The Brief

Last year, the virtual book club at the Huntington Beach Public Library voted to read and discuss the humorous novel The Guncle during its May 2025 meeting. The book, published in 2021, is about a gay former sit-com star who suddenly finds himself the primary caretaker of his niece and nephew.

Then, just a month before the book club meeting, library staff were told to remove the book from the club’s discussion calendar, according to several sources. An LAist review of the book club’s calendar and library newsletters confirm the switch.

Some library supporters suspect the book was removed because it has a gay protagonist. It’s one of several indications, they say, of what’s sometimes called “soft” or “quiet” censorship.

“Any time that you restrict access or create an impediment to access, it's a form of soft censorship,” said Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association.

The Guncle incident is also an indication that the book battles that have divided this historically conservative beach town are far from over — despite a special election last month in which voters rebuked the City Council’s conservative agenda for the public library system. The continued controversies over Huntington Beach’s libraries has put the city at the forefront of the so-called culture war battles taking place across the country.

“In reality, there's a lot of things going on still, even since the election, that we're concerned about,” said Carol Daus, a volunteer and former board member of the group Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, “certain areas that, again, could be involving book censorship.” These include:

• Conservative activists filing formal requests for library book reviews, effectively taking books off the shelf, potentially for months.
• The continued exile — to an isolated shelf in the city’s main library — of some books about puberty and sexuality that used to be available in the children’s section.
• The city’s still-existing resolution that restricts minors’ access to books deemed to have “sexual content,” a term that is debated.

Daus told LAist she asked a city official with library oversight about the removal of The Guncle from the virtual book club list earlier this year and was told it was necessary “to lower the temperature” ahead of the special election. One of two measures on the ballot asked voters if they wanted to repeal a board of residents with the power to decide which children’s books are appropriate for the library.

Corbin Carson, a city spokesperson, said staffers could not comment on the decision to remove the novel from the club’s reading list or otherwise comment for this story because of a pending lawsuit from several Huntington Beach residents and civil rights organizations, including the ACLU. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 22.

What happened after the special election?

In the June special election, a solid majority of Huntington Beach voters rejected the city’s efforts to exert greater control over the content and management of the libraries. Just over 58% voted to repeal the library review board. And an even greater margin, nearly 61%, voted to restrict the city’s ability to privatize the libraries.

The proudly all-MAGA City Council quietly accepted the results of the election at its meeting earlier this month. “The people have spoken,” Councilman Chad Williams, who campaigned against the ballot measures, said in a phone interview. He said the point of the book review committee was to give the community more say over which books are selected for the library.

But as of Friday morning, more than a month after the election, the city’s website had yet to be updated to fully reflect the election results. The review board is still listed on the city’s website as one of the official advisory bodies, and it has yet to be removed from the city’s municipal code, as called for in the ballot measure.

Plus, the library’s website still links to a collection development policy — guidelines to help librarians select and maintain library materials — that cites the powers of the repealed “Community Parent/Guardian Review Board” and contradicts the new selection policy adopted by voters in the special election. Although, as of last week, the website now notes that pursuant to the results of the election, the city is “reviewing the Collection Development Policy.”

“ I think it's just a matter of time,” Williams said. “It's all going to be codified.”

Librarians at the Huntington Beach Central Library review books in the children's section on Feb. 7, 2024.

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What's in the restricted books section?

The City Council’s establishment of the book review committee, by way of a resolution passed in 2023, was just one part of its efforts to restrict access for minors to certain library materials. The resolution also states: “No city library or other city facility shall allow children ready access to books and other materials that contain any content of a sexual nature.” The question of what that means is very much alive.

The issue will be discussed when Judge Lindsey Martinez hears oral arguments in the lawsuit that seeks to overturn the sexual content resolution. The plaintiffs argue the resolution violates California’s Freedom to Read Act. The law, which went into effect in January, was squarely aimed at Huntington Beach. The city argues that it’s not subject to the law because it’s a charter city, which gives it more independence from the state.

Currently, the central library maintains a shelf labeled “Youth Restricted Books Section” for books that librarians have moved out of the children’s section under an evolving set of criteria intended to comply with the sexual content restrictions. The mostly empty shelf sits between an art gallery and a study area. Minors are not allowed to check out the books without a parent’s consent.

The library posted its most recent list of books restricted to that shelf in December 2024. The list has seven titles, including It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families, first published in 1999, and It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, first published in 1994.

A recent visit by LAist found just two books on the restricted shelf, It’s Perfectly Normal and The Care and Keeping of You, a book published by the American Girl doll company. The latter is not on the library’s list of books with restricted access under the youth sexual content resolution, raising questions as to how and why it was on the restricted shelf.

Why challenged books are unavailable books

Other books considered inappropriate by some City Council members and conservative activists have been completely removed from shelves while librarians review them. The review policy, which has existed for years, allows library patrons to lodge complaints about books and ask that they be recatalogued or removed altogether.

Until recently, librarians had only received official complaints about a handful of books. But in recent years, dozens of complaints have been lodged, including from City Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland, president of the group Huntington Beach Republican Women and the wife of Tony Strickland, a state senator and former mayor. Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland did not respond to repeated requests from LAist for interviews for this story.

In a social media post following the special election, the Huntington Beach Republican Women vowed to “never give up this fight to keep our children safe from sexualized content, both in our HB libraries and schools.” The group wrote that its members had challenged more than 40 books that “have no business being in our taxpayer funded libraries.”

The challenges alarmed library advocates, who filed a public records request for related documents, which they shared with LAist. Some of the challenged books are frequent targets by conservative activists across the country, including the young adult books This One Summer and Flamer, both coming-of-age books with LGBTQ protagonists.

Other challenges to books catalogued as children’s books included:

• Making a Baby, billed as answering the classic question “Where did I come from?” 
• Pride Puppy! an ABC book in which a family’s dog gets lost at a Pride parade.
• The Big Bath House, a picture book about Japanese bath house culture.
• The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, written by Lil Miss Hot Mess, the founder of Drag Queen Story Hour. 

On the library complaint form about The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, the complainant, whose name was redacted, wrote that the book's “content is gender confusing.” The complainant also wrote that the book had “sexually explicit” content. LAist reviewed the children’s picture book and found no sex, kissing or nudity.

The person who filed a complaint about The Big Bath House wrote that the content included “sexual and obscene themes.” The complaint included drawings from the book depicting naked women at a communal bath with penciled pubic hair and sketched outlines of breasts.

Another of the complaints was about an adult book, Call Me By Your Name, about a love affair between two men. Adult books catalogued as such are not subject to the city’s sexual content restrictions for minors.

At least one copy of each challenged book, including Call Me by Your Name, is currently unavailable for check out at the central library while the books undergo evaluation. Those evaluations could take up to a year, according to the library’s collection development policy.

“ We see that as making books inaccessible to readers who want to read them,” said Daus, from Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library.

Khloe Rios-Wyatt, chief executive of the group Alianza Translatinx, one of the groups suing the city over the sexual content restrictions, told LAist the actions of city leaders and their allies are “a direct attack on LGBTQ people's ability to access library resources that are self-affirming.”

The unexpected reach of censorship

Proponents of Huntington Beach’s book restriction efforts have said their goal is to protect children from age-inappropriate sexual content. When asked whether those efforts constitute censorship, Williams, a City Council member, said, “ I think that we all believe in censorship to some degree. And I guess the question is, where's that threshold?”

Williams cited the book Let’s Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human as one of the books he thinks should not be available to minors without parental permission. The book, which the library catalogues as young adult nonfiction, contains a discussion about pornography and advice on how to explore it ethically, including that you should pay for it.

“ I think that [voters] weren't aware that that's one of the things that they were voting on,” Williams said. He said if his critics feel like restricting access to a book “that instructs its readers, minors, to go and watch porn and pay for porn, if they think that that's censorship … I guess that's on them. I guess that's on each individual community member.”

Ada Palmer, a University of Chicago professor who studies the history of censorship, said the goals and effects of censorship go well beyond the obvious target. “What they're going for is the chilling effect, side effect of censorship,” she said.

For example, “if you have a big, scary, public ceremonial book burning of Harry Potter books … a nearby school librarian will be more conservative with what she orders for the school library. A young writer will be more conservative with what she puts in her book if she wants to get published, right? It makes other people self-censor,” Palmer said.

Another potential effect in Huntington Beach: Nearly a dozen librarians and other library staff members have left their jobs since the book controversies started. One librarian was let go days after the June special election, despite being promoted in January.

“Everybody who I know who left, left because of the City Council and the resolution,” said Melissa Ronning, the former principal librarian and one of the first to announce her resignation. (She did so at the public podium during a contentious City Council meeting about the library.)

A local lawsuit, a national debate

Versions of Huntington Beach’s book battles are taking place across the country. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who sought to excuse their children from class during discussions of books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters, citing religious beliefs. One of the much-discussed books throughout the case was Pride Puppy!

There’s evidence that conservative national leaders want to elevate Huntington Beach’s library debate to a bigger platform. Last week, a nonprofit law firm co-founded by Stephen Miller, a top White House aide to President Donald Trump, signed on to defend Huntington Beach against the lawsuit that seeks to block the city’s library book restrictions. It’s a high-profile ally for a city that has emerged as a conservative darling in the so-called culture wars.

Helmick, from the American Library Association, said librarians have a duty to provide a wide variety of material for all sectors of the population. “It is the responsibility of credentialed library staff to offer a wide and robust collection of information for the community to pursue,” Helmick said, and to let people “make their own determinations” about what books to read or not read.

Otherwise, Helmick said, “I am afraid we will have a generation that is afraid to think and afraid to reason on their own.”

Tracking sharks off the California coast is a full-time job. One program that does that is on the brink of losing its funding, even as they want to help track sharks during the 2028 Summer Olympics.

The Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach recently announced a plea for private contributions to fund another year of research and data collection focused on keeping the public safe.

The plan leading up to the 2028 Summer Olympics is to create a tracking system specific enough to share real-time monitoring information with local lifeguards through state-of-the-art autonomous boat and drone technology.

“There are going to be Olympic events in Long Beach Harbor, down in San Clemente – there are white sharks in all those places,” said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab, highlighting the importance of the tools not only for athletes, but for the public also visiting from all over the world.

“Lifeguards will be scrambling for monitoring data, and they won’t have it if we run out of money,” Lowe explained.

In 2019, the lab’s Shark Safety program began after it received nearly $4 million from the state to set up a research program to tag white sharks and use drones to monitor them from the air, while using new EDNA technology to measure their presence in the water.

“That money was scheduled to last 5 years; we made it last 6,” Lowe said. “Last year we tried to get state money back, but we were told ‘the budget’s too bad, we can’t fund you this year.’”

State Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach put in a request this year for $1.7 million in NOAA funding. “The funds requested for FY 2026–27 represents the immediate need to prevent program reductions as existing funding expires and to maintain continuity of operations,” said Strickland in his budget request. The lab’s annual operating budget is around $1 million, and the hope was that the extra funding could expand the program to Monterey Bay.

Since Strickland’s request was denied from this year’s budget, the lab’s funding is set to run out in September. Going a year without funding would be detrimental to the program’s support system, Lowe said. He says half of the budget goes toward the salaries and training of highly experienced and educated technicians, required to keep the program moving.

The lab monitors sharks up and down the California coastline.

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Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab

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Roughly $700,000 worth of equipment is set up in the ocean, monitoring around 260 white sharks from Morro Bay to San Diego. “That’s a lot of money in the water that we have to constantly maintain and download… but it provides huge amounts of data, and we share that data with everybody,” said Lowe.

Lowe is also worried about the potential crisis local beaches may face in the event of an incident such as a shark bite, as the public may be dissuaded from visiting a beach following an incident.

Lowe sees education as a crucial way to mitigate that risk and raise awareness. The Shark Lab created summer outreach programs led by undergraduate students that visit beaches along the coast, teaching beach safety surrounding marine life and risks like rip currents.

“We’ve teamed up with psychologists to look at people’s perceptions, and we’ve teamed up with an economist to look at what those costs really are,” Lowe explained.

“These are all projects with the goal of keeping both people and sharks safe,” Lowe said. “We just need help. We need financial help.”

This article was originally published by the Long Beach Post, an LAist partner newsroom.

Voters in Orange will decide in November if the city should become a charter city.

The City Council approved 4-3 at its July 14 meeting to bring the question to voters. Councilmembers Arianna Barrios, Ana Gutierrez and John Gyllenhammer opposed the measure.

Orange is currently a general law city, which means it’s bound by state law and mandates. Charter cities still have to follow state law, but can establish their own rules on issues such as mayoral authority, term limits and financial management. Each charter city varies in how they establish those rules. (Read more about the nuts-and-bolts of Orange’s proposed charter city below.)

In California, 121 cities have adopted charters, including Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. Other cities, including Fullerton, have also discussed adopting a city charter.

Why this matters 

Supporters of the ballot measure have said that a city charter will give Orange more control over city planning, contracting and revenue. The city is facing a budget deficit and largely lacks the revenue to sustain operations, according to consultants.

Last year, consultants warned Orange officials that if big changes aren’t made, the city could go bankrupt by 2029.

Councilmember Kathy Tavoularis introduced the charter idea earlier this year, saying the move could help the city face its financial problems.

“If you talk to people from other charter cities, Anaheim included, they'll tell you the benefits that they have from it,” Tavoularis said. “I will respect what the voters say. It's just an option, and I want to keep giving the voters options.”

Is a charter really the solution to Orange’s problems? 

The answer might not be straightforward. Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College, told LAist that the charter can help with finances, but it all boils down to how it's written.

“The idea that being a charter city absolves you of all state regulation is not true,” Balma said. “How does a charter city change the finances? That depends what's in the charter. But cities get their revenue from taxes. The charter itself does not magically give the money.”

Voters can amend the charter later, she added.

“Residents can put charter amendments on the ballot,” Balma said. “Some of the cities have done good governance charter amendments, or written it in to begin with, and other cities have used that power to block the public out.”

For a city to adopt a charter, it requires a majority approval from voters. Adopting a charter alone will not cost the city, but placing the measure on the ballot will incur a cost.

What do opposing council members say? 

Other council members questioned the timing of the ballot measure and whether the city was moving too fast on the idea.

“My actual issue about not voting for this right now has to do with the timing against the other things we've brought forward,” Barrios said. “I don't think it's a bad idea. I think we need more time to get there.”

Councilmember Guttierez also said the charter item could have been tabled to prioritize more pressing city issues.

“I'd be happy to discuss this in the future after we get ourselves out of this structural deficit that we have,” Guttierez said.

What would the city’s proposed charter do?

Here are some highlights of what the 10-page proposed charter would accomplish: 

Fiscal responsibility: The proposed ordinance includes several rules concerning finances. For example, the city is required to adopt a balanced budget. An annual independent audit to be presented to the City Council would also be required under the ordinance. When deciding where to use general funds, repairing public infrastructure, replenishing reserves and reducing outstanding debt are among the city’s top priorities, per the charter.

Term limits: The ordinance governs all manner of elections, district boundaries, term limits and qualifications. For example, a resident must reside in Orange for 30 days or more to qualify to run for office. And no person can serve as mayor for more than two four-year terms in a lifetime. Also, no person can serve as a city council member for more than three four-year terms in a lifetime.

Open space reserve: A unique section in the proposed charter ensures the preservation of parks, wildlife habitat and other natural resources. The designated areas would be restricted to certain uses like recreation and park use.

You can read the full proposed charter here.

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo.

"Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different."

Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none.

Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect.

"It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are."

U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.

Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment."

Boyer and Hoy work on some last-minute adjustments to his AI-powered SkoBot before presenting at his school's end-of-year showcase, called the STEAM Museum.

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That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.

"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"

SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.

Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."

Hoy, a rising seventh-grader, showed off his design at an end-of-the-year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.

He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"

Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.

His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.

"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."

Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.

Hoy's Sabe, or Bigfoot, SkoBot on display (right), alongside three other SkoBots that Boyer brought with her to show off at the STEAM Museum. Each represents a specific animal: a wolf, turtle and bear. Hoy's SkoBot is 3D printed in light gray, and its face is adorned with a footprint surrounded by floral designs.

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"Basically, when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."

That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."

Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.

"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."

And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."

Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.

"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."

Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"

He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."

Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
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