Author: Reporter

After parents in a rural and staunchly conservative Wyoming county joined nationwide pressure on librarians to pull books they considered harmful to youngsters. The local library board obliged with new policies making such books a higher priority for removal, and keeping out of collections. But that is not all the library board has done. Campbell County also withdrew from the American Library Association, in what’s become a movement against the professional organization that has fought against book bans. This summer, the state libraries in Montana, Missouri, and Texas and the local library in Midland, Texas, announced they’re leaving the...

The U.S. Census Bureau is thinking about how to ask about sex. People have opinions. Dozens of health officials, civil rights groups, individuals, and businesses have weighed in about how the statistical agency should ask about sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time on its most comprehensive survey of American life. A review of the 91 written public comments posted in January shows them to be largely supportive of the proposed additions, though not without constructive criticism. The proposed questions geared toward people age 15 and older will be tested sometime this year. If given final approval,...

A few years back, Sage Brook Carbone was attending a powwow at the Mashantucket Western Pequot reservation in Connecticut when she noticed signs in the Pequot language. Carbone, a citizen of the Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, thought back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has lived for much of her life. She never saw any street signs honoring Native Americans, nor any featuring Indigenous languages. She submitted to city officials the idea of adding Native American translations to city street signs. Residents approved her plan and will install about 70 signs featuring the language of the Massachusett...