The Resistance Roundup: Issue #14

The Regime is on Defense

Hi Resistance Readers!

Welcome to The Resistance Roundup, your go-to source about major events that affect books and libraries, taking action to support libraries and fight censorship, updates on Action Alerts and other calls to action, and highlights of the American Resistance movement against the cheeto-in-chief and his red hat regime. This week we have several victories to celebrate for the Resistance. Let’s dive in!

La Lucha: The Fight to Protect Immigrants and Latinos from Human Rights Violations

Federal Agents Conduct Large Sweep in NYC’s Chinatown Area, Encounter Angry Opposition

On 10/21/2025, a large group of ICE agents and other federal agents conducted a sweep of an area in New York City’s Manhattan borough known for its street vendors, some of whom are immigrants. While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which runs ICE, claimed this sweep was a targeted operation focused on arresting suspects selling counterfeit goods, witnesses of the incident reported that the agents appeared to question anyone who they suspected could be an immigrant. They reported that multiple people, including US citizens, were stopped and told to show their papers in order to prove their right to be in the United States. Awa Ngam, who spoke to the Associated Press about the incident, is a vendor in the area where the incident took place; she reported that at least one of her fellow vendors was taken away by ICE that afternoon. She said federal agents also asked her for her ID. After she showed it, they asked her for her passport, which she doesn’t carry around. The agents quizzed her about how she had come to the US, but they eventually backed off after her husband intervened and explained that she is a US citizen. Ms. Ngam reported that the agents “asked every African that was here for their status.” She reported that she was not afraid to return after the incident, but she was sad about what took place: “I’m saddened because they should not walk around and ask people for their passport in America.”

When it became clear that federal agents were conducting an immigration sweep, angry New Yorkers began to confront them. AP News reported that bystanders and activists converged at the scene and shouted at the agents, at one point blocking their vehicle. Federal agents tried to clear the crowd from the streets, sometimes shoving protesters to the ground and threatening them with stun guns or pepper spray before detaining them. Video footage from AP News shows the crowd yelling at agents, filming them, following them as they walked down the road, and demanding that they leave. Another video shows the crowd standing in the street and crosswalk surrounding the agents’ vehicles. In this footage (which is chaotic), it does not appear that any of the protestors assaulted an agent on camera. All told, only nine people were arrested in the initial immigration sweep, according to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. She said that four more people were arrested on charges of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, and that a fifth was arrested and accused of obstructing law enforcement by blocking a driveway.

See the “Action Alerts” section for action steps to take on this issue.

Regime Plans to Deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia

On 10/23/2025, the federal government filed a document from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a court case regarding the government’s attempts to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The document indicates that the regime plans to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to Liberia, a country in western Africa where he has never lived and has no connections. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case gained nationwide attention after he was deported to El Salvador, in violation of a settlement agreement in his immigration case that he could not be deported to his home country due to a credible fear of gang violence and threats to his life. He was returned to the United States in June after the US Supreme Court said the administration had to work to bring him back. Since he cannot be re-deported to El Salvador, ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. In its filing last week, DHS argued that Liberia is a thriving democracy, its national language is English and that its constitution “provides robust protections for human rights,” so DHS should be allowed to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia there. There is much room for debate on the government of Liberia’s track record of protecting human rights, and on its current ability to uphold them. DHS said that it could deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to Liberia as soon as Friday 10/31/2025. Meanwhile, one of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys stated, “After failed attempts with Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Liberia, a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland. Costa Rica stands ready to accept him as a refugee, a viable and lawful option. Yet the government has chosen a course calculated to inflict maximum hardship. These actions are punitive, cruel, and unconstitutional.”

See the “Action Alerts” section for action steps to take on this issue.

Watching Big Brother: The Fight Against Censorship

Judge Orders DOD to Restore Banned Books to School Libraries

On 10/20/2025, a judge ordered the Department of Defense to restore hundreds of books that it pulled from its school classrooms and libraries. The DOD Education Activity (DODEA) runs grade schools for children of active-duty military families, and it serves about 67,000 students in 161 schools worldwide. In April 2025 12 students from six military families attending five DoDEA schools sued the DODEA for removing books from their schools based on executive orders that Donald Trump signed earlier this year, which banned “gender ideology” and “divisive concepts” in federal programs. The books removed include To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, The Kite Runner, and No Truth Without Ruth, a children’s book about the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Teachers were also told to pause observances such as Black History Month and Pride Month, and to modify lessons that included gender or race discussions.

The judge’s order requires DODEA to restore the removed books within 30 days and publish the full list of affected titles. She cited the 1982 Supreme Court decision, Island Trees v. Pico, which found that public schools cannot remove books simply because officials disagree with their content. She found that the DODEA’s removal of books dealing with race and gender likely violated their students’ First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia and ACLU of Kentucky, representing the families, called the ruling “a victory for the freedom to read.” Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement that students in DODEA schools “have the same First Amendment rights as all students.” When Miltary.com, a news and information outlet that covers issues related to the US armed forces, reached out to the Pentagon and the DODEA to ask for comment, neither provided a response.

This is a significant victory for the First Amendment, but this case is ongoing and the fight is not over. See the “Action Alerts” section for action steps to take on this issue.

Judge Rules Law Requiring Booksellers to “Rate” Book Content Unconstitutional

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the state’s READER Act, which requires that any book vendor selling materials to school libraries rate the content of the books they sell, is unconstitutional. The law set out standards of what content the state deems “acceptable” to include in books purchased for school libraries, then required vendors that want to sell books to these libraries to rate the content of every book they offer based on whether it meets those state-approved standards. In addition, the law required book vendors to recall any previous sales of books the state deemed unlawful, and all vendors would need to submit their book ratings to the Texas Education Agency (TEA, the state’s department of education). But the state could decide whether to list those vendors as compliant with the law and whether it agreed with the vendor ratings, or override them with its own rating of their books. Through the READER Act, the state would control what vendors school libraries could purchase materials from, based on the ratings those vendors applied to materials being sold and whether or not they agreed with those ratings.

After the law was originally passed in 2023, a lawsuit was filed against it in federal court by the American Booksellers Association, Texas bookstores BookPeople and Blue Willow Bookshop, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Last week, the court ruled that the provision of the READER Act that requires vendors to rate their books is unconstitutional, and that booksellers lose their constitutionally protected speech rights when forced to apply content ratings to materials. As the judge stated in their ruling, “READER operates in a way that fully compels Plaintiffs’ [the booksellers’] speech–violating both prongs of the prohibition discussed in 303 Creative. First, READER compels Plaintiffs’ speech when they would choose to remain silent, because Plaintiffs must assign ratings even if they would not want to. Second, READER compels Plaintiffs to adopt the government’s speech because the TEA is allowed to re-rate books and publish its own rating as being attributed to Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs have no choice but to accept the government’s speech as their own.”

This is a significant victory for freedom to read in Texas, but this state is a hotbed for book bans. There are several ongoing legal battles in Texas over book bans in school and public libraries. If you live in Texas, contact your state legislators and urge them to protect your right to read books that you choose. The Texas Freedom to Read Project has lots of great information and resources to help you advocate for your rights in the state of Texas.

If you live in another state, you can urge your members of Congress to protect your right to read at the federal level. See the “Action Alerts” section for action steps to take on this issue.

Texas School District Bans Middle School and High School Students from School Libraries

On 10/13/2025, the New Braunfels Independent School District (NBISD) governing board voted to shut down all libraries in its middle schools and high schools. This decision comes on the heels of Texas’s Senate Bill 13 (SB 13), which requires that school libraries remain free of “harmful material,” “indecent content,” and “profane content.” All three of these designations lack any legal definition, leaving it up to school boards to figure out what these terms mean and how to comply with this law. In their decision, the board indicated that it “has directed a comprehensive review of the district’s collection, which includes more than 195,000 books and resources. Secondary schools have a collection of more than 50,000 titles. Books that are found to violate SB 13 will be removed from the library’s collection.” The board did not offer any framework for how they’ll complete this comprehensive review of over 50,000 books across their district’s middle and high schools. They also did not offer any timeline for when students will have access to their own school libraries again.

If you live in Texas, contact your state legislators and urge them to protect your right to read books that you choose. The Texas Freedom to Read Project has lots of great information and resources to help you advocate for your rights in the state of Texas. If you live in another state, you can urge your members of Congress to protect your right to read at the federal level. See the “Action Alerts” section for action steps to take on this issue.

Texas School District that Used AI to Ban Books Returns Most of Them to Shelves

In the previous issue of the Resistance Roundup, we covered the Leander Independent School District’s decision to use AI to determine which books should be removed from their schools, resulting in several classic books and popular children’s and young adult books being banned from LISD classrooms. On 10/8/2025, during Banned Books Week and after that issue was published, the school district announced that it reinstated all but four of the books it required teachers to remove from their shelves. This decision was greeted with relief by people across the political spectrum in Texas, given that many of the books that were removed are literary classics that have significant educational and social value. According to KVUE, a local ABC News outlet, Mary Elizabeth Castle is the director of government relations for the conservative group Texas Values, which supported SB 12, the bill that led to LISD’s decision to pull these books. Ms. Castle said she believes, in some ways, the district overcorrected. “Some of these books or classics. They actually help us understand a positive message of our country and how we can come together and correct wrongs and work together.” Carolyn Foote, a retired librarian and English teacher, said it is a relief to have many of the books back, but it should never have happened in the first place. She is also concerned that the pause on certain books sent a bad message to students: “It sends a message to students that stories about their lives don’t belong, which means that they don’t belong, that their family doesn’t belong, even in their classroom. That’s a terrible message to send to high school students, who are already struggling with their own identities and belongings, and reading is a place where we learn to understand one another better and have empathy for others, but also a place where we can see ourselves.”

The Resistance Lives!

No Kings 2.0 Draws Nearly 7 Million Americans to Voice Support for Democracy!

On October 18th, nearly 7 million Americans participated in No Kings events across the country, from large cities such as New York and Chicago to small towns such as Ashland, Oregon and Hendersonville, North Carolina. Americans in blue and red states and cities alike came together to express that Americans do not want a ruler who acts like a king. The protests emphasized support for democracy and opposition to hatred, with many protestors chanting slogans such as “This is what democracy looks like,” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” Many protestors waved American flags or included red-white-and-blue colors and motifs in their outfits and protest signs. Signs included messages opposing ICE, authoritarianism, and billionaires.

In New York City, one demonstrator held a sign that said, “We protest because we love America, and we want it back.” The protester, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, said she’s been protesting since the 1960s, but this time feels different. “In the 60s we wanted to expand rights – women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, voting rights,” she said. “But all that’s being taken away now. Now our entire democracy is being threatened, the basic tenets, the press, the judiciary.” She described feeling “very sad, a sense of loss, fear” under the Trump administration. “I’m hoping together, we can all save democracy.”

Members of a group named All in for Democracy attended the “No Kings” protest in Washington, DC. wearing Revolutionary War-era clothing and wigs. “I just see all of our institutions changing, and I don’t want us to change as a country and as a people,” said DC resident Lee Ayres, sporting a coat, wig and hat. “I want all of America to realize the Declaration of Independence is about no kings.” Bobbie Castillo, who traveled hours from her hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska to DC for her first protest ever, told CNN “It doesn’t seem like we’re able to peacefully or safely (express ourselves) right now, without fear of repercussions” from the government, work or families. Also in D.C., Michael Langfeldt said he was protesting against hatred toward immigrants and the deployment of the military to US cities. “I feel like there’s a lot of overreach in the federal government, specifically in, like, the executive branch,” he told CNN. “Congress doesn’t do anything about it.”

Big cities weren’t the only places where No Kings events were held. In Beckley, West Virginia, Kendra Sullivan staged a one-woman protest on a street corner. No Kings protestors lined an intersection in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and waved an American flag on the sidewalk in Fort Myers, Florida. Other small towns and cities that held No Kings protests and events included Macon, Georgia, Burlington, Vermont, St. Peters, Missouri, and Prineville, Oregon.

The Latest in Laughtivism

Inflatable Costumes Become a National Symbol of Resistance

Photo credit to Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

At No Kings events, and at other protests around the country, inflatable costumes have become so common that NPR ran an article about them, titled “A frog, a lobster and a unicorn walked into a No Kings protest.” Frogs, pandas, dinosaurs, sharks, chickens, dogs, lobsters, and unicorns were among the many bouncy creatures spotted at No Kings events on 10/18/2025. While it may look silly and strange, or even flippant, the use of inflatable costumes is a strategic choice for many protestors. It sends a message that the pro-democracy Resistance is not a violent, America-hating cabal of terrorists, and that American cities are not hotbeds of mass chaos burning to the ground. “It’s really hard to call something a war zone, when you look at something and it’s just a block party and people in Halloween costumes,” one Los Angeles protester told CNN, as he wore a unicorn costume and danced to music.

The trend started in Portland, Oregon when a man in a frog suit was trying to help a fellow protester at an anti-ICE rally. A law enforcement officer responded by spraying the suit’s air valve with a chemical agent, which was captured on video and later went viral. Jordy Lybeck, a political streamer, watched the video on a livestream and asked his viewers, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? What if somebody bought a lot of them and distributed them at the facility?” So he teamed up with another streamer to buy several inflatable costumes and donate them to the protests outside this facility, which have been ongoing for weeks. They called it Operation Inflation, and their goal was to undermine Donald Trump’s argument that he had to deploy troops because Portland was a “war zone.” The costumes help emphasize that the protestors are not trying to destroy property or be violent, making the idea that they are turning Portland into a war zone look as absurd as it is. It also makes protesters seem less threatening to observers and to law enforcement, because it is hard to see or move quickly in an inflatable suit. It also helps reduce fear among supporters–when you can laugh and have fun while standing up to the regime, you feel less afraid, and other people learn they also don’t have to fear the regime. The silly costumes have continued to appear in Portland and at other local protests or events since No Kings, making this a trend that will likely continue.

ACTION ALERTS- Tracking Our Progress

Demand Accountability for ICE and End Human Rights Violations Against Immigrants and Latinos

As opposition to its agenda grows stronger by the day, the regime has escalated its harassment and arrests of immigrants, including those who have legal documents allowing them to reside in the US and those who are following the legal process to obtain residency. The regime’s efforts have included blatant racial profiling of Latino people as ICE agents descend en masse on workplaces, businesses, parks, and other community hotspots and detain, question, and arrest anyone who might potentially be an immigrant they can deport. Latino US citizens have been caught up in these ICE raids and forced to prove their right to be in the country where they were born. Horrific reports have emerged about conditions inside a detention facility in Los Angeles where people have been held for days without access to adequate food or water, and about conditions at a prison camp in Florida for people arrested by ICE. ICE has also arrested immigrants for exercising their right to free speech when they express viewpoints the regime doesn’t approve of. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE over his role in organizing protests against the war in Gaza. Mr. Khalil was never charged with any crime in connection to these protests, and the regime has not produced any evidence that he has expressed antisemitic views or promoted violent activity. On 6/21/2025, a court ordered that Mr. Khalil must be released from federal custody.

These abuses of people’s human rights cannot be allowed to continue, and we must make our calls for justice and the protection of our neighbors louder and clearer than ever. Contact your members of Congress and urge them to protect civil rights for immigrants and Latinos, stop the inhumane treatment of people detained by ICE, and shut down the Florida prison camp. You should also urge them to protect immigrants’ and citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and due process, and end deportations to the CECOT torture prison. Here is a link to a sample call script from 5 Calls you can use as a starting point when you contact your MOCs. Download their app to make calling from your smartphone faster and easier.

Know your own rights and use them. The ACLU has a Know Your Rights page on their website about your legal rights related to immigration and immigration law enforcement. Every person has rights in the United States, including immigrants with or without legal permission to be in the country. Know what your rights are and how to exercise them if you are contacted by law enforcement or immigration authorities.

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) has free “know your rights” Red Cards that you can carry with you at all times to help you remember and exercise your rights, whether you are a US citizen or an immigrant (regardless of immigration status). Red Cards are completely free to download, print, or order in bulk. You can find the link to obtain Red Cards for yourself and your neighbors at the ILRC’s website. You can pass out red cards in your community and to people you know to help remind everyone of their rights and how to exercise them.

Talk to your family, friends, and neighbors about their rights and how they can exercise them. Make sure that you are providing clear and accurate information by sharing information only from trustworthy resources, such as the ACLU and the ILRC. Here is an additional guide from the ACLU on talking to other people about their rights and your own rights when sharing truthful, lawfully-obtained information about law enforcement.

If you are considering accompanying your immigrant neighbors to immigration court and ICE appointments, or on other errands when they may be vulnerable, make sure you attend an accompaniment training session with a reputable organization first, so that you understand your rights, your neighbors’ rights, and how to lawfully advocate for them. Find a local immigrant rights/ advocacy organization with a good reputation in your community, and ask if they have training sessions on accompaniment or can help you find a training session. If you are part of another organization that is standing up for democracy in your area, you can also ask leaders in your group if they know about organizations that hold these training sessions.

Support Factual Journalism and Public Media

The White House has launched a series of attacks on news outlets, including public media outlets like PBS and NPR, and accused them of being biased against the regime and its agenda. These attacks are often launched against outlets that report accurate information on the regime or refuse to use the regime’s propaganda and preferred language in their reporting. For example, the White House has made several attempts to bar AP News from presidential events after AP News refused to call the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” to due their wide international readership which does not recognize the regime’s attempts to rename the gulf. The regime has also attacked PBS and NPR as being biased and promoting their favorite boogeyman: “woke ideology.” As a result, the regime demanded, and the Republican-controlled Congress passed, legislation that clawed back over $1 billion in funding for PBS and NPR that had previously been approved by Congress.

Support AP News and other independent news outlets by reading and sharing their articles, watching their videos, and sharing other content from these outlets. If you can contribute, consider donating to AP News or other journalism nonprofits or purchasing a paid subscription to independent media.

Support public media outlets like PBS and NPR by donating to your local PBS and NPR stations. To find your local PBS station and donate, visit PBS.org and click the Donate button. To find your local NPR station and donate, visit NPR.org and click the Donate button.

Save IMLS

On 3/14/2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order in an attempt to shut down several government agencies that he has decided are unnecessary. The order, titled "Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy" labels several agencies as “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.” One of the agencies targeted in his executive order is the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The IMLS is a key source of funding for museums, libraries, and educational institutions, and it distributes thousands of grants nationwide totaling over $200 million annually. The order demands that non-statutory components and programs of this agency “shall be eliminated to the maximum extent” that the law allows. The order also requires that any funding requests for these agencies must be rejected, unless they are needed to shut these agencies down.

At least 21 states have sued the Trump regime to stop the dismantling of IMLS and the cancelling of federal grants to libraries. Democracy Forward has also filed a lawsuit on behalf of the American Library Association to stop the elimination of the agency. In the states’ lawsuit, the court issued an injunction on 5/6/2025 that stops the executive order from being carried out.

Contact your members of Congress and urge them to pass legislation funding the IMLS and keeping it open, and to demand that the regime end its attempts to shut down the agency. Right now funding for IMLS has been included in budget legislation; urge your members of Congress to make sure it gets passed into law.

Continue to follow news and reliable reporting on the IMLS and DOGE’s efforts to shut down the agency. Share accurate information about the IMLS and its work. You can find more information on the agency at the American Library Association’s FAQ page about the executive order that attempts to shut down IMLS. You can also find more information about the IMLS at the webpage website set up by EveryLibrary to promote the IMLS’s work and educate the public. You will also find links there with more tips to take action to defend the IMLS and our libraries.

Tell Congress to Protect Citizens From Book Bans

On 5/23/2025, a federal appeals court issued a ruling in a lawsuit against government officials filed by residents of Llano County, Texas. The court overturned a lower federal court’s ruling that the county had violated citizens’ First Amendment rights by removing books from their library system for politically-motivated reasons. The library officials removed books that dealt with themes of racism and discrimination, sex education materials, and that featured LGBTQ+ characters, real people, or themes. This ruling goes against past interpretations of Supreme Court precedent and could empower government officials to remove books they dislike from public libraries. Elly Brinkley, PEN America’s attorney for U.S. Free Expression Programs, said in a statement, “The court’s embrace of the dangerous argument that the curation of library books constitutes ‘government speech’ immunizes state censorship from First Amendment scrutiny, essentially giving the government free rein to exert ideological control over what citizens can read in their public libraries.”

Contact your members of Congress and let them know you do not support any effort to ban books from public libraries or other points of access. You can use the email script provided by EveryLibrary as a guide when you call or email your member of Congress.

Support the Fight to Stop DOD Book Bans

Since January 2025, the Department of Defense has made significant changes to the curricula used in schools it runs for children of active-duty military members, and it has removed books from the schools that the regime believes promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and ideas about race and gender that the regime disagrees with. The ACLU said that books the DOD has banned discuss topics such as slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ+ history and sexual harassment prevention. ACLU of Virginia’s supervising attorney, Matt Calahan, stated that “The government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.” The ACLU, along with a group of students and parents, sued DOD on 4/15/2025 over the book bans and curriculum changes. On 10/20/2025, a judge ordered the DODEA to restore the books that it pulled from its school classrooms and libraries.

Contact your members of Congress and urge them to support diverse perspectives and freedom to read in DOD-run schools, including schools for children of military service-members. You can use the script below as a guide for your calls and/or emails.

Dear [Representative/Senator], my name is [your name here] and I am a constituent from [city, state and zip code]. I am contacting you to urge you to take action on behalf of students attending Department of Defense schools and the US Naval Academy that have banned books the Trump administration wants to censor. The DOD has removed multiple books from its schools, including schools that children of active-duty service-members attend. The books that DOD has banned include classics like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou and books on topics such as slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ+ history and sexual harassment prevention. These books teach our young people the truth about important issues, and banning them from schools does not make our military stronger or strengthen our national security. This is a political stunt that stifles freedom of speech. It deprives American students of the chance to read books that teach them the value of free expression, the beauty of diverse life experiences, and the importance of fair and equal treatment of all people regardless of their background. Our students need more opportunities to learn these values, not less. Congress must act to restore these opportunities to students in DOD schools and support a challenging, positive education for all students. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Closing Quote

As always, we end this issue with an inspiring quote from a banned book to remind you to keep up the fight.

You can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.

~ Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Until next time, Resistance Readers! Go read some good books and cause some good trouble.