked in 2023, with 4,240 different book titles challenged nationwide, as part of 1,247 reported requests filed against books, and other library resources, such as educational research databases. This represented an 11% increase in titles targeted at school libraries, and a 92% increase in the number of titles targeted at public libraries, compared to 2022. ALA reported that challenges dipped in 2024 to 1,915 and came back up to 4,235 in 2025. These numbers do not account for underreporting, censorship by exclusion, chilling effects, and legislative restrictions.

A 2023 analysis by The Washington Post found that a majority of book challenges in over 100 school districts from the 2021–2022 school year were filed by just 11 people. The percentage of challenges coming from activist groups, politicians, and decision-makers increased to 72% in 2024 and 92% in 2025. Only 3% of challenges came from individual parents in 2025.

Legislation-based censorship led to 10,000 books to be banned from schools in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to a survey by PEN America, nearly tripling the number for the previous academic year. At the beginning of the second Trump administration, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed 11 cases regarding challenged books in schools and eliminated an oversight position for investigating such issues, calling book censorship a "hoax".

Scope In fall 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) received 330 reports of book challenges, a rate which it called "unprecedented", but also an undercount because the ALA estimates 82–97% of challenges are not reported. The New York Times reported in January 2022 that "parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades". In April 2022, nonprofit organization PEN America found that 1,586 book bans targeting 1,145 unique books had occurred in the past nine months. Also in April, the ALA published its annual report on book censorship, finding that there were 729 attempts to remove school, university and library materials in 2021, resulting in 1,597 book challenges or removals. This is the highest number of removals and challenges of books that the ALA has recorded in a single year since the organization began tracking book censorship more than 20 years ago. In the first eight months of 2022, the ALA received 681 reports of book challenges targeting 1,651 unique books. Most of the books have to do with race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom released preliminary data for 2024, stating, "Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged. In the same reporting period of 2023, ALA tracked 695 attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Though the number of reports to date has declined in 2024, the number of documented attempts to censor books continues to far exceed the numbers prior to 2020." The ALA also stated that there was a decrease in documented censorship from 2023 that could be contributed to underreporting, censorship by exclusion, and Legislation restrictions.

Role of activist organizations Parents, teachers, students, and other stakeholders commonly express concerns over the works students read in schools. Typically, the process of challenging a book's inclusion in curricula or in libraries involves the parties reading the book, debating its appropriateness, and making a decision at the level of a teacher, class, school, or district. The spate of challenges and bans in 2021–22 differ from the norm in number as well as the tactics and politics involved. The involvement of national advocacy groups also sets the 2021–present trend apart from book challenges of the past. National conservative organizations, activists, and politicians have driven many of the challenges, and they have operated through higher-level political processes than usual, proposing legislation and petitioning lawmakers rather than just teachers or local school boards.

Organizations like No Left Turn in Education and Parents Defending Education operate nationally, with connections to wealthy conservative donors and organizations, but provide resources, connections, and sophisticated strategy to grow, support, and mobilize local parent groups. According to NBC News, as of June 2021, there were "at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender". Several of the challenges have begun with lists of books shared online by conservative advocacy organizations like No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty. The lists are distributed to parents who then audit local schools and libraries to see if they have any copies of the listed titles. No Left Turn in Education, for example, maintains lists of books in categories "critical race theory", "anti-police", and "comprehensive sexuality education", which they say "are used to spread radical and racist ideologies to students". The strategy of distributing lists has meant that many challenges come from people who have not actually read the books they argue to ban.

NBC News reported that while these groups operate differently, "they share strategies of disruption, publicity and mobilization. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students." One parent in Rhode Island submitted more than 200 records requests which took 300 staff hours to respond to. In some places, they teamed up with other activists fighting against public health restrictions in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The groups have also been successful in attracting attention in conservative media. According to University of Massachusetts political science professor Maurice T. Cunningham, the parents' rights groups are "highly networked into The Daily Caller, Breitbart [and] Fox News".

In 2021, only 1% of the challenges were initiated by students, and most were by parents or library patrons. A 2023 analysis by The Washington Post found that a majority of book challenges in over 100 school districts from the 2021–2022 school year were filed by just 11 people. The percentage of challenges coming from activist groups, politicians, and decision-makers increased to 72% in 2024 and 92% in 2025. Only 3% of challenges came from individual parents in 2025.

Subject focus Most of the targeted books have to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Journalists, academics, librarians, and others commonly link the coordinated, often well-funded book challenges to other efforts to restrict what students should learn about systemic bias and the history of the United States.

In 2020, the murder of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans by law enforcement led to widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism. The public conversation about these concepts led some teachers and schools to talk about racism more with their students. That, and the Black Lives Matter movement in general, also fueled a conservative backlash advocating for teaching students an idealized version of the history of the United States which omits or whitewashes issues like racism. The book challenge trend is frequently linked by journalists and academics to other elements of that reactionary movement, especially the restrictions on teaching "critical race theory" which limit the extent to which students can learn about systemic racism and the history of race in the United States. Legislation was introduced or passed in at least 29 states taking aim at lessons that teach children about race and inequality, with most of the laws framed around putting a stop to "critical race theory". These laws, which use broad language prohibiting teaching about privilege related to race or sex, or systemic bias in the United States, have led to many book removals. NBC News described the use of the term "critical race theory" in this context as "a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies". University of Michigan education professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas summarized the issue as "an assumption that everything Black is critical race theory".

Proponents of removing books mention how certain kinds of lessons dealing with racism and history can make students uncomfortable and make white students feel guilty. In some other cases, the books have been by or about people of color or the LGBTQ community, but the reasons cited for removal have to do with profanity or sex. For example, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is about a black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite, predominantly white private school and becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer kill her childhood friend. It has been among the most challenged books primarily because it contains profanity.

According to Richard Price, a professor at Weber State University who studies book censorship, there is a "cycle of anxiety in which book challengers are driven by concerns and fears about a changing world. And so whatever the issue of the day is, then that usually drives and pushes people to try to remove books". Before the focus on critical race theory in 2020, the most commonly banned books had to do with LGBTQ inclusion. In her Washington Post analysis, Valerie Strauss contextualized the bans in the history of book censorship in the United States, dating back to charges of blasphemy in 1650 against William Pynchon's The Meritorious Price on Our Redemption, and spanning The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the Harry Potter books, which were the most challenged books between 2000 and 2009. Strauss and education historian Adam Laats connected the trend to challenges of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and evolution in schools in the early 20th century which, according to Laats, involved similar strategies of mobilizing parents to take over school boards and widescale legislative proposals claiming to defend children's morality.

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