According to a new report, publishers in the US are passing on queer works amid book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment from the current Republican administration.

As The Hill reports, Trump’s return to the presidential office has had a chilling effect on the publishing industry. Queer authors have noticed an increase in rejections, while industry professionals have cited a prevailing atmosphere of “fear” when it comes to LGBTQ+ titles. Children’s books and Young Adult works with LGBTQ+ themes have been particularly affected by this, according to The Hill.

In addition to book bans and protests, the Trump administration’s targeting of DEI initiatives and critical race theory has been cited as the driving factor behind the rejection of LGBTQ+ works. As the article reports, there are concerns that the hesitancy to publish queer literature may continue throughout Trump’s presidency.

PEN America, a human-rights and free-speech project, has tracked book bans in the US. The group found that since 2021, almost 23,000 books have been banned, while during the 2024-2025 school year, 6,870 books were banned across 23 states and 87 public school districts.

“Everywhere, it is the books that have long fought for a place on a shelf that are being targeted,” PEN America wrote following the publication of Banned in the USA: The Normalization of Book Banning. “Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history. PEN America pushes back against censorship and the intolerance and exclusion that undergird it.”

This censorship of books, PEN America writes, is “rampant and common”, and LGBTQ+ identities and representation in literature are conflated as being “sexually explicit” in the US political and cultural climate.

“Efforts to ban children’s picture books especially illuminate the perniciousness of this attack,” PEN America writes. “We have tracked and reported on how book banners claim that picture books like And Tango Makes Three, Everywhere Babies, The Family Book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, or The Purim Superhero are “sexually explicit,” merely for including LGBTQ+ identities. Nationally, there is evidence that extreme conservative groups have continued to circulate reports to schools with these claims, putting pressure – and providing cover – for district leaders to ban books on that basis.”