Over the last several weeks, I’ve had one question asked of me over and over. It’s been asked by people who’ve been fighting book censorship for 5 years now and by people who are newer to the fight or just tuning in. It’s been asked by everyone in between, too.

As much as it’s a good question, it’s the wrong one to be asking.

“What are the chances of HR 7661 actually passing?”

House Resolution 7661 (HR 7661, also known as the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act#), for those who may be unaware, is the proposed nationwide school book ban. It was written by a Hitler-quoting House Representative from central Illinois, Mary Miller. The bill would bar any public schools receiving funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.”

HR 7661 was introduced the same week that Trump delivered his anti-trans screeds in the State of the Union, and the bill quickly moved to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for markup. The markup was peppered with discussion from committee members–some who spoke with rationale and others who spewed the same right-wing conspiracies that have been the basis of book censorship and school voucher schemes since 2021. The Committee passed the bill forward along party lines because republicans refuse to think for themselves. That means HR 7661 is up for a hearing in the House, though no calendar date has been set yet. Congress members are working in their home districts until April 14.

From the moment the bill was announced, the question of its passage began. It’s a question borne of several things: wanting to know how to prepare for the possibility of its passing, wanting to mentally prepare for what this would look like on a personal and/or professional level, and wanting to take a break from the nonstop fights being waged to preserve basic constitutional rights.

I don’t have a crystal ball, and I also don’t find value in predictions made by experts in this arena. I’ve seen numbers ranging from 11% to 25% cited as the chances of HR 7661 passing. I have no idea what that means, who these experts are, or why time is being spent on guessing about a bill that would fundamentally alter public school libraries and impact every student in them.

What I do know is that this fight to protect books has been going non-stop since spring 2021, and for every single bit of good news, there is a flood of concerning news right at its heels. I also know that this is a long game, and that when you consider everything from that perspective, you recognize that focusing solely on one bill’s prospects can make it easy to miss what else is happening. It also becomes too easy to write yourself a permission slip to sit back. To be clear: I don’t think that’s why people are asking this question, but it is a possible outcome, especially in an era of complete and utter overwhelm, anxiety, and fear.

One of the first things that happened to me when I began taking yoga–and what happened as I began teaching it–was wrestling with what it meant to be present. Consciously, we all know what being present means. But to put that philosophy into action is something else entirely. This doesn’t apply solely to the physical practice on the yoga mat, but the body is a powerful tool in helping contextualize the idea off the mat.

Today, your standing leg feels wobbly in tree pose. It’s normal to compare that experience with previous ones and then to begin a running list of ways you’re going to improve upon tree next time you encounter the pose. Neither of those things is being present, though: they’re simultaneously looking in the rearview mirror, comparing and looking forward, predicting or willing the future. To be present is to notice instead exactly what’s happening without more. Maybe your tree feels ungrounded because there’s a cramp in your big toe or your gaze is darting from place to place, rather than softening on a stable focal point in front of you. Maybe your brain is creating your next to-do list or trying to remember what you need at the grocery store. All of these things are normal. Noticing them in the moment and not judging them is being present.

Being present isn’t ignoring the past nor hiding your eyes from what’s ahead. Being present, though, is key to understanding why this question about a bill’s passage isn’t especially useful. We cannot know what we cannot know, and in a world of predictions (and prediction markets*), it’s critical to remember that guesses aren’t truths, even if they’re presented that way. Instead, we take the things we do know, notice what’s happening, and step into the action that we can take right now.

For a bill like HR 7661, that’s reaching out to representatives in opposition. It’s also looking at other bills being floated at the federal level right now–three of which are about protecting the right to read–and telling your representatives to support them. This is true whether you have good representation or not. Your voice being on the record is key not only for knowing you’ve done what you can, but also for knowing you’re meeting the present moment.

We’re all looking for hope right now. But we need to think about it outside of chance or trying to play prophet. Hope is an action, not just a feeling. We’re grasping for something that seems out of reach when the truth is that hope lives inside us already. It’s not always easy to activate–and some days it won’t activate at all because every single moment we are alive we are different than the moment before+–but we control that switch.

Hope is noticing that most of the bad bills across the states this session died nasty deaths, not because they weren’t likely to pass, even if that felt true in many cases. Those bills died because advocates for the freedom to read and champions of public institutions worked hard to have their voices and concerns heard. Did some of those bad bills resurface in new ways in different bills? Yes, but that happened because of shady politicians who have to lie, cheat, and steal to retain power. It is not reflective of the people's desires; it’s in opposition to them.

Hope is knowing that, for the second year in a row, Louisiana legislators did not float any bad library bills. They were leaders early in the rise of attacks on libraries and literature, but thanks to the incredible work of state advocates, legislators know they can’t mess with libraries. Taxpayers care about accessing books and information.

Hope is seeing that some of the worst school board members in the country–those actively seeking to ban books and destroy the public education system–lose their bids for reelection this week. It wasn’t just Francis Howell. This happened throughout the country. That a democrat won a mayoral race in one of the most conservative Wisconsin communities–one that my family has dubbed Walkersha for its role in giving Scott Walker power in Wisconsin–is also hope.

Hope is the Trump administration dropping their appeal in a federal lawsuit filed when the regime shuttered the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). It’s the Trump administration settling the second federal lawsuit filed against the dismantling of the IMLS–a settlement in favor of the American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Hope is knowing that despite a zeroing out of the IMLS budget again for fiscal year 2027, the only agency dedicated to public libraries and museums in the US, so many people fighting for the work of the agency. If it hadn’t, the budget for this year would never have come to be 10 months after it was initially wiped.

We activate hope when we step into the present moment and get real with how it’s showing up right now.

Will HR 7661 pass? I don’t know. What I do know is that this may be the legislation that raises awareness among those who haven’t been paying attention over the last five years and gets those people to show up and do the work. That, to me, is hope.

That, to me, is power.

When we activate over a cruel, bigoted bill like this, it becomes easier to keep the action rolling and advocate for the bills like Representative Maxwell Frost’s and Representative Ayanna Pressley’s. It’s how we continue to push for the Federal Prison Libraries Act and educate people about why those experiencing incarceration deserve access to libraries and information.

You may wobble in tree pose today. But when you wobble and are present with it, you can make a choice about what to do right now. Maybe you get out of the pose and rest. Maybe you shift your gaze and notice a sense of stability. Maybe you simply accept that today, it’s not the thing for you and that the next moment is new and fresh with possibility.

Asking yourself whether the pose will happen again later in the class or in the next class you take doesn’t change things. It just pulls you out of the moment where you have total control over what you do or don’t do.

We will keep having bad bills. We will keep having cruelty. We will continue to see marginalized voices, perspectives, and people pushed further from the center. It is tiring. It is overwhelming. It is dispiriting.

But we will continue to take action, be present with what is happening, and deploy hope as we do everything we can to make this place better than it is.

Notes:

#The “sexualization of children” is happening at the hands of the Epstein class. An amendment to HR 7661 that would permit information about child sex abuse and child sex trafficking was vetoed by the republican members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce during markup.

*Remember it was Kalshi that helped spread the lie that no Moms for Liberty member won a school board seat in the fall 2025 election cycle–disinformation that was extremely easy to discredit, but that people got very angry about hearing. Again, the desire for hope and victory was far greater than the desire to understand what the work is in the moment.

+This is a thing you truly notice when you embody being in the present moment. Every single second you are different than the second before. It’s both maddening as hell and unbelievably liberating when you accept it.