I mentioned last article there's a ton of things to catch up on, but trump is just overwhelming me with assholery aimed at my own profession so I got to respond to this bullshit (yes I am pissed over this).
This past weekend, trump went and fired the head Librarian of Congress - is that even something he could do? - over "complaints" that she was too woke and for the most absurd reasons (via Kara Yorio at School Library Journal):
President Donald Trump fired Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden in a terse, two-sentence email sent on Thursday night...
"This is unprecedented, and unnecessary; Dr. Hayden has served Congress and the American people with integrity and distinction,” EveryLibrary executive director John Chrastka said in a statement. “This is a purely political move. And coming as it does right after the Preliminary Injunction and TRO reopening IMLS, it is hard not to see it that way. Congress should be outraged at this overreach."
EveryLibrary has launched a petition asking the public to signal their support to stop the attacks on the Library of Congress.
Hayden was nominated to lead the Library of Congress by President Barack Obama and sworn in for a 10-year term in September 2016. She was the first woman and the first African American to serve in the position.
AP reported that Hayden had been targeted by a conservative group, American Accountability Foundation, which tweeted on Thursday: “The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids. It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”
Her removal is the latest for the administration that is stripping federal agencies of women, people of color, and anyone whose work is believed to be in opposition to Trump's agenda...
In a later press briefing, the White House accused Hayden of being "woke" and including "inappropriate books" in the library collection, completely ignorant of HOW the Library of Congress actually functions (via Kerry Pickett at Washington Times):
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Carla Hayden was fired as librarian of Congress because she promoted DEI and pushed “inappropriate books” for children...
“We felt she did not fit the needs of the American people,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”
And we don’t believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well. So, she has been removed from her position, and the President is well within his rights to do that.”
Leavitt - and everybody else in that press room - doesn't understand that the Library of Congress has a mandate to include every professionally published book securing its Copyright - by that I mean books from established large and mid-sized publishers, including university presses: they do NOT take self-published books, trust me - so that Congressional staff and elected members have access to research materials (and even fictional entertainment). Hayden couldn't stop getting LGBTQ+ books if she wanted to.
Also, these are NOT books that circulate or even go into Interlibrary Loan: NO CHILDREN are going to get their hands on these books through LOC, let alone people from outside of Congress (there is a reading room where visitors can borrow a book if available but they can't leave it with, and threats to cutting / stealing pages prevent anybody from walking out with one). Every excuse trump and his fellow book-burners anti-woke mob are tossing out there are lies. It wasn't the taxpayers she was serving, it was Congress (and researchers able to visit in-person). If Hayden was doing anything, she was acting as Archivist for the printed works of human knowledge stretching back to the 1800s, with the Library of Congress as one of the world's largest holdings of the modern era (if not all of human history, bigger than the famed Library of Alexandria). And that is something the anti-woke mob cannot abide.
This morning, trump added onto the bullshit by appointing Todd Blanche - as white a name you can get - acting Librarian, in spite of the fact Blanche has no work history or experience as a librarian period (via Hillel Italie at AP News):
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who represented Donald Trump during his 2024 criminal trial, has been appointed acting Librarian of Congress, the Justice Department said Monday.
Blanche replaces longtime librarian Carla Hayden, whom the White House fired last week amid criticism from some conservatives that she was advancing a “woke” agenda. She was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2015.
Blanche was named the number two Justice Department official after serving as a criminal defense attorney defending Trump against two cases brought by the Justice Department during the Biden administration. Blanche is a former federal prosecutor who was a key figure on Trump’s defense team in his New York hush money trial, which ended in a conviction on 34 felony counts.
There is NOTHING on this guy's resume that even hints he did time as a paralegal working a law library for research projects. I doubt Todd can tell you the difference between DDC, LC, and SUDOC (I've studied and worked all three, by the by).
The ONLY thing that qualifies this guy is his utter loyalty to trump, and a likely willingness to purge the entire Library of Congress - which is supposed to belong to CONGRESS - of every "woke" "DEI" "climate change" book in the collection.
Do you understand the severity of what is about to happen if Blanche - an unqualified white boy hire - is able to weed out thousands of now-rare, hard-to-find books - some titles so old and out-of-print that even large research libraries like Harvard and Yale don't own them - all because they offend the racist/sexist/evangelical/ignorant sensibilities of the Far Right fringe?
The book burnings of the Reich are about the most recent equivalence you can match that to. The destruction of the ancient Library of Alexandria would be the closest poetic example, except that destruction honestly took centuries of fires big and small to wipe it out. Trump and Blanche and the entire MAGA fringe are capable of wiping out the Library of Congress in weeks if not days.
What the absolute hell, America. If even one rare book from 1860 gets destroyed, our nation will regret it forever.
Call your congresscritters. DEMAND they defend their own Library!
This incident, by the by, is a perfect distillation of the damage trump and his Republican cohorts are inflicting on our federal government. Purging our agencies of effective, qualified personnel, and replacing them with idiotic, toadying nobodies clinging to trump out of loyalty and self-interest. What's happening to the Library of Congress is happening to CDC, to the IRS, to Social Security Administration, to offices of Veterans Affairs, to our national parks, to even our Defense and Justice Departments. We're getting the worst government led by the worst people, and Americans are going to suffer for this for generations to come.
Update: Just finding out now trump fired the head of the Copyright Office at LOC, arguably over a published report about AI's ineffectiveness and potential to destroy copyright protections for authors, artists, and musicians. This is going to get worse.
Revision to the Update: Got pointed out on Bluesky that there's more to what trump is doing with the Library of Congress. he and his lackeys are trying to gain access to the personal data of congressmembers and their staffs, especially any legal questions/research requests that are supposed to remain confidential. Basically, trump is looking for his own kompromat on both his opponents and allies to compel them to submit to his rule.