<....China could adopt a 27-child policy, but this would have no effect. "Notwithstanding the totalitarian conceit that population trends are something that government can 'fine tune,' the reality is that birth trends tend to comport very closely with the desired family size of real life parents," Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute told me. "It is possible to use bayonets and police power to force birth rates down against the will of a people; it is very much more difficult to use state force to push birth rates up."

In fact, as Wang Feng points out, "No country has successfully raised fertility with government policies."

Wang thinks that a declining demography gives China incentives to adopt benign external policies. As he writes, "Economic and political challenges, which will amplify with demographic changes in the coming decades, should compel Chinese leaders to seek and maintain better relations with the United States and in Western Europe, with countries that have both markets for China's export products and innovations and new technologies that China needs."

Wang perfectly sums up how China's leader should calculate the country's interests. Xi Jinping, however, may see things differently. His primary form of diplomacy in recent years has been intimidation. He can intimidate if others believe his China will dominate or even rule the world; he cannot do that if others see his country shrinking quickly. Given Xi's goals—he is pushing the imperial-era notion that China should rule tianxia or "All Under Heaven"—he knows he does not have much time.

Xi must know that old societies tend to be pacific and that China is getting old fast. If he wants the Chinese people to support his glorious visions of planetary rule, he surely understands the time to act is now. There is, he must know, a closing window of opportunity.

How did Xi ever get the idea he could impose his will on all humanity in the first place? "By teaming up to dress up an old, sick cat as a ferocious lion, Chinese and American scholars have fueled the political ambitions of China's leaders and misdirected U.S.-China relations down the dangerous path of a furious battle between a dynamic tiger and an aggressive lion," Yi Fuxian points out. "Strategic miscalculation based on incorrect demographic data is costly and dangerous."

"More people means more power," posted "Fang Feng" on the Strong Country Forum of People's Daily when China's population was growing. "This is the truth."

The world has to be concerned that China's leader both believes the opposite is also true and realizes he must move before it is too late.>

<Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership.

Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse.

He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

On Saturday evening, he had accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the Jimmy Carter-era treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he wrote, just ahead of an increase in the charges scheduled for Jan. 1. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop.”

He went on to express worry that the canal could fall into the “wrong hands,” an apparent reference to China, the second-largest user of the canal. A Hong Kong-based firm controls two ports near the canal, but China has no control over the canal itself.

Not surprisingly, the government of Greenland immediately rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, as it did in 2019, when he first floated the idea. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede said in a statement. “We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”

The Danish prime minister’s office was more circumspect, writing in a statement that the government was “looking forward to working with the new administration” and offering no further comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

After Mr. Trump brought up the Panama Canal again in a speech on Sunday, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, said in a video that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be.” He added: “Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.”

But the president-elect’s statements — and the not-so-subtle threats behind them — were another reminder that his version of “America First” is not an isolationist creed.

His aggressive interpretation of the phrase evokes the expansionism, or colonialism, of President Theodore Roosevelt, who took control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. And it reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.

Mr. Trump has often suggested that he does not always see the sovereignty of other nations’ borders as sacrosanct. When Russia invaded Ukraine, his first response was not a condemnation of the blatant land grab, but rather the observation that President Vladimir V. Putin’s move was an act of “genius.”

Even now, as Mr. Trump seeks a deal to end the war in Ukraine, he has never said that the country’s borders must be restored, a key demand of the United States and NATO — he has only promised a “deal” to end the fighting.

In the cases of Greenland and Panama, both commercial and national security interests are at play.

Mr. Trump’s desire for Greenland was made explicit in the first term, when a wealthy New York friend of his, Ronald S. Lauder, the New York cosmetics heir, put the idea in his head....>

<....In the Trump White House in 2019, the National Security Council was suddenly delving into the details of how the United States would pull off a land acquisition of that size. Mr. Trump kept pressing the point with Denmark, which consistently rebuffed him.

Mr. Trump was not the first president to make the case: Harry S. Truman wanted to buy Greenland after World War II, as part of a Cold War strategy for boxing out Soviet forces. Mr. Trump can make a parallel argument, especially as Russia, China and the United States jockey for control of Arctic routes for commercial shipping and naval assets.

Arctic experts did not dismiss Mr. Trump’s Greenland bid as a joke.

“Not that many people are laughing about it now,” said Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defense College in Denmark who focuses on Arctic security.

Mr. Jacobsen noted that the reaction in Denmark to Mr. Trump’s latest bid had been one of fury (one Danish politician called it “an unusually strange way to be an ally”). But, he said, Greenlanders — who have long sought independence — may seek to use Mr. Trump’s interest as an opportunity to further strengthen economic ties with the United States.

Since 2009, Greenland has had the right to declare its independence, but the vast territory of about 56,000 people is still heavily dependent on Denmark and has never chosen to pursue that path. Mr. Trump’s interest could give Greenland an opening for more U.S. investments, including in tourism or rare earth mining, he said.

“Was it crazy when the U.S. acquired Alaska? Was it crazy when the U.S. built the Panama Canal?” asked Sherri Goodman, a former Pentagon official and a senior fellow with the Wilson Center Polar Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Ms. Goodman, whose book “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security” centers in part on the Arctic, said the United States did have a strong interest in ensuring that China in particular does not develop a strong presence in Greenland.

Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic have grown, and in 2018 it laid out plans to build infrastructure and develop shipping lanes opened by climate change. Ms. Goodman said the United State should continue to prevent China from gaining a foothold in the doorstep to North America, but said Greenlanders must decide their own fate.

“We want to have all those territories proximate to our own mainland territory to protect us and also to prevent an adversary from using it to our strategic disadvantage,” Ms. Goodman said. “On the other hand, there is international law and international order and sovereignty, and Greenland is still a part of Denmark.”

When it comes to Panama, Mr. Trump may also hold a distant personal grudge.

In 2018, Panamanian police officers evicted the Trump Organization from the Trump International Hotel in Panama City after a protracted legal battle between the president-elect’s family and the majority owner of the property. The Trump name subsequently came down. The company had held a contract to manage the property.>

<A federal judge ruled on Monday that sections of an Arkansas law, which sought to impose criminal penalties on librarians and booksellers for distributing “harmful” material to children, were unconstitutional.

The law, known as the Arkansas Act 372, was signed into law last year by Republican governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It was challenged by a coalition of organizations in the state, leading to a lengthy legal battle that concluded this week.

Two sections of Act 372 subjected librarians and booksellers to jail time for distributing material that is deemed “harmful to children”. Proponents of the law, including Sanders, said the law was put in place to “protect children” from “obscene” material.

“Act 372 is just common sense: schools and libraries shouldn’t put obscene material in front of our kids,” Sanders said in a statement to KATV-TV. “I will work with Attorney General Griffin to appeal this ruling and uphold Arkansas law.”

The governor signed the bill into law in March 2023, and a coalition of organizations in the state, including the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock and the ACLU of Arkansas, challenged it last year, saying the law was vague, overly broad and that the fear of criminal penalties would have a chilling effect on librarians across the state. A federal court temporarily blocked the enforcement of the two sections in question, while the law was being challenged in court.

The two sections that were struck down on Monday had established a criminal misdemeanor for “furnishing a harmful item to a minor”, and would have required local governments to create oversight boards to review challenged material. The organizations opposing the law argued that local officials, at their own discretion, could censor whichever books and material they pleased.

“This is a significant milestone on a long, sometimes rocky road we were obligated to travel after the passage of Act 372,” said Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, in response to Monday’s ruling.

“We took that path to protect our librarians from prosecution for doing their jobs and to prevent some local elected officials from censoring library books they did not feel were ‘appropriate’ for our patrons to read.”

In 2004, a federal judge struck down a similar law. The year prior, the state passed a law that required booksellers and librarians to hide materials deemed “harmful to minors”. It was deemed unconstitutional after legal challenges.>

<U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will direct his Justice Department to "vigorously pursue" the death penalty to protect Americans from "violent rapists, murderers, and monsters" when he takes power on Jan. 20.

Trump's statement on his social media platform Truth Social was in response to President Joe Biden's announcement on Monday that he had commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal inmates on death row, converting them to life in prison without parole.

"As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters," Trump said.

Trump restarted federal executions during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021 after a nearly 20-year pause.

Biden, who ran for president opposing the death penalty, put federal executions on hold when he took office in January 2021.

Unlike executive orders, clemency decisions cannot be reversed by a president's successor, although the death penalty can be sought more aggressively in future cases.

The Trump transition team on Monday had denounced Biden's decision, calling it abhorrent and favoring convicts who are "among the worst killers in the world.">

<Even as China’s leaders have looked for ways to lift sagging birthrates, Beijing thought there was one group who would always want to have many children: rural couples.

They were wrong. Research suggests that rural migrant workers have severe reservations about starting a family. And a big reason appears to be China’s household-registration system, which since the 1950s has divided the population into rural or urban and makes it hard for rural workers to take their children with them.

Described as an invisible wall, the hukou system was set up to prevent cities from becoming overrun. It limits migrant workers’ ability to put down roots in China’s biggest cities by restricting access to local services such as healthcare and education, or the right to buy an apartment.

When China started its economic reforms in the 1980s, most Chinese lived in villages and rural towns. The new economic opportunities sent millions to work in factories or construction sites in cities. Partly because of the residency restrictions, children typically stayed behind in the care of grandparents or other family members.

Many so-called left-behind children have grown up to become migrant workers themselves. And many reject the tough prospect of having children only to live apart from them.

One 27-year-old woman who grew up with her grandparents while her parents hopped from city to city for jobs said she wouldn’t rush to get married or have children.

“I deeply understand the low self-esteem and timidity as a left-behind child,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her family name, Zhao. Her grandparents were illiterate and had to work the land in their village in Guizhou province. With little oversight and care, Zhao and her sister barely managed to finish vocational school.

“I don’t want the next generation to be like me,” Zhao said.

Even though two-thirds of Chinese now live in cities, only 48% have urban residency rights, suggesting that roughly a quarter of a billion people are shut out of many benefits in the cities where they work. According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in 2017 only about 22% of migrant workers were part of pension plans in their city jobs or had medical insurance. The ministry hasn’t disclosed more recent data.

Some demographers argue that eliminating the household-registration system could be one of the few moves Beijing could take that might dramatically lift births, a priority as the population declines and ages.

“The primary force that has been driving down China’s fertility rate is the migrant workers who still don’t have equal access to resources in the large cities,” said Martin Whyte, a sociology professor emeritus at Harvard University who has long argued for improving conditions for China’s rural population.

Migrant workers in cities with harsher restrictions tend to put off having children by at least one year compared with those in cities with looser rules, according to researchers at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Residency restrictions also significantly lower the willingness to have a second child among migrant women compared with urban women, according to a 2021 research paper written by Min Zhou, a sociologist at Canada’s University of Victoria, and based on official surveys of migrants.

For many rural workers, life in the city means a bunk in a factory-run dorm or in an apartment shared with other workers, with little money to rent—much less buy—an apartment for their families.

Many migrants who can afford it do bring their families to cities and some manage to get their children into local public schools. Others send children to privately run schools for migrant-worker children. The quality of such schools varies; many are unregulated and overcrowded, China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit, said in a 2023 report.

Beijing authorities a few years ago embarked on what was in essence a mass eviction of rural workers by closing wholesale markets and other informal businesses where many of them worked. The campaign to knock down “illegal structures” came as the capital was trying to reduce its population by 15%.

Shenzhen, a city essentially built by rural workers, long made it easier than other big cities for migrants to establish an urban foothold. But even as other cities ease residency restrictions, Shenzhen is now looking to tighten migrants’ access to education for their children or paths to get a residence permit through marriage.

Rural households have less than half the disposable income of their urban peers, about $3,000 on average compared with more than $7,000 in cities, 2023 official data shows.

“Only in China is the urban-rural divide entrenched by official policy and codified by law,” Stanford University researchers Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell wrote in their 2020 book “Invisible China.”....>

<....China still has more left-behind children than any country in the world, 67 million in 2020, according to official data. The challenges and tragedies of such children are well documented.

In March, the killing of a 13-year-old boy by classmates in a village in north China drew renewed attention to the problem. Both the victim and his killers had parents who worked elsewhere.

The killing upset Wang Yahui, a waitress in her mid-30s. Wang and her husband are both working in Beijing, leaving their two sons with her parents in Inner Mongolia. They try to go back to see them twice a year. Still, Wang found it impossible to properly oversee their education. Her older son is now a teenager. “He is reluctant to talk with me,” Wang said.

The Beijing nonprofit On the Way to School, which surveyed 3,501 left-behind children in 2020, found that more than one-tenth of children said they hadn’t seen their parents at all over the previous year. About a quarter of the children said they received a parental call only once a quarter, the survey found.

In November, China executed a man who had raped a left-behind girl for years, starting when she was 11. The girl, who was living alone, died by suicide when she was 16. “For lack of guardians’ protection, left-behind children have become easy targets,” the high court said in announcing the execution.

Zhou Shen, 32, a well-known Chinese singer, recently described the trauma of growing up without parents in an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency. “My dream was going to school with shoes and clothes and without an empty stomach,” Zhou said.

One consideration that stopped the Communist Party leadership from lifting all birth restrictions, even after China’s demographic challenges became clear, was leaders’ suspicion that, without limits, rural families would have too many children and never make it out of poverty.

But the old norms about rural families’ needing more hands for farming are changing around the world, said Jack Goldstone, a sociologist at George Mason University.

In China, the number of newborns this year is expected to show a continued decline. The total of marriage registrations was 4.7 million over the first three quarters of the year, representing a 17% decline from a year earlier, the latest official data showed.

Chinese health authorities in October launched a nationwide survey, with special focus on rural communities and smaller towns, to better understand reasons people don’t want to have children. The same month, the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced a series of measures to lift birthrates, including asking cities to expand birth insurance to migrant workers.

Qin Zhou, one of tens of thousands of yellow-uniformed food-delivery drivers in Beijing, said he and his wife plan to save more and move back to their home province of Shanxi before they have children. “Probably one is enough,” said Qin, who is in his early 30s.

Chen Pan, a delivery man in his 20s from Hunan province, said outside a Beijing shopping mall that he has no plan to get married before he turns 30. He wants to focus on making more money in Beijing first.>

<The outgoing and incoming U.S. presidents had different messages for the Christmas holiday on Wednesday, with Democrat Joe Biden urging Americans to reflect and unite, while Republican Donald Trump offered a holiday greeting and then took aim at his political opponents.

Biden narrated a video tour of the White House Christmas decorations that was published on YouTube late on Christmas Eve, in which he urges Americans to set aside "all the noise and everything that divides us."

"We're here on this Earth to care for one another, to love one another," Biden says in a voiceover as a camera pans past adorned evergreen trees and bedecked fireplaces inside the White House. "Too often we see each other as enemies, not as neighbors, not as fellow Americans," he said.

Biden urged Americans to find a moment of "quiet reflection" to remind themselves to treat each other with dignity and respect, to "live in the light" and remember there was more to unite than divide Americans. "We're truly blessed to live in this nation," he said.

Trump published a mid-morning "Merry Christmas" message on Truth Social on Christmas Day with a photo of himself and his wife Melania, followed by over two dozen re-posts of articles or other social media posts that backed his political positions on topics including Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth and his pursuit of Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Later, Trump published a more lengthy "Merry Christmas" message that claimed Chinese soldiers were operating the Panama Canal, and criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Biden and Democrats.

"Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections," Trump wrote. "They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing."

"Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%," Trump wrote.

Biden took office in 2021 vowing to "end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal," and said he bowed out of the 2024 presidential race in July to unite the country.

Biden's Democrats lost every battleground state and both houses of Congress in the November election.

By some measures, polarization in the country has increased, including during the 2024 campaign that saw Biden face Trump, again, before Democrat Kamala Harris took over.

The incoming U.S. Congress is on track to be the most polarized ever.

Trump has called for the prosecution of perceived political enemies, the U.S. takeover of the Panama Canal and vowed to restructure the federal government.>

<[Event "Boylston CC Championship"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1998.10.21"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Mishkin, Paul"]
[Black "Porter, Ryan W"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "A45"]
[WhiteElo "2018"]
[BlackElo "2274"]

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 c5 5.c3 Nc6 6.Nbd2 Bd6 7.O-O O-O 8.dxc5 Bxc5 9.e4 Qc7 10.Qe2 Ng4 11.h3 Nge5 12.Bc2 d4 13.Nxe5 Nxe5 14.cxd4 Bxd4 15.Nb3 Bb6 16.Bf4 f6 17.Rac1 Qf7 18.Rfd1 Bd7 19.Nd4 Rac8 20.Bb3 Rxc1 1/2-1/2>

<As public libraries throughout Arkansas have come under scrutiny in recent years, some have faced uncertainty about the future of their funding sources, which determine what resources they offer their communities.

The only library system that has seen a funding cut so far is the one in Craighead County, where citizens narrowly voted in 2022 to halve the property tax dedicated to library funding.

Craighead County residents who supported the defunding had previously decried the availability of books they considered “inappropriate for minors.” Their protests started in 2021, in response to an LGBTQ+ book display and a transgender author’s visit to the library.

Other counties saw the same argument over content in the following years, fueled in part by a state law that would change how librarians handle content challenges and criminalize their decisions about materials. Parts of Act 372 of 2023 were temporarily blocked in federal court in 2023 and permanently blocked Monday. Outcry over “inappropriate” books quieted down in 2024.

At the same time, claims that libraries are overfunded have come to the forefront, sometimes in communities where there has been no organized backlash against the books on the shelves. Residents of three counties tried to gather support for ballot measures this year to reduce their libraries’ property tax millage.

The measure to cut Lawrence County’s millage in half failed by a large margin, and officials in Saline and Garland counties declared the measures ineligible for the ballot. Meanwhile, an effort to restore some of Craighead County’s library funding failed.

Librarians and library advocates have said they are heartened by public opposition to defunding efforts. They have also expressed frustration about the challenge of convincing some local governments and community members to trust them to be financially responsible.

To fend off future defunding efforts, librarians need to educate Arkansans on “how library funding works” and “how libraries operate in general,” said Adam Webb, the incoming president of the Arkansas Library Association and executive director of the Garland County Library.

Libraries in two other counties have not faced active defunding efforts, but county government officials have publicly put the libraries’ finances under a microscope. A judge ordered the Crawford County Library in September to stop separating LGBTQ+ books from the rest of the collection, and county officials want the library to pay the legal fees of the patrons who sought the order. Governance of Marion County’s library is up in the air after the director’s arrest in early December for alleged financial crimes.

Additionally, some Republican state officials have said libraries’ funding should be granted only under certain conditions.

Some critics of libraries have claimed they are left-wing entities. Libraries are nonpartisan, though they cannot be considered neutral “when you have every type of speech that the world can come up with in one building,” Webb said.

“All we’re doing is standing up for First Amendment rights and protecting free speech, so it’s frustrating that when people aren’t getting their way, the natural recourse is to just defund [libraries],” he said.

In August 2023, Saline County Judge Matt Brumley fired county library director Patty Hector after the quorum court granted him the power to do so. Hector had refused to relocate books with “sexual content or imagery” out of children’s reach at the quorum court’s urging after Act 372 became law.

Officials in one Central Arkansas county consider shifting library authority to county judge

Hector’s decision met hostility from some members of the public. Some of those individuals sent the library a series of Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requests, later claiming at meetings that both the financial information they received and the library’s slow FOIA response time were signs of misconduct.

Craighead County saw a similar pattern of FOIA requests and accusations of financial wrongdoing by citizens who wanted LGBTQ+ books moved away from children and later supported defunding the library. Saline County residents who supported the library warned the quorum court that the campaign against Hector and LGBTQ+ books likely preceded a defunding campaign as well.....>

<....In October of this year, the Saline Courier reported that Brumley rejected a citizen-led effort to put a measure on the November ballot to cut the library’s funding. Amendment 38 of the Arkansas Constitution requires at least 100 signatures from “taxpaying electors” for a proposal to change the tax levy that funds a local library.

Webb said Amendment 38 is a “criminally low standard” for putting library funding up to a public vote. Codie Crumpton, secretary of the Saline County Republican Women, submitted 171 signatures to Brumley in favor of reducing the county library millage from 1.7 to 0.9 mills.

Concerns about both financial mismanagement, based on the FOIA responses, and children’s access to certain books made circulating the petition “a good option,” Crumpton said. She and her cohorts haven’t seen “any sort of meaningful change” since Hector’s firing, she said, and she expressed disappointment that Leigh Espey, Hector’s successor as Saline County Library director, has “stood her ground” when approached about controversial library content.

Crumpton said she plans to circulate another petition after she “learned a lesson” from Brumley’s rejection of the first one over technicalities.

The Saline County Library Alliance, a nonpartisan organization that formed to support the library in 2023, was prepared for the defunding petition and will be prepared for another one, organizer Bailey Morgan said.

“They were so loud with the content argument that we were able to get ahead of the funding argument,” Morgan said. “Moving forward will be a continuation of that. We will let folks know that the library is not stealing your money, that very little of your property tax actually goes to the library and [defunding] would be a savings of a few dollars at best.”

Some Saline County residents said last year that Hector should be investigated over the library’s finances. There was no such investigation in Saline County, but there was one in Marion County that culminated in the now-former library director’s arrest on Dec. 2.

The county sheriff’s office charged Dana Scott with two counts of tampering with public records and one count of failure to pay or file tax returns, both of which are Class D felonies. Scott pleaded not guilty on Dec. 10. Her attorney, Samuel Pasthing, declined to comment at this stage in the case.

Scott’s arrest came after years of scrutiny and criticism of the library from the Marion County quorum court, which repeatedly declined to include in the county budget the library board’s recommended merit pay raise for Scott.

Quorum court member Claudia Brigham sent the library a series of FOIA requests in August and September asking for detailed financial documents, such as cash logs, the library’s tax ID number and the dollar amount of merchandise the library sold in recent years. The Advocate obtained the requests via its own FOIA query.

Brigham attended several library board meetings earlier this year, and she repeatedly asked the board for financial information and criticized what she saw as a lack of transparency, according to meeting minutes. She did not respond to requests for comment and will not be on the quorum court after Dec. 31.

The Marion County sheriff’s investigation into Scott began after Alesia Owen filed a complaint with the local prosecuting attorney raising questions about library finances. Owen was a library board member from February 2022 to August 2024, and board meeting minutes from those two and a half years indicate Owen did not publicly express financial concerns to the board. She declined to comment when reached by phone.

Public libraries are required by state law to have five-member administrative boards. Three days after Scott’s arrest, County Judge Jason Stumph dismissed all four library board members, with one seat vacant after Owen’s resignation. Stumph told the board its dismissal was accountability for not supervising Scott more closely.

Quorum courts are responsible for confirming new county library board members after the county judge makes recommendations from a pool of applicants. Brumley reminded the Saline County Library board of this power in May 2023, in light of Hector’s refusal to relocate LGBTQ+ books, and criticized what he saw as insufficient oversight of Hector and library finances.

Brumley urged the library board to hire an accounting firm to audit the library, but the board’s efforts to do so have yielded no results over a year later. Hector said private auditors have been unwilling to engage because the state’s nonpartisan government oversight arm, Arkansas Legislative Audit, already examines libraries as part of required annual audits of all 75 counties.....>

<....The state’s audit of Saline County in 2023 found no issues with the library. The same was true of Marion County’s 2022 and 2023 audits.

Hector said it’s unlikely that a state auditor’s “very thorough and professional” examination of library finances would have missed the alleged crimes in the charges facing Scott.

Library finances face “a higher level of scrutiny… than other political subdivisions” due to state audits, library board supervision and local governments’ approval of the budgets, Webb said, creating “more potential for catching errors.”

However, audits are rarely mentioned by libraries’ detractors because “it undercuts the narrative that libraries are fiscally irresponsible,” Webb said.

The Arkansas State Library Board disburses taxpayer funds to public libraries on a quarterly basis. Jason Rapert, a former Republican state senator appointed to the board in 2023, argued at all four board meetings this year that libraries with “sexually explicit” content within children’s reach should not receive state funds.

Rapert’s defunding attempts have failed due to opposition from the other six board members, including Shari Bales of Hot Springs, who was appointed alongside Rapert.

When Garland County officials were tasked with approving or rejecting the petition to reduce the county library’s funding, Bales was one of many county residents to urge officials at a public hearing to keep the measure off the ballot. She called Rapert’s efforts “an existential threat” to libraries and said “local funding is paramount” to libraries’ survival.

County Judge Darryl Mahoney rejected the proposed ballot measure in September.

Rapert has called for the state Legislature to abolish the State Library Board in response to its rejection of his efforts to keep children away from materials he said are “grooming” them.

Sen. Bart Hester of Cave Springs, one of Rapert’s former Republican colleagues and the Senate President Pro Tempore, agreed that “pornography” should not be allowed in libraries and that “a state board that is intent on sexualizing children” should be dissolved if it doesn’t “get on board.”

Another Republican senator, Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro, was the primary sponsor of Act 372 of 2023 and has also said the state should defund ArLA. The nonprofit advocacy organization receives no state funds.

Sullivan has also said the Legislature should “eliminate all the funding for public libraries that have the American Library Association in their policy” during the 2025 legislative session. ALA is ArLA’s parent organization, and its Library Bill of Rights states that access to libraries should not be restricted based on a person’s age. Far-right conservatives nationwide have claimed this statement is proof that the ALA believes in forcing content about sexual activity and LGBTQ+ topics onto children.

A Democrat-sponsored bill introduced for the 2025 session would repeal Act 372 and require public libraries to have “a written policy prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval” in order to receive state funding. The 2025 legislative session begins Jan. 13.

Saline County residents worried in 2023 that the library’s state funding would be in jeopardy due to the quorum court granting the county judge power over library staffing and finances. They were concerned that the board would be labeled advisory rather than administrative as required by the State Library. Espey told the Advocate those fears did not come true, and State Library Board minutes show the Saline County Library’s allotted funds have remained consistent.

Brigham, the Marion County quorum court member, proposed an ordinance in February 2022 that would have redesignated the county library board from administrative to advisory. The proposal saw public pushback over potential funding loss. It was pulled from the quorum court’s agenda and never received a vote, county clerk Dawn Moffet said this month.

Another requirement for state funding is a library director with a master’s degree in library science. Suzy McVay, the Marion County Library employee tapped as interim manager after Scott’s arrest, does not have this degree.

The State Library allows libraries in Marion County’s position to form agreements with librarians in other counties that have the requisite education. Those individuals would handle certain aspects of library administration, such as reports to the State Library, and allow the local entity to keep receiving state funds.

Stumph said via email that he is considering this option for Marion County.....>

<....If the Lawrence County millage cut had passed, library director Ashley Burris said, the county’s part-time library branches in Lynn and Imboden would have closed, leaving only the main branch in Walnut Ridge. Cuts to staff and programming would also have been necessary, she said.

Coty Powers, who collected signatures for the ballot measure under Amendment 38, said he believed some of the library’s programs were “redundant.” He does not plan to reintroduce the proposal because “the people have spoken,” he said.

Powers and other Lawrence County residents wanted some of the library’s funding to go toward improving county roads instead. Burris said she spoke to several signers of the petition who were under the impression that tax money taken away from the library would immediately benefit the road department.

“I would explain to them, ‘Actually, no, the only thing on this [petition] is to cut library funding,’” Burris said. “They would be surprised by this and end up with a sign in their yard to support the library.”

In Garland County, the proposed 0.6-mill tax reduction would have cut the library’s budget by $1 million and might have forced it to reduce its hours or limit its more expensive services, Webb said.

The Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library cut 13 employees and reduced its hours of operation to adjust to the loss of funding. After the refunding effort in Jonesboro failed in November, director Vanessa Adams said the library’s reserve funds will be necessary to keep the doors open, and she did not anticipate another restoration issue on the 2026 ballot.

Dean MacDonald, who collected signatures for the refunding petition, said county residents should continue to fight the “bad narratives” against the library and highlight its struggles since the defunding.

“If 100 good people want to see [restoring millage] on the ballot in 2026, then it’s absolutely their right and they should do just that,” MacDonald said.

They were so loud with the content argument that we were able to get ahead of the funding argument. Moving forward will be a continuation of that. We will let folks know that the library is not stealing your money.

– Bailey Morgan, an organizer with the Saline County Library Alliance

Meanwhile in Crawford County, the library board and county officials disagree over who is responsible for paying a projected sum of more than $118,000 in plaintiffs’ legal costs after losing the case over the segregation of LGBTQ+ books in “social sections.”

The five-branch library system might have to reduce its broadband internet speed and after-school meal services if it’s forced to shoulder the cost, board chairman Keith Pigg said, but a federal judge has yet to order the payment of the legal fees.

Three parents sued the library in May 2023 over the social sections, saying they violated the First Amendment. Former library director Deidre Grzymala said it was a “compromise” in response to public outcry. The quorum court gave her a $40,000 severance package after her resignation.

Pigg has said the quorum court violated Amendment 38 by paying the severance with library funds without the board’s consent. The amendment states, “No claim against [designated library] funds shall be approved by the County Court unless first approved by the County Library Board.”

Crawford County was also a defendant in the case against Act 372 due to its segregation of books, which ended in October.

Community members have not been complaining about library content since the resolution of the lawsuit, Crawford County Library director Charlene McDonnough said. She and Hector said the citizens of their respective counties that complained about books were usually not library patrons.

“That tells me it wasn’t ever about the books,” said Hector, who plans to take legal action against Saline County for her firing.>

<[Event "MetroWest CC September 98"] [Site "Natick Mass"]
[Date "1998.09.08"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Kelly, Joseph F"]
[Black "Curdo, John"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "D02"]
[WhiteElo "1891"]
[BlackElo "2312"]