Cass Balzer writes: “On March 18, 2021, the Niles–Maine (Ill.) District Library held a candidate forum for its April board of trustees election—a forum that got widespread attention for all the wrong reasons. When a reporter asked candidate Joe Makula how to make the library welcoming to a diverse community, he answered, ‘Instead of stocking up on books in seven different languages, if we got people to assimilate and learn English better, I think we would do more good in that area than increasing our inventory of foreign language books.’ The comments of Makula illustrate a trend unfolding in library boards across the country. Public libraries are facing a wave of trustee candidates whose goals challenge intellectual freedom, community service, and other core values of librarianship.”