Posted on April 13, 2023 at 1:30 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The hits just keep coming for librarians.
This week, Republican lawmakers in Missouri's House of Representatives passed a state budget that eliminates all $4.5 million that would've gone to libraries, reports Salon.
The move is in retaliation for a lawsuit filed by the Missouri Library Association, which is pushing back against a state law that bans hundreds of titles in public school district libraries.
Officials, including librarians, who don't comply with that law could be fined up to $2,000 and/or imprisoned for up to a year.
The funding cuts are intended so that the MLA can't use state money to fund that lawsuit, claimed the representative who proposed the cuts.
However, Salon notes that Republicans in the state Senate said they would restore the funding — perhaps because, as the MLA has argued, eliminating the money would violate the Missouri Constitution.
Additionally, the MLA says, the legal aid that it's receiving in its lawsuit is being provided pro bono.
As for the literal attacks on literature — author Salman Rushdie, victim of a brutal stabbing last summer, has revealed his next writing project.
In an interview with TIME magazine, he said he's writing about the August 12 attack that nearly claimed his life.
“If it’s a book, it’s not going to be a particularly long book,” Rushdie said.
“Might be a couple hundred pages, so I’m hoping that I could do it in a year or so. But I’m not beating myself up about it. I’m just getting it right.”
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Categories: Today in Books