Rep. Jamie Raskin Schools Right-Wing Book-Banning Efforts In Vicious Takedown

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) made an impassioned speech Thursday that slammed efforts to ban books in the wake of a new report that found that challenges to books hit a record high last year .

Raskin, who responded to a Republican -supported measure regarding parental oversight in public schools, noted that the measure played into notorious attempts in history to ban books from classrooms and libraries.

The Democrat , in a speech on the House floor, cloaked shots at the Republican Party as he displayed a number of books targeted for bans, including Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and George Orwell’s “1984.”

He noted the presence of the Taliban, which he described as a “right-wing religious fundamentalist movement all about censorship and repressing women’s control over their own bodies,” in the pages of “The Kite Runner.”

He described Atwood’s book, “about a right-wing misogynist movement,” and detailed the “irony” in conservatives’ attempts to censor “1984.”

“We need more politicians reading books in America and fewer politicians trying to censor books in America,” Raskin said.