Trump taps Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting head of Library of Congress

WASHINGTON — Uncertainty gripped the Library of Congress on Monday as the White House moved to assert more control over the legislative branch agency, naming Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as its acting head.

It comes after President Donald Trump fired longtime Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden last week, followed by U.S. Copyright Office chief Shira Perlmutter over the weekend.

The steps caused confusion for library employees and raised questions about who was rightfully in charge.

“You may have read that the White House has appointed a new acting Librarian. Currently, Congress is engaged with the White House, and we have not yet received direction from Congress about how to move forward,” Robert Newlen, who had stepped into the acting director role after Hayden’s firing, wrote Monday morning in an email to Library of Congress employees obtained by CQ Roll Call. Newlen identified himself as acting librarian in the subject line of the email, which was sent just before noon.

Some critics argued that Blanche should not pull double duty at a legislative branch agency, while others said it opened up complicated legal questions.

“You can’t name an executive branch official to head a legislative branch agency. It is unconstitutional, illegal and imprudent,” said Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute and a former employee of the Congressional Research Service, which is part of the Library of Congress.

Blanche is a former personal attorney of Trump’s who has defended him in multiple instances, including the 2024 hush money case in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He was confirmed by the Senate in March to serve as second-in-command in the Trump Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi.

He is not the only one headed to the library, according to a Justice Department spokesperson. Brian Nieves, deputy chief of staff in the office of the Deputy Attorney General, has been tapped as acting deputy librarian, while Paul Perkins, associate deputy attorney general, may serve as acting register of copyrights.

Democrats have questioned the validity and process of Trump’s terminations of Hayden and Perlmutter. While the president appoints librarians of Congress with Senate confirmation, the copyright office head is appointed by the librarian, according to statute.

“This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos. When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?” said Rep. Joseph D. Morelle, D-N.Y., ranking member on the House Administration Committee, in a statement.

Morelle, in his statement, speculated that Perlmutter’s dismissal could be related to her refusal to “rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.” The copyright office on Friday published a draft report on the question of fair use of copyrighted materials in artificial intelligence.

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., who serves as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over intellectual property and AI, accused Trump of a “power grab.”

“We should also recognize the clear benefit to Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence CEOs, who are in litigation over their use of copyrighted material to train their generative AI systems,” he said in a statement.

Executive powers question

Michael Stern, a former senior counsel to the House, said he suspected some in Congress would be willing to defer to the courts on the question of whether Trump’s power grab at the library is legal. The White House could claim, Stern said, that the copyright office performs executive branch functions, or argue that since the president has the authority to appoint the librarian of Congress, then he should also have the authority to fire the librarian.

“But that’s ridiculous, because Congress relies on these people to work for them. They don’t work for the executive branch in any realistic sense,” Stern said.

Morelle led a group of Democrats — including House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. — in a letter on Monday to the library’s inspector general requesting “an investigation into, and continued monitoring of, potential improper communications between” the library and the executive branch.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, but also serves as a legislative resource to members of Congress. Library employees communicate regularly with members and member offices, raising the possibility that the White House could access troves of data.

“The abrupt firing of Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden raises serious concerns that the executive branch is improperly targeting the Library and its employees with adverse employment actions and inappropriate requests for information including, but not limited to, confidential communications between congressional offices and the Library’s various service units,” the lawmakers wrote.

Congressional Republican leaders, as of Monday afternoon, were slow to weigh in on Trump’s attempt to assert control over the library.

“We know from the first 100 or so days that with every action he is testing the reaction of Congress. He is testing the reaction of the rule of law, if the courts will stand up to him, if members of Congress will stand up to him,” Democratic Rep. Norma Torres, a member of the House Administration Committee who also signed the letter to the Library of Congress IG, said on Monday. “Thus far I think Republicans in Congress have shown they have no backbone.”

At a press briefing Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Hayden’s dismissal, citing “quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in pursuit of DEI.”

“We don’t believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well,” Leavitt said.

The first woman and the first African American to lead the Library of Congress, Hayden helmed the public library system in Baltimore before she was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016. She was fired via an email from the White House a little before 7 p.m. Thursday, more than a year before her 10-year term was set to expire.

The upheaval has prompted some to call for sweeping changes to how the librarian is chosen. Last Congress, lawmakers overhauled the appointment process for the Architect of the Capitol, taking power away from the president and giving it to a congressional commission.

Morelle said he would introduce legislation as early as this week that would similarly change the process for the Library of Congress, along with two other legislative branch agencies led by Senate-confirmed presidential appointees: the Government Accountability Office and the Government Publishing Office.

As for the copyright office, debate has swirled for years about whether to give it more independence from the library. A bill passed the House in 2017 that would have made the register of copyrights a presidentially appointed position, but it never took off in the Senate.

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