Political news for readers: April 9, 2025

Catch up quick with the politics-adjacent bookish news of the past few days.

• Twenty-one state attorneys general are suing over federal cuts to a number of organizations, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Literary Hub).

• The American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees have also filed a lawsuit against the Department of Government Efficiency for "gutting" the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Book Riot). 

• If you have a subscription to Publisher's Lunch, you can read about how current tariff plans would exempt books printed in other countries, but not the actual paper ... leading to the possibility that more printing could be done overseas to save money (Book Riot). 

• Gale Massey interviews author Lauren Groff about her new bookstore, The Lynx, and how it is pushing back against the rise in bans, challenges, and other restrictions on the freedom to read (Southern Literary Review).

• In case you missed it, the American Library Association issued its annual report on the state of book bans and challenges; a notable finding is that, contrary to the depiction of such attacks as instances of parents wanting to monitor what their children are consuming, only 16 percent of ban attempts in 2024 came from parents — in contrast, 72 percent came from organized interest groups (The Guardian).