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Did Project 2025 release a book ban list? No, a social media user did | Fact check

Katie Smith   Paste BN
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The claim: Project 2025 seeks to ban nearly 3,000 books over topics including 'female autonomy and independent thought'

A Feb. 15 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) claims the conservative policy initiative Project 2025 plans to restrict access to certain books.

The post includes a video with text that reads in part, “#Project 2025 is terrified of women. It links to a spreadsheet of books labeled "Ban book list."

“It is almost 3,000 books long, and it makes the somewhat critical mistake of explaining why it’s banning books,” the post’s creator says in the video. “So, for example, when it says it is banning Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ it says, ‘Promotes female autonomy and independent thought.’”

The post received more than 145,000 likes in five days. Similar claims also spread on X.

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Our rating: False

Project 2025 did not make the list. It was created by a TikTok user.

TikTok user took credit for list

Project 2025 is a policy blueprint published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in April 2023.

Also known as "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," the playbook includes policy recommendations to overhaul the government under a conservative president beginning in 2025.

The organization said it didn't generate a banned book list.

"That rumor is completely false and ridiculous," foundation spokesperson Ellen Keenan told Paste BN.

A TikTok user created the spreadsheet and said as much in an introduction at the top of the document.

“I made this list to spread awareness that you might not find these books at the libraries,” the list’s creator wrote. “Few people don't have a privilege to buy books so they rely on school/libraries to access it. There is alot of books we didn't know that got ban.” (sic)  

The document also includes a resource list of news articles and watchdog groups.

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One of those sources, PEN America, is a nonprofit that has been tracking school book bans since 2021. The organization wasn’t aware of an official Project 2025 banned book list.

“Last summer, PEN America issued an analysis of the education component of Project 2025,” Pen American spokesperson Suzanne Trimel told Paste BN. “Nothing in this report raises up a ‘book ban list.’ Certainly, if there had been one, we would have included it.”

The user who posted the claim told Paste BN she received the list from someone who characterized it as Project 2025’s “book-banning plan.” She later learned Project 2025 did not create the list.

“Had I known that post would have gotten so many views, I would have chosen my words more carefully,” she said.

Project 2025 does oppose some library materials

It’s unclear where the purported ban of Woolf’s essay originated, but many titles on the list have been the subject of debate.

Bans over the past three years have predominantly targeted books with themes of race, sexuality and gender identity, according to PEN America.

Although Project 2025 didn’t create the list in question, it does use rhetoric consistent with other book-banning efforts, Trimel said.

The Project 2025 forward, for example, references an “omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology,” which it considers “pornographic.” It says educators and public librarians who provide access to such materials should be “classed as registered sex offenders."

Some of Project 2025's coalition partners also maintain book rating websites and have been "active in the organized campaign to target books and the freedom to read," Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told Paste BN.

Paste BN reached out to the list’s creator for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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