“IAM District 837 members … deserve a contract that reflects their skill, dedication, and the critical role they play in our nation’s defense,” the union’s Business Representative Tom Boelling said.

Boeing said it was ready for the action. “We are prepared for a strike and have fully implemented our contingency plan,” Boeing Air Dominance vice president and general manager Dan Gillian said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Boeing’s original offer proposal included a 20% general wage increase over four years and a $5,000 ratification bonus. Bloomberg via Getty Images

“We’re disappointed our employees in St. Louis rejected an offer that featured 40% average wage growth,” he added.

Boeing’s original proposal included a 20% general wage increase over four years and a $5,000 ratification bonus, as well as more vacation time and sick leave. The union had rejected the offer, saying it was insufficient.

Last week, Boeing sent a new contract offer to the union with some minor compensation changes that would benefit senior union members, according to the company. The offer also kept current overtime policies, which Boeing had proposed modifying in the last contract offer.

The workers assemble Boeing’s fighter jets and the MQ-25, an aerial refueling drone being developed for the US Navy.

Boeing is expanding manufacturing facilities in the St. Louis area for the new US Air Force fighter, the F-47A. AFP via Getty Images

Boeing’s defense division is expanding manufacturing facilities in the St. Louis area for the new US Air Force fighter, the F-47A, after it won the contract this year.

The upcoming strike by the union, representing 3,200 employees, would be much smaller than the one Boeing was hit with last fall, when 33,000 machinists at Boeing’s commercial plane division walked out for nearly two months. That strike ended with approval of a four-year contract that included a 38% wage increase.

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For years, it’s been clear that one of the most vital ways through this era of book censorship is the legal system. The results of the ongoing spate of lawsuits are a mixed bag. We’ve seen Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which involves removal of any books from schools with so-called “sex acts” in them, be blocked and deemed unconstitutional. We’ve seen the Fifth Circuit Court say that library users have no First Amendment grounds to sue libraries for removal of books for any reason in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Librarian Brooky Parks successfully settled a lawsuit against her former public library employer, where she was terminated for speaking out against censorship; so, too, did Suzette Baker in Llano County.

Keeping track of the number of lawsuits over library censorship right now is a nearly impossible task because there are so many. Among them are suits in Tennessee and South Carolina over bans in public school libraries and public libraries respectively; a lawsuit over the use of BookLooks/RatedBooks to select school library materials in Minnesota’s St. Francis Area Schools (a state where they have an anti-book ban law, remember); and a lawsuit over Idaho’s bill that requires public libraries relocate books parents complain about or face financial penalty.

These don’t even touch on upwards of a dozen more, nor do they cover the two federal lawsuits happening over the dismantling of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (you can read a timeline of this ongoing situation, including all of the court actions on it, over here).

Another lawsuit underway right now is one that has gotten less attention than some of the others, thanks in part to the censorship issue at play taking place outside of the “typical” public library and school environment. One of the first book ban directives of the current federal administration came through the Department of Defense Education Activity schools, which fall under the directive of the Department of Defense. This creates a more direct line for federal demands than your average public school or public library–the IMLS, for example, doesn’t set policies or procedures for public libraries in the country, as those are determined on the state and local level and thus, while the financial support for libraries can be yanked as we’re seeing now, that doesn’t (yet) translate to the agency’s leader being able to demand all books on certain topics be banned from public schools. The same goes with the Department of Education and public schools. There are a lot more hurdles to jump through from the top down than with the Department of Defense’s Education Activity schools.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the administration for its book banning demands on those schools.

Sam LaFrance, First Amendment Communications Strategist for the ACLU, gives background into the current book banning directive, which books are being targeted, what led the ACLU to pursue litigation, the current status of the case, and more.

***

From Kentucky to Japan, something is going on in certain public schools: books are being taken off the shelf, posters of historical figures like Frida Kahlo are being removed from walls, and Black History Month celebrations are being cancelled. 

It’s all because the Department of Defense is implementing new policies banning books, classroom discussions, events, and extracurriculars that relate to race and gender in military-run schools on bases around the world. 

So the ACLU took them to court. 

What is DoDEA? Why are they banning books?

The U.S. Department of Defense runs public schools on their military bases around the world for children of active-duty servicemembers and civilian military personnel. The agency that runs these schools is called the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), and it operates just like any other public school district — except that it is run by the federal government and therefore is under the direct control of the Secretary of Defense and the Commander in Chief, not a local school board. DoDEA serves over 67,000 students from kindergarten through high school in 161 schools across 11 countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

If you compared DoDEA to more traditional school districts in the United States, it would be among the most diverse, and most high achieving, in the nation. 

But in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders that impact DoDEA and how it operates: 

• Executive Order (EO) 14168 titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”;
• EO 14185 titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force”; and 
• EO 14190 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”

These executive orders prohibit, among other things, the use of federal funds for anything that may promote “gender ideology” or “divisive concepts,” the latter of which has long been interpreted to cover a wide array of topics related to race, sex, and American history. EO 14185 explicit instructs the military to stop “promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating” several “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories” — all of which implicate books and curricula that relate to race and gender, as we have seen in public schools around the country since 2021.

In President Trump’s words, these concepts add up to “wokeness”:

[W]e are getting wokeness out of our schools and out of our military and it’s already out and it’s out of our society, we don’t want it. Wokeness is trouble, wokeness is bad, it’s gone. It’s gone. And we feel so much better for it, don’t we? Don’t we feel better?

What exactly are they doing?

In February, DoDEA began implementing these new executive orders. In several emails to teachers and staff, administrators asked that they “ensure books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology are removed from the student section” of the library. Parents were told that “books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” were to be relocated to a private section, away from students, for professional review. Teachers were asked to remove these books from their classrooms, and DoDEA told the press that they were taking steps to end “radical indoctrination” in school.

Using keyword searches, materials were identified for potential noncompliance with the executive orders prohibiting so-called “gender ideology” and “divisive concepts.” That review is ongoing at DoDEA HQ – and their decision could impact students in schools from Kentucky to Japan. In DoDEA’s own words, all of this happened in response to President Trump’s executive orders and guidance from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The impact is already being felt.

A training at a school in Germany, librarians were instructed to scan books for potential references to gender identity; one book, Both Sides Now by Peyton Thomas, was flagged as in violation because it “refers to transgender.” 

A news outlet in Kentucky reported that librarians at Fort Campbell felt they needed to remove “any books that mention slavery, the civil rights movement or the treatment of Native Americans.” In that same school, an internal memo explicitly banned “monthly cultural observances” — resulting in bulletin boards about Black history being taken down, and the cancellation of similar plans for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. In an official, DOD-wide memo from January titled “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” the agency instructed all schools to cancel any “special activities and non-instructional events” related to Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, and more.

Several books and resources were removed from the curriculum, including chapters of two AP Psychology books that discussed human sexuality and a historically accurate, grade-appropriate biography of Robert Cashier, a civil war veteran who was born female but enlisted and fought valiantly as a man in the Union Army.

This censorship extended into sex education, too. Several chapters were banned from DoDEA sex ed textbooks, including:

• “Communicable Diseases: Sexually Transmitted Diseases”;
• “Unwanted Sexual Activity: Sexual Harassment”;
• “Human Reproductive System, Menstrual Cycle, and Fetal Development”;
• “Abuse and Neglect”; and 
• “Adolescence and Puberty”

The agency left no stone unturned. Even school yearbooks were implicated: no “visual depictions, written content, or editorial choices” that may indicate support for “social transition” was allowed. 

All of this violates the First Amendment.

Students in DoDEA schools, just like other students in American public schools, have a right to receive information about the world around them. They have a right to read books about their own experiences or the experiences of people that are different from them, and they have a right to have their education shaped not by animus or politics but by pedagogical expertise, curiosity, and educational rigor. 

What books were banned?

According to a new filing from DoDEA, 555 books and 41 curricular materials have been banned on bases around the world while they undergo review. DoDEA doesn’t want to say what those books are, but we’ve compiled a list of some titles that appear to be included, and the court ordered a full list by mid-June.

According to reporting from news outlets, plaintiffs, DoDEA itself, and other sources, these 233 books are alleged to have been quarantined or banned in DoDEA schools. Here is a selection:

• Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
• 4 entries in the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman
• I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (and The Dozier School for Boys: Forensics, Survivors, and a Painful Past by Elizabeth A. Murray, about the school on which this novel was based).

Despite pleas from parents, students, and advocates, DoDEA has thus far refused to confirm which 555 books are officially on the chopping block systemwide. But based on what we know, as with other school districts, the vast majority of books allegedly banned within DoDEA appear to be by or about women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.

What is being done about it?

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU of Virginia, filed suit against DoDEA in March on behalf of six families with children in DoDEA schools. These families have children ranging from kindergarten to 11th grade in schools around the world. 

The suit argues that these removals violate the First Amendment. As described in the initial complaint, the removals and bans are not based on “rational, age-appropriate, evidence-based concerns” but on politics and the President’s “anti-wokeness” agenda. This limits students’ ability to think critically, learn about themselves and their neighbors, and in the case of sex ed materials, even keep themselves safe from harm.

On Tuesday, June 3, 2025, the ACLU argued in the Eastern District of Virginia that the court should grant an immediate preliminary injunction – restoring curriculum, putting books back on the shelf, and preventing DoDEA from continuing to enforce the executive orders that caused all of this. The court could issue a decision at any time and at the hearing, the court ordered DoDEA to share more information about the removed books within seven days.But the battle won’t just be won in the courtroom – student organizers in DoDEA schools have been leading walkouts in protest of these new policies, often risking disciplinary action, since January. In South Korea, 40 students participated in one such walkout, which included a flag folding ceremony and a student dressed as the Statue of Liberty. And military parents, like the ones bringing the lawsuit, have spoken out about how incongruous this spate of censorship is with their jobs: “We make sacrifices as a military family so that my husband can defend the Constitution and the rights and freedoms of all Americans,” said one such parent. “If our own rights and the rights of our children are at risk, we have a responsibility to speak out.”

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July 16, 2025, 2:25pm

The Trump administration has moved to ban 596 books from schools that serve military children. This is in addition to all their ongoing support for state book bans. Though it’s uniquely upsetting because military schools can be seen as arms of the government, where free speech protections can be harder to protect.

Threatened titles include “children’s biographies of trailblazing transgender public figures. An award-winning novel reflecting on what it is like to be Black in America,” and “a series of graphic novels about the love story between a teenage gay couple.”

To meet their apparent quota, Defense Department (DD) censors seem to have applied a control F search to the whole Library of Congress. YA books with “gender,” “trans,” “racist,” “identity,” or any acronym in the title have been scrubbed from school shelves.

Counter or contextualizing histories that challenge white supremacy, like Paul Ortiz’s An African American History and Latinx History of the United States, are also on the chopping block. Ditto rhetorical question titles that tease a challenge to hegemony. Like Ronald D. Lankford’s Are America’s Wealthy Too Powerful?

All of this is pure trash, of course. But some of the censored books are real curveballs. Here are a few that surprised me on the government’s latest list.

Megha Majumdar, A Burning

Majumdar’s thrilling three-hander debuted five years ago to great acclaim. It dances with big themes re: gender, class, and political extremism. But as a literary novel—one pitched at adults, no less—it’s extra bizarre to find this one in the government’s cross-hairs.

What “ideology,” DD?

Meagan Brothers, Debbie Harry Sings in French

This YA book charts a young person’s coming-of-age under the only benevolent influence of your favorite 80s pop-punk icon.

What gives, DD? Do you just hate fun?

Kai Cheng Tom, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea

This beautifully illustrated children’s book follows a young person with shape-shifting powers. The story affirms gender-queerness and gender-questioning. But its allegory can also be read as a general urge to embrace one’s contradictions. Also, Julie Andrews reads the audio book.

Really, DD? You’re scared of Maria von Trapp?

Ann Braden, Flight of the Puffin

This novel, from the former middle school teacher and grassroots activist Ann Braden, is about bullying. It follows four kids around the country as they investigate bad habits and embrace small acts of kindness. Though I can’t emulate their example here, this message seems pretty innocuous to me.

But maybe this one’s on the outs because it’s at cross-purposes with the military in general…?

Robie Harris & Michael Emberley, It’s Perfectly Normal

This book, a big one on my childhood shelves, first came out in 1994. And as the title suggests, it offers a pretty innocuous intro to all the things a young body can go through.

But I guess you’re anti puberty, too? Huh, DD?

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

On its publication in the previous century, Orlando enjoyed a fair bit of controversy for its allusions to same-sex love and strategic censor-dodging. The academy has since celebrated the novel with abundant queer readings. That said, it’s fiction. For grown-ups.

Also, more threats on Julie Andrews-related texts? Not in this house!

Grace Ellis & ND Stevenson & Shannon Watters & Gus Allen, Lumberjanes

I’ll be honest. I guess I have to thank the DD censors for pointing me to this series, which was not on my radar but looks like the kind of thing that would have ruined my grades in middle school. Following a set of punk-rock preteens who solve mysteries and wail on monsters at their bespoke summer camp, this series has been described as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls.” And I list it here for the same reason I list the others: I actually think more kids should have copies of this book.

Surprise! You’ve been AGENDA’d!

You can read the rest of the list of unobjectionable titles the government wants to take away from its military students here, and buy them in abundance on your own free time.

In the meanwhile, we send warm thoughts and props to the families fighting these bans.

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Fresh off the assembly line, the two Eurofighter jets screamed down Turin’s runway at 186 miles per hour before lifting off against the snow-capped Alps. Their destination was Kuwait, a six-hour flight away.

The Kuwaiti military is the first foreign customer to buy the supersonic jets from Leonardo, the Italian defense contractor that manufactures the Eurofighter as part of a consortium with producers in Britain, Germany and Spain. More such deals are likely, as Europe looks inward to build its defenses amid President Trump’s trade war and his demands that Europe stop relying on the United States for its security.

Demand for weapons spiked in Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and has persisted. With Europe producing more and better weapons, it is also looking to sell its wares more broadly on the global market.

The new emphasis on arms production is evidence of a broader generational shift in Europe, which wound down its militaries after the Cold War in favor of social investments.

Giancarlo Mezzanatto, a top Leonardo official who was the Eurofighter consortium’s chief executive until December, is betting that the administration’s antagonism toward Europe will encourage more militaries to buy European weapons. Already, both Poland and Turkey are weighing multibillion-dollar deals for the Eurofighter, known as the “Typhoon,” instead of expanding their fleets of American-made jets.

“It is a matter of how successful the products are, and of how the technologies are helping the products to be successful in the market,” Mr. Mezzanatto said in a recent interview in Turin, describing a “renaissance” for the Eurofighters with a new mid-generation upgrade that will maintain its edge until 2060.

“Then, of course, there are the geopolitical situations, which are clearly influenced by Trump,” he added.

Even before Mr. Trump invoked punishing global tariffs this month, Europe’s defense stocks were flying high, in part because institutional investors that had long disregarded them are reconsidering their stances.

The Stoxx Europe Total Market Aerospace & Defense, an index of top defense contractors including Leonardo, Rheinmetall, and BAE Systems, has soared roughly 24 percent this year while the S&P 500 is down more than 10 percent.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs blitz has shaken investors’ confidence just about everywhere, but analysts see the defense sector as secure, especially given the political pressure to rearm Europe. In March, the European Commission announced a broad proposal to ramp up defense spending by about $840 billion, including $165 billion in loans. The European Investment Bank also said it planned to at least double its funding for security and defense projects, and expand its financing to military equipment.

That has caught the attention of institutional investors, including Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Such funds have long stayed clear of arms makers but are rethinking those restrictions.

“What really has provoked the turnaround in opinion, I think, is the Trump administration’s obvious reluctance to support Europe in defense,” said Stephen M. Davis, a senior fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance. “When public opinion changes, the investor community is likely to change, too.”

The shift represents a major change in how many investors have approached the defense industry in Europe. Governments there drastically cut their militaries when the Cold War ended in 1991 and began pumping money into pensions, health care, education, environmental programs and other economic priorities deemed more important than building weapons.

For decades, many European pension funds prohibited direct investments in arms manufacturers that produce weapons like cluster bombs, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, and mines. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO implored governments, banks and private funds to invest in the defense industry and help speed up arms production and keep the war from spreading deeper into Europe.

“It’s always nicer to invest in health and infrastructure and education,” Jens Stoltenberg, then NATO’s secretary general, said in December 2022. But, he said, “the reality is that the only way to sustain peace is to invest in defense.”

Varma, a Finnish pension fund, was one that relaxed its rules a few months after the Russian invasion, and before Finland joined NATO in 2023. Under some conditions, Varma can now consider investing in such a manufacturer if, for example, the controversial weapons such as cluster bombs account for no more than 5 percent of sales.

“There are no restrictions regarding conventional weapons, as long as the products are primarily used to defend sovereignty and prevent conflict,” added Hanna Kaskela, Varma’s senior vice president for sustainability and communications.

AkademikerPension in Denmark is also rethinking its arms investing rules — but it may be more because of Mr. Trump than Russia. The 65-year-old pension fund, which counts many of the country’s current and retired academics as clients, has been a big investor in companies with strong climate and human-rights credentials.

Lately, its members have grown more hawkish in their investment focus.

“In February, everything changed,” recalled Jens Munch Holst, the chief executive of AkademikerPension, which has roughly $24 billion worth of assets under management. Mr. Trump’s threat to expropriate Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, was “shocking news for the Danes.”

For some investors, that was the moment national defense overtook climate change as the new top threat.

But in addition to money, Europe will need political will to bolster its defenses.

Most of the major weapons producers in Europe are partially state-owned, and each government has its own spending priorities, regulations and defense strategies. That has created inefficiencies among national manufacturers that each produce relatively small amounts of weapons, resulting in relatively high costs.

The price of a self-propelled 155-millimeter artillery howitzer built in Europe, for example, can range between $6 million and $19 million, according to the Bruegel Institute, an economic think tank in Brussels, while one built in the United States is less than $2 million. Analysts are watching to see whether Mr. Trump’s tariffs drive up costs for steel, copper and other metals key to the construction of military hardware.

“The fragmentation of the European defense market has meant that money is spent very inefficiently,” researchers at the Royal United Services Institute, an analytical group affiliated with the British military, concluded in a study this month.

The four-nation consortium that builds the Eurofighter jet sought to pool its resources instead of competing when it was created in the 1980s. The jet now flies in nine countries, including four in the Middle East. While Kuwait was the first to buy the warplane from Leonardo, other nations purchased it directly from the other companies in the consortium.

Named for the Italian inventor Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo is also developing a next-generation fighter jet, the Global Combat Air Program, with producers in Britain and Japan; it is expected to enter military service in 2035.

Its technology is expected to rival, if not surpass, that of the American-made F-35 stealth jet, which flies in 20 countries and is broadly considered the most advanced fighter jet on the global market. But while the United States has strict restrictions on some of the F-35’s highly classified capabilities, the GCAP, as it is known, will give its customers more control over its systems.

With uncertainty swirling over Mr. Trump’s trade policies, some Europeans are now openly debating the value of the F-35, which Lockheed Martin produces.

“If we need the F-35, then we need to invest in the American defense industry, which I understand a lot of people are going to have issues with at a time in which we’re at a commercial war with the United States,” Thibault Muzergues, a researcher with the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, said at a NATO-sponsored conference this month.

The Italian Air Force flies both Eurofighters and F-35s, and Leonardo builds parts for both. But while Leonardo is restricted to manufacturing wings and other hardware for the F-35, the company is deeply involved in developing the technology for the Eurofighter.

Two years ago, when chief executive Roberto Cingolani took over Leonardo, he focused the company on high-tech advances and brokering joint ventures with other European weapons producers, including with the German defense giant Rheinmetall to build tanks and with the Turkish drone-maker Baykar.

He believes that is what caught the attention of investors who were reconsidering Europe’s defense industry after Mr. Trump took office.

“Europe has, all of a sudden,” Mr. Cingolani said, “realized that we have to change.”

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