CBS News/60 Minutes
A 60 Minutes segment on the growing trend of right-wing book bans featured an at-times contentious interview with a pair of women who co-founded the “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, during which correspondent Scott Pelley chided them for dodging questions with “talking points” and avoiding his repeated questions about the group’s attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans.
Pelley opened the report by interviewing a school board member from Beaufort, South Carolina, named Dick Geier, a Republican who nonetheless has seen his life upended by conservatives in his community who have begun to complain in droves about books and curriculum used in the district.
In the past, these sorts of issues would be solved via parental opt-out forms issued through school libraries restricting what books certain students can check out, Geier said—but following the viral success of groups like Moms for Liberty—which has been labeled an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—in galvanizing complaints that have the power to overwhelm schools’ bureaucracies, everything has changed for local administrators tasked with handling the backlash.