By trying to take control of the Library of Congress, Trump is attacking Congress itself
Donald Trump’s administration is attempting a hostile takeover of the Library of Congress — an agency that is part of the legislative branch and functions as its research arm in addition to maintaining the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and recordings.
While the takeover has been framed as part of Trump’s broader purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content, it is the latest effort by the president and his team to subsume the role of Congress and ensure it cannot do its job.
An expert on the Library of Congress tells Rolling Stone that Trump’s takeover attempt is “dangerous,” given that the library’s sub-agencies provide confidential legal advice to members of Congress and help police misconduct by lawmakers.
The expert says the Trump administration is actively trying to place a landing team at the Library of Congress, noting that when Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has done this elsewhere, the first thing that team does is hoover up and gain control over as much sensitive data as possible.
Last week, the Trump administration attempted to fire the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, before the end of her 10-year term — and today, Trump moved to install Todd Blanche as interim director of the Library of Congress. Blanche, who’s currently serving as a U.S. deputy attorney general, is best known for representing Trump during his New York hush-money trial, in which the president was convicted on all counts.
Today, current interim director Robert Newlen wrote to staff that Blanche’s appointment has not been recognized. “Congress is engaged with the White House and we have not received direction from Congress about how to move forward,” Newlen wrote in an internal email obtained by Politico.
Over the weekend, the administration also removed Shira Perlmutter, head of the U.S. Copyright Office, days after the agency issued a report clarifying that tech companies’ efforts to train AI models on data scraped from public websites could run afoul of American copyright law and the intellectual-property rights of the data’s original creators.
It is disputed what legality, if any, there is for Trump’s ongoing power grab at the Library of Congress. According to two sources familiar with the matter, even before the internal message was sent, library staff were told by superiors this morning to refrain from recognizing Trump’s new pick at this time, describing the power grab as possibly illegal.
The expert on the Library of Congress says Perlmutter’s firing may be illegal — and more emphatically, that Trump “cannot name an acting librarian of Congress, because it’s not an executive-branch agency.”
“Inside the Library of Congress, they’re all congressional staff, and congressional staff are protected under the speech or debate clause in the Constitution,” adds the expert, whom Rolling Stone agreed not to name.
Moreover, they note that the Congressional Research Service (CRS), an agency within the Library of Congress, “provides confidential advice to Congress, including confidential legal advice, and there is a database that has all the questions that every member has asked for the last 50 years and the answers. That cannot be made available.”
Even amid Trump’s broader takeover of the federal agencies — and all of their sensitive data and systems — this effort stands out in that it poses significant risk to Congress, according to the expert. [Continue reading…]
In a rare bipartisan effort to defend its institutional authority, Congress is quietly resisting President Donald Trump’s attempt to assert control over the Library of Congress — a move that experts say threatens the separation of powers and the integrity of the legislative branch’s premier research body.
Pushing back on Trump’s designation of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting librarian, lawmakers said Tuesday that control of the institution remains with its top career official, Robert R. Newlen. Newlen told staff at the library that he is the acting head, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The president installed Blanche — a close Trump ally and his former defense attorney — as the acting head of the library just days after he abruptly fired Carla Hayden, the first woman and African American to serve as librarian of Congress, on Friday, nine years into her 10-year term.
The White House has not publicly announced Blanche’s new role, but a Justice Department official confirmed it, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
The Library of Congress declined to comment. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats said Tuesday they did not believe that Blanche was the acting librarian — and Republicans, who have repeatedly deferred to Trump even as he has wrested control of federal spending from authorities, indicated that they wanted to maintain their power around the library, which is part of the legislative branch even though the president nominates its leader.
“We made it clear that there needs to be a consultation around this — that there are equities that both Article I and Article II branches have [with] the Library of Congress,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters Tuesday, adding that Trump administration officials had met with members of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees the library. [Continue reading…]