NYT: Lawmakers in Both Parties Resist Trump’s Attempt to Seize Control of Their Library
By Maya C. Miller and Carl Hulse
In a Congress controlled entirely by Republicans, there has been little pushback to President Trump’s brute-force efforts to unilaterally upend entire federal agencies and bend them to his will. But the administration’s latest takeover target is much different from others that have faced Trump loyalists at their front doors, trying to assert control.
The Library of Congress, with its grand Beaux-Arts architecture and iconic reading room, is a distinctly congressional institution just across First Street from the Capitol. It is part of the history of the Capitol itself, as British soldiers used books and maps from the original library inside the unfinished building to stoke the flames when they torched the Capitol in August 1814. Thomas Jefferson then sold Congress his own books to restart the collection.
Members of Congress are proprietary about the library, a sentiment that has provoked bipartisan resistance after Mr. Trump summarily fired the popular chief librarian and tried to install one of his lawyers as the new acting head of the institution that catalogs American literature and culture.
“We’ve made it clear that there needs to be a consultation around this,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said this week. He suggested that the White House had overstepped its authority and that both Congress and the president play roles in deciding who leads the library.
Other Republicans have joined outraged Democrats in signaling their discomfort with the president’s meddling in a squarely congressional institution after he abruptly fired Carla Hayden as the librarian of Congress. Mr. Trump then moved to put Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer who is now at the Justice Department, in her place. That prompted a brief standoff at the library this week and a rebellion of sorts among top staff members there, who argue they answer to Congress, not the White House.
The episode has given rise to a quiet battle over the separation of powers centered on a relatively obscure corner of the government. The outcome could determine not only the leadership of the library and its vast collection, but also whether members of Congress can continue to receive nonpartisan research materials on a confidential basis and who controls the immense repository of copyrightable material in the United States.
Ms. Hayden, who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2016 and confirmed for a 10-year term by the Republican-controlled Senate, holds a doctorate in library sciences and was the first Black woman to serve in the distinguished position. She was highly regarded by lawmakers.
“I don’t think they have the ability to make that decision in the executive branch,” said Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. “My understanding is these are congressional employees, and because of that, I think it’s up to Congress to make that decision, and not the White House. But we’re going to check.”
Opponents of the president’s staff changes argue that his attempted takeover at the library breaches the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. They are particularly concerned that it could imperil the integrity and independence of the Congressional Research Service, the premier nonpartisan research arm of the library that is little known to the public but revered by lawmakers.
The research service responds to roughly 75,000 congressional requests per year, and all communications are protected from disclosure under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution. Lawmakers and staff members rely heavily on materials from the service in their work.
“The executive branch should not have a window into what members of Congress are asking for in terms of research, in terms of documentation,” said Representative Joseph D. Morelle of New York, a top Democrat on the congressional committee that oversees the library.
“It’s just a blatant overstep by the executive,” Mr. Morelle said.
Other lawmakers expressed concern that the administration might seek to assert greater control over the library’s extensive collection and censor or remove materials, particularly after Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, tried to justify the firing by accusing Ms. Hayden of “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”
“The president is well within his rights to do that,” she told reporters of the firing.
The Library of Congress is not a lending library and is used primarily for research.
In the wake of the firing of Ms. Hayden, as well as that of Shira Perlmutter, the head of the copyright office housed at the library, multiple meetings have taken place on Capitol Hill between administration officials and lawmakers with jurisdiction over library funding and operations.
Top Republicans would not discuss the details of those sessions, but officials said they did not expect any resolution until Mr. Trump returned from his travels in the Middle East. For the moment, as internal library regulations stipulate, the former No. 2 official at the library, Robert R. Newlen, is in charge as lawmakers and the White House clash over who has the power to appoint a successor to Ms. Hayden — or if the White House had the power to dismiss her at all.
“If the president wants new leadership at the library, he should nominate somebody,” said Senator Alex Padilla of California, another top Democrat on the committee that oversees the library.
“We have an acting librarian at the moment,” Mr. Padilla added, referring to Mr. Newlen. “Everybody seems to be respecting that.”
In the interim, library staff members are trying to go about their daily work as normal, said one employee who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal operations. Visitors are still able to tour the exhibits and view the grand reading room, made famous by movies such as “National Treasure” and “All the President’s Men.” But the uncertainty around who their leader will be — and what priorities they will have — has employees on edge.
Several people have raised concerns over what will become of the National Book Festival, a literary event that is scheduled for Sept. 6 in Washington.
The standoff has also sparked a move in Congress to change the law to explicitly remove the president from the line of approval over who serves as head librarian.
Lawmakers took similar action two years ago for the architect of the Capitol, after concluding that there was no justification for the president appointing an official who otherwise answered solely to Congress. Instead of being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the architect, who oversees the physical plant of the Capitol complex, is now chosen by a bipartisan congressional commission.
“The architect of the Capitol gives us a model,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who said she would back making such a change for the library. She said other agencies such as the Government Accountability Office that serve Congress but have a presidentially appointed head should also be reviewed.
“We should take a look at all of those,” she said. “But I don’t think this is a close call when it comes to the Library of Congress.”
Ms. Collins and others say that the head of the copyright office might need to be treated differently than the librarian, remaining under the authority of the executive branch.
“We maybe need to delineate those more clearly,” Mr. Thune said about the distinction between the two positions.
But critics caution that handing control of the copyright office to the executive branch could politicize a powerful entity that oversees a collection containing two copies of every copyrightable work published in the United States. Some of them warn, for instance, that a political appointee, as opposed to a career civil servant, could be more easily persuaded to open the collection for purposes of training artificial intelligence and large language models.
Overall, though, members of both parties seem ready to insist that deciding who is in charge of the Library of Congress is much more the purview of those on Capitol Hill than the White House.
“It’s the Library of Congress, not the library of the executive branch,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said this week. “The executive branch needs to stay in its lane.”
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