A Children's Book Writer Clashed With Trump. Now She's Defending The First Amendment
When best-selling children’s book author Bess Kalb wrote the second installment of her book series, Buffalo Fluffalo, she wasn’t trying to become a voice against censorship. However, after a stop on her book tour was derailed by a group of pro-Trump parents, that’s what happened.
In front of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, Kalb recalled that before a scheduled visit to a rural Montana elementary school where she planned to read her book, Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo, to kids, she was informed that a group of parents arranged to protest her appearance. “[They] told the superintendent that if I planned to read my book about prairie animals and their feelings to the kids, they would show up and make a scene in front of the kids until I left,” Kalb said.
The reaction from the parents stemmed from jokes Kalb had made during her career as a comedy writer, which included a stint as a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Earlier in the Capitol Hill hearing, which was titled “Silencing Dissent: The First Amendment Under Attack,” Kalb recalled a clash with President Donald Trump back in 2017. While doing a running joke in which she would respond to Trump’s Twitter tirades as his concerned mom, Kalb says the president blocked her “after I wrote a joke that hurt his feelings.”
Kalb connected the moment to Trump’s increasingly hostile reactions to late-night hosts, despite his claims that he’s anti-censorship and pro-free speech. This includes the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary suspension in 2025.
“Under any administration [late-night hosts] are powerful voices of criticism and dissent,” Kalb said. “These permanent and temporary cancellations aren’t just about controlling jokes, they’re about controlling criticism of the administration and its corporate bedfellows.”
Kalb’s anecdote about her own brush with censorship on her book tour was used to show how hostility toward political comedy has “trickled down” into schools and libraries, impacting kids of elementary school age.
Kalb acknowledged school librarians who are on the front lines of the fight against book bans and noted that, regardless of class or ethnicity, the kids she met in schools across the United States are “the same.”
“It isn’t some great national tragedy that a story time was cancelled,” Kalb told lawmakers of her tour stop in Montana. “But it’s a harrowing indication of how a joke can be wielded against its writer by exactly the same movement that railed against cancel culture.”
Watch Kalb’s full testimony on her Substack.