Latest news with #FrecklefaceStrawberry
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Julianne Moore looks incredible in an elegant black gown at world premiere of Netflix's Sirens in New York
Julianne Moore looked incredible as she attended the world premiere of Netflix 's Sirens in New York City on Tuesday. The actress, 64, who stars as billionaire socialite Michaela Kell in the series, wore an elegant black gown while posing for photos on the red carpet. Featuring a ruffled, scooped neckline and spaghetti straps, her gown was completed with a voluminous A-line skirt. Julianne completed her outfit with a pair of heels, styled her hair straight and accessorised with a pair of statement earrings. Sirens, which is set for release May 22, also features Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock, who were also in attendance. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The show is based on Molly Smith Metzler's 2011 play, Elemeno Pea, and follows a group of women after an explosive weekend at a lavish beach estate. It comes after Julianne's semi-autobiographical book about a child embracing their freckles has been added to the Trump administration's banned book list. The Academy-Award winning actress revealed her first book Freckleface Strawberry is barred from schools run by the Department of Defense. She shared her 'great shock' at the revelation, describing the book as one 'about a seven year old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them.' In the book, the little girl 'realizes that she is different just like everybody else.' Julianne said: 'It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but are united by our humanity and our community.' The decision to prohibit the book in DoD classrooms comes amid a wider push to prevent diversity, equity and inclusion practices being taught. Other topics like transgender and immigration issues have also reportedly been banned. Julianne said that she herself is a graduate of a DoD school, raised by a father who is a Vietnam veteran and spent his career within the US Army. 'I could not be prouder of him and his service to our country,' she said. 'It is galling for me to realize that kids like me, growing up with a parent in the service and attending a @dodea_edu school will not have access to a book written by someone whose life experience is so similar to their own.' Julianne said she simply can't wrap her head around what in her picture book was 'so controversial... that caused it to be banned by the US government.' 'I am truly saddened and never thought I would see this in a country where freedom of speech and expression is a constitutional right.'
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Dems Demand Pete Hegseth Halt 'Orwellian Book Purges' In Military Schools
WASHINGTON — More than two dozen House Democrats on Monday demanded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth immediately reverse course on what they say is an unconstitutional purge of books and learning materials in dozens of K-12 schools run by the military ― an effort aimed at erasing diversity and LGBTQ+ people. 'We write to express our grave concern about the escalating censorship taking place in schools run by the Department of Defense,' reads a letter signed by 26 members of Congress and led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is a constitutional scholar and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. 'We are alarmed by reports that children at DoD schools were prevented from accessing any library books and many learning materials for a week while officials conducted a 'review' to identify any books that are related to the mysterious bodies of thought you call 'discriminatory equity ideology' or 'gender ideology,'' they said. 'After this week-long review, the nation's military schools began purging library books and restricting access to books and learning materials that are reportedly undergoing 'further review.'' 'You are plainly violating the constitutional rights of DoD families,' they added. Here's a copy of their letter, which was sent to Hegseth along with Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, director of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), and Darin Selnick, the Defense Department's undersecretary for personnel and readiness. DoDEA runs 161 schools worldwide that provide K-12 education to more than 67,000 children of people in the military. It, too, has to comply with President Donald Trump's executiveorders to federal agencies to eradicate any programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). After DoDEA last month directed its schools to pull lessons from its curriculum related to immigration, gender and sexuality, the schools responded with things like book bans, a portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama being removed, a Harriet Tubman poster being pulled down, rainbows being taken down in kindergarten classrooms and bans on school clubs for LGBTQ+ students and girls in STEM. Ironically, Vice President JD Vance's memoir, 'Hillbilly Elegy,' was also banned. In their letter, House Democrats highlight other books that were reportedly purged from DoDEA schools, including a picture book about the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a single chapter on sexuality and gender used in Advanced Placement psychology, a reading of 'A Nation of Immigrants' in a social studies lesson for fourth graders, and a story about a girl who doesn't like her freckles but eventually learns to love them, titled 'Freckleface Strawberry,' by actor Julianne Moore. 'These Orwellian book purges seriously restrict the spectrum of knowledge and literature available to military families,' they wrote to Hegseth. In the case of one active-duty military officer, Trump's anti-DEI policies in DoDEA schools ― along with his ban on transgender troops ― are a source of constant stress and fear for people around him. This officer, who requested anonymity to protect his job and his family, said he has served in combat with LGBTQ+ people who have become close friends, currently serves with LGBTQ+ people and has LGBTQ+ children. Trump's attacks on transgender service members and LGBTQ+ kids 'hits home in so many ways,' said the officer, who serves overseas. 'It's dehumanizing.' He said his spouse is a teacher at a DoDEA school and was told teachers will be fired for even talking about Trump's anti-DEI policies. 'If they engage with the media, they will be fired,' said the officer. 'If they protest, they will be fired; if they encourage students to protest, they will be fired; if they use social media to protest changes and can be identified as a DoDEA employee, they will be fired; if they speak out at a town hall (even as a parent of a DoDEA child), they will be fired.' A DoDEA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about House Democrats' letter or about the concerns raised by the overseas DOD employee. A Defense Department spokesperson deferred to DoDEA for comment. 'As with all Congressional correspondence, the Department will respond directly to the author,' said the spokesperson, referring to Democrats' letter. DoDEA schools have long struggled with inconsistency in their LGBTQ-friendly policies, said Rachel Branaman, executive director of Modern Military Association of America, the largest organization of LGBTQ+ service members, veterans and their families. Trump's policies are a giant step backward on this front, she said. 'We have received discrimination reports from some DoDEA schools indicating an influx of bathroom bans, deadnaming, and the disbanding of after-school clubs,' said Branaman. 'We are tracking these developments to determine how we can best support the well-being of LGBTQ+ children of military parents if their schools are not safe or welcoming.' The overseas military officer said while his spouse is worried about job safety, their biggest concern is for their LGBTQ+ students, who now feel scared and isolated. Teachers at this school were initially directed to remove anything from classrooms that could be seen as related to DEI, including community bulletin boards. Later, they were quietly told they could keep those up. These anti-DEI policies have already taken a toll on the kids, though. 'Collectively, [the LGBTQ+ students] all stopped talking and interacting except when absolutely necessary,' said the officer.
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Julianne Moore's freckles? How Republican bans on ‘woke' books have reached new level
When the actor Julianne Moore learned her children's book, Freckleface Strawberry, a tale of a girl who learns to stop hating her freckles, had been targeted for a potential ban at all schools serving US military families, she took to Instagram, posting that it was a 'great shock' to discover the story had been 'banned by the Trump Administration'. Moore had seen a memo that circulated last week revealing that tens of thousands of American children studying in about 160 Pentagon schools both in the US and around the world had had all access to library books suspended for a week, while officials conducted a 'compliance review' to hunt out any books 'potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics'. Although whether Moore's book would be selected for 'further review' or banned entirely remains unclear, the episode brought into stark relief that the movement to ban books in the US – which has been bubbling up for several years, mostly in individual states – had reached a whole new level: the federal one. Donald Trump's re-election, and his subsequent crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, has many campaigners fearing that the Pentagon move to scrub its libraries of anything it opposes ideologically could be the first of a series of broad attempts to eliminate any discussions of race, LGBTQ+ issues, diversity and historical education from public schools. The Trump administration has scoffed at the idea that it is banning books, and last month it instructed the Department of Education to end its investigations into the matter, referring to bans as a 'hoax'. Indeed, many deny that banning books is censorship at all – a disconnect that stems not just from the historical context of book banning, but from a semantic dispute over what it means to 'ban' something. In the early 20th century, books such as Ulysses by James Joyce and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck were banned due to 'moral concerns'. Likewise, the red scare of the 1950s saw increased censorship of materials perceived as sympathetic to communism, while the 1980s saw attacks against books dealing with race and sexuality, such as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which was nearly banned two years after its release in 1984 after a parent petitioned against its use in an Oakland, California, classroom. The difference today, however, is that instead of coming primarily from conservative community organizers, the book banning movement is now coming from government – school boards, local governments and now, with the Pentagon move, even the federal government, increasingly working in lockstep. The modern wave of book bans could be said to have started with a backlash against The 1619 Project, a journalistic anthology by Nikole Hannah-Jones published by the New York Times. The project aimed to reframe US history by centering the contributions of Black Americans, but conservative politicians – including Trump – claimed it taught students to 'hate their own country'. In response, Republican lawmakers moved to ban the work in schools, marking the beginning of an intensified campaign against so-called 'anti-American' literature. According to PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to defending free expression in literature, more than 10,000 book bans occurred in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year. Books that address racism, gender and history were disproportionately targeted. 'The whole principle of public education is that it is not supposed to be dictated by particular ideologies that aim to censor what other people can learn and access in schools,' Jonathan Friedman, managing director for US free expression programs at PEN America, said. Rightwing politicians, however, have increasingly used book banning as a rallying cry, portraying certain books as tools of 'indoctrination' – failing to note the irony that indoctrination is the process of carefully limiting ideas, like banning books. One key figure has been the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. He has echoed Trump's dismissal of book bans as a 'hoax', and spearheaded multiple attempts to reshape education to reflect only conservative values, including the Stop Woke Act, which restricts discussions on systemic racism, and the Parental Rights in Education Act, widely known as the 'don't say gay' law, which limits discussions of gender identity and sexuality in classrooms. Banned titles in Florida schools now include Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Normal People by Sally Rooney, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. What DeSantis and other rightwingers often say is that these efforts don't truly constitute 'bans' because they only remove books from schools, rather than totally outlawing them from being bought in the US, and therefore don't encroach on free speech. John Chrastka, the executive director and founder of EveryLibrary, argued that this is faulty reasoning. 'The private marketplace is protected by the first amendment in ways that the government is not beholden to,' he said. 'The idea that because a book is still available for sale means that it's not being banned outright is only the difference between a framework that was in place prior to the 1950s' and today. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion He noted that Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was first published in 1928 in Europe, was banned in the US for several years before finally getting its American publication in 1959 in what was a watershed affirmation of the right to free speech. Realizing that the first amendment prevented them from blocking the book from US bookstores, critics turned their attention to libraries instead, a grayer area in terms of constitutional protections. DeSantis and other rightwing politicians have taken the lesson: if the constitution prevents you from banning a book from being bought or sold in Florida, the next best thing is to ban it from the places most people would have the easiest access to it – schools and libraries. 'It doesn't add up,' Chrastka added, 'the idea that a teenager in a state where it's impossible for them to get to an independent bookstore because they don't exist any more somehow has enough liberty to buy the book when the school library is blocked from having it available for them.' Another key distinction is between banning books from classroom curriculum versus removing them from school libraries – which, unlike classrooms, are historically protected spaces for free access to ideas. 'What you read for a class supports the curriculum,' says Chrastka, whereas 'the school library is supposed to support independent reading. One of them is required reading and the other one isn't, but [the reading material] is meant to be available.' The landmark supreme court case Island Trees School District v Pico in 1982, when a school board in New York removed books from its libraries it deemed 'anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy', established that school boards cannot restrict the availability of books in their libraries simply because they don't like or agree with the content. Critics contend the new wave of book bans, although not yet about preventing sales at bookshops, fails to meet the intended purpose of libraries: to preserve and provide a variety of ideas and information that may not be readily or equally accessible to everyone. Now, many fear that once certain books are established as unacceptable in schools, the censorship could spread to colleges, bookstores and eventually nationwide bans. Even if that does not happen, experts say one of the most reliable ways to ensure ideas are suppressed is to dismantle the education system, making Trump's repeatedly stated goal of eliminating the Department of Education a particular concern. 'The vast majority of the budget for the Department of Education and the laws and regulations that make sure that the department is functional go to help students succeed and protect students who are otherwise vulnerable,' said Chrastka. With the education system having been chipped away at for decades with budgets cuts, low literacy rates and high dropout rates, book bans only make it weaker. 'What we need in this country is for students to feel supported and to find their own identities, and reading is a core component of that,' Chrastka said. 'Let's let the kids discover themselves and discover their own path forward in the process.'
Express Tribune
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Trump brings censorship fears
In an Instagram post last week, Oscar-winning actor Julianne Moore wrote she was "deeply saddened" by the Trump administration's decision to put her 2007 children's book Freckleface Strawberry under review and removing it from schools serving the children of US military personnel and civilian defense employees. As per DW, the book tells the tale of a red-headed youngster who hates her freckles but eventually learns to love them - as well as the differences of others. According to The Guardian, the Department of Defense circulated a memo stating that all library books "potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics" were being looked into, and that a "small number" of said books were being held for "further review" as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. "It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but are united by our humanity and our community" the Oscar-winner wrote in her social media post. "I am truly saddened and never thought I would see this in a country where freedom of speech and expression is a constitutional right." Many in the world of arts and humanities fear that a climate of censorship is impending - and it's far from the only concern. 'Assault on free expression' In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that mandated all federal agencies end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. The move was felt in the arts scene, namely in several dozen major museums that receive federal funding, including the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art. These institutions were left to determine whether their programs fit with the new directives that consider diversity efforts to be discriminatory. The National Gallery of Art already announced it would close its Office of Belonging and Inclusion. "The DEI assault of the Trump administration and... censorship of activities that in any way touch on race is upon us. And it's very incoherent because there's no clear guideline for what it means to be racially biased when in fact you're simply trying to redress grievances of the past," says Maxwell Anderson, a former museum curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and director of the Whitney Museum. "So there's a kind of free-floating assault on free expression." Anderson, who now runs the foundation Souls Grown Deep, which supports Black artists in the southern US, says he and other equality-driven organisations are keeping a close eye on the manoeuvers of the new administration. "Because it seems that it's now becoming illegal in the United States to talk about the history of race," Anderson said. "This kind of erasure is so reminiscent of the fascist movements in the '30s, so for us in the US, it's shocking. We all assumed that if Trump was elected, it would be a devastating blow to culture, but we didn't know how deep it would cut." Federal support gets the axe During his first term in office, Trump dissolved the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, a historically non-partisan group established by Republican president Ronald Reagan on "the fundamental belief that creativity, diversity, and democracy are intrinsically bound, and that the arts and the humanities can be a powerful force for social change." The committee has brought together prominent artists, academics and museum professionals to advise on cultural policy. In the past, it has included members such as Frank Sinatra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, among others. In 2017, President Trump banned the group after 17 members resigned over his response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Joe Biden reinstated the group in 2022, citing the importance of arts and humanities. Then in January, Trump dissolved the group once again in a series of executive orders aimed at rolling back the previous administration's policies on art and culture and historical commemoration. Already, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide, cut its FY26 Challenge America grants, which gave millions in federal funding to small arts organisations that extended outreach to underserved communities in the US. The organisation announced that funds and manpower would now go towards the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence - which along with the creation of a new national sculpture garden, is one of the president's planned projects. Kennedy Centre takeover Yet almost ironically, President Trump recently came to the helm of one of the largest performing arts institutions in the US: The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The president orchestrated a veritable takeover of the cultural enterprise that - uniquely - is part of the US government. It hosts more than 2,000 performances a year across artistic disciplines and is home to the National Symphony Orchestra and the National Opera. President Trump fired many of the previous board members, replacing them with hand-picked allies, including Second Lady Usha Vance, his advisor Dan Scavino and his chief of staff Susie Wiles, among others. They, in turn, elected him chairperson. President Trump said he wants the institution to move away from "woke culture," writing on social media that there would be "No more drag shows, or other anti-American propaganda - only the best." A number of artists have since cancelled upcoming performances out of protest at the takeover - as well as eyebrow-raising program changes that occurred at the same time but supposedly have nothing to do with it. Finn, a children's musical, about a young shark who realises he relates more to smaller fish than other sharks, was cancelled. The National Symphony Orchestra concert titled A Peacock Among Pigeons which was described as a celebration of love and diversity, was also postponed indefinitely shortly after the regime change on the board. Anderson points out that, in contrast to the performing arts scene, museums typically plan their exhibitions years in advance. "So the conundrum will be that there are plenty of exhibitions on the calendar at museums nationwide that had works by Black artists or works that were ideologically rich and textured and controversial in the eyes of the new administration that are still on the books." Cancelling them, Anderson says, may pose more of a challenge. In the meantime, he hopes arts institution leaders will have the courage to stand up to what is happening, despite the many challenges present in doing so. After all, he points out: "Self-censorship is in some ways a more dangerous force than the pressures we're under today."
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
NEWS OF THE WEEK: Julianne Moore slams Trump administration for banning children's book
Taking to Instagram the actress reported her 2007 book, Frecklface Strawberry had been removed from schools within the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) as part of Trump's plans, to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the armed services. "Freckleface Strawberry is a semi-autobiographical story about a seven-year-old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she is different 'just like everybody else.' It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle…'
