Latest news with #LibraryOfCongress
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Judge denies US Copyright Office director's request to halt her firing
May 28 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday rejected U.S. Copyright Office Director Shira Perlmutter's emergency bid to block the Trump administration from firing her. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled during a hearing that Perlmutter had not shown she would be irreparably harmed if not immediately reinstated as the case continues. The administration had terminated Perlmutter from her position by email on May 10, which she called "blatantly unlawful" in a lawsuit filed on May 22. The Copyright Office, a department of the Library of Congress, confirmed on May 12 that the administration had fired Perlmutter. Her removal sparked a backlash from Democratic politicians, who said that Congress had "purposely insulated" the Copyright Office from politics. The administration, in a court filing responding to the lawsuit, said the Library of Congress is "not an autonomous organization free from political supervision," but did not give a specific reason for Perlmutter's firing. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that the president "reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority." The administration also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on May 9, citing her advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Perlmutter's firing came one day after the Copyright Office released a report on the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright law. The office said in the report that technology companies' use of copyrighted works to train AI may not always be protected under U.S. law.
New York Times
3 days ago
- General
- New York Times
New Tensions Between the White House and Israel, and a Surge of Homeless Seniors
May 13, 2025 • 10:02 A Lavish Welcome for Trump in Saudi Arabia, and a Standoff at the Library of Congress
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Legal Fight Against Trump's Library Of Congress Power Grab Begins
The fired head of the U.S. Copyright Office is fighting back against the Trump administration's recent attempt to seize control of the Library of Congress, which, as the name suggests, is a legislative branch agency. As TPM has reported, Democrats in the House have already taken some action to raise the alarm after President Trump abruptly fired the Librarian of Congress and then, days later, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the library. Republican leadership, somewhat surprisingly, has even nodded in the direction of acknowledging that Trump's actions concerning the agency embedded within the legislative branch might not be lawful. Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden earlier this month. A few days later the White House fired the director of the copyright office, Shira Perlmutter and the Justice Department announced that one of Trump's closest allies in the DOJ would replace Hayden as acting librarian. The moves are, of course, just one of many actions Trump's executive branch has taken to seize power from the other branches of government that are meant to serve as a check on the President's authority. Questions around whether Trump is allowed to fire anyone in the Library of Congress or the U.S. Copyright Office — let alone replace them with his cronies in an acting capacity — are genuinely murky. Trump's rationale for the overreach is likely threefold, as I see it: Trump, and those around him, are hellbent on testing the limits of his ability to defy the legislative and judicial branches' authority. Undermining free thought, ransacking education and attacking academia has emerged as a running theme of his second term. The Trump administration and Republicans generally have emerged as opponents of any effort to check the power of the burgeoning AI industry, or to contend with the threats it poses to intellectual property, education, critical thinking, etc. Just days before Trump abruptly fired Perlmutter, the U.S. Copyright Office had put out a report that was critical of the use of copyrighted material in training generative AI. Perlmutter's lawsuit names the following Trump allies as defendants: Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense lawyer and current deputy attorney general who he wants to name as Hayden's replacement, Sergio Gor, the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and Paul Perkins, who Trump wants to replace Perlmutter as register of copyrights. In the suit, she argues that only the Librarian of Congress legally has the power to remove the register of copyrights, not the President, and that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act — which the Trump White House is using to justify their power grab — only applies to executive branch agencies. The key excerpt from Perlmutter's lawsuit: The Administration's attempts to remove Ms. Perlmutter as the Register of Copyrights are blatantly unlawful. Congress vested the Librarian of Congress—not the President—with the power to appoint, and therefore to remove, the Register of Copyrights. Accordingly, the President's attempt to remove Ms. Perlmutter was unlawful and ineffective. Nor can Ms. Perlmutter be removed by Mr. Blanche, whom the President purported to appoint as acting Librarian of Congress. The President has no authority to name a temporary replacement Librarian of Congress, much less name a high-ranking DOJ official whose presence offends the constitutional separation of powers. Although Congress has authorized the President through the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to temporarily fill vacant, high-level positions in an 'Executive agency,' it has not authorized the President to fill temporary vacancies elsewhere, including, as relevant here, the Library of Congress. Instead, Congress chose to authorize the Librarian of Congress to 'make rules and regulations for the government of the Library,' and, pursuant to those rules, interim Principal Deputy Librarian Robert R. Newlen now exercises the powers of the acting Librarian of Congress. And so, another attempt at accountability for Trump's relentless attack on the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution arrives before the courts. — Nicole Lafond Kate Riga discusses Democrats' increasingly disastrous tendency to hold on to power until it is too late. Josh Kovensky shares a theory as to why a bipartisan bill meant to place some soft-touch regulations on crypto has not yet passed the Senate. Hint: It's got something to do with Trump's own crypto schemes. Emine Yücel weighs in on the shocking news this week that RFK Jr. doesn't think he'll be able to find the cause of autism by September after all. Let's dig in. Days after Joe Biden released his aggressive prostate cancer diagnosis and hours after Rep. Gerry Connolly's (D-VA) office announced his death, those on the left are wrestling with a familiar knot of feelings: empathy for the suffering of the men and their families, and frustration that the end of their lives is defined by an insistence on grasping power, no matter the ramifications of doing so in their diminished and declining state. I experienced this most personally a few years ago, when I was covering a round of Senate Judiciary hearings. The late Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was still the chair, shortly before her death in office. The committee had taken a brief recess, and I was headed to the bathroom. I ended up behind Feinstein and a staff member who was physically supporting her as she walked down the hallway and telling her, in the tone of a loving caregiver, that she only had one round of questioning to go and that the staffer had prepared a snack to make sure her blood sugar levels didn't dip. Feinstein's diminishment was on clear display by that point. Reporters let her walk by unmolested in the hallways, feeling that peppering her with the daily gamut of questions was something akin to abuse. People on the left had started clamoring for her to step down as chair. It's profoundly uncomfortable to meet human suffering with political recriminations. But it's also required when those suffering refuse to turn over the keys of this country's leadership while in the throes of it. Connolly ran to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, citing his seniority — and despite his ongoing struggle with esophageal cancer — sidelining Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), claiming one of the few positions of messaging power the minority has at a time when Democrats are consistently drowned out. Biden's misdeeds on this front are numerous and more profound, in line with the power of the office he sought and held. His seeking of a second term, perhaps even his seeking of a first term — where party leadership and the pandemic helped him notch a victory he didn't have to perform for — displayed a wrongheaded conviction that communication skills, as candidate and as president, lag far behind governing talents in importance. I know many Democrats who felt acute pain watching a man many of them felt great affection for crumple under his age, to be browbeaten out of the race three months before the election. He left his vice president an impossible task, and has regularly disrespected her since she failed to pull it off. The last eight lawmakers who died in office were Democrats. Three of them died this year, just as the party is having an ongoing debate about how to confront Trump and, relatedly, the gerontocracy of its leadership. There are human reasons that these lawmakers struggle to give up their positions of power and relevance, to resign themselves to their twilight years in a country that disrespects and disregards its elderly. But voters elected them to serve the public, not to cling to power until their bodies literally give out from under them. Many liberals find Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to be disappointing, or at least anachronistic — too mild, too amiable, too enamored with bipartisanship to be an effective steward of the committee Feinstein was forced to give up (Durbin also snatched the gavel from Sheldon Whitehouse, a more punacious colleague). But, at the very least, Durbin saved us from this experience. We won't have to play doctor with a diagnosis, track the slowing of his gait, cringe at his increasing confusion, treat him, a man with unusual power and privilege, with kid gloves. By bowing out — granted, at the advanced age of 80 — he has chosen to age in private, ideally, even with grace. More Democrats should follow his lead. And if they won't, at least some of them will be forced out through the political process, a painful end to many careers that were initially premised on serving and bettering the country. — Kate Riga On the GOP side, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has taken the lead on crypto. She's appeared at events with industry CEOs, she's sponsored the leading legislation aimed at regulating the industry with a light touch. She even combined crypto boosterism with MAGA fealty by introducing a bill that would codify Trump's idea of a strategic crypto reserve. Her analogue on the Democratic side has largely been Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), though Gillibrand's been joined in her more muted-but-still-substantial show of support by Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ). Gillibrand and Lummis appeared at an event this month hosted by a crypto advocacy coalition where they traded praise over the GENIUS Act, the first major crypto regulatory bill under real consideration by Congress, and offered expectations of its passage. Both expected it to pass; Lummis offered a timeframe: by Memorial Day. The audience cheered. But Memorial Day no longer seems to be the plan. The Senate goes into recess next week. After clearing a key procedural vote this week, the GENIUS Act is not yet law. There may be any number of reasons for that, but one Senate interlocutor of mine offered an entertaining theory: last night, Trump held a dinner for the top holders of his personal coin, $TRUMP. It would have looked too unseemly to pass a bill that will allow him to enrich himself further in crypto within a few days of his buck-raking dinner. — Josh Kovensky Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is casually walking back his big promise: that he and his team would find out the cause of autism by September. (Cue in Cilla Black) Surprise! Surprise! RFK Jr. says the new deadline would be sometime in March of next year. 'We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done,' the HHS Secretary told CNN's Kaitlan Collins this week. 'We're also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of scientists. We're going to send those grants out to bid within three weeks.' RFK Jr. added that he thinks replication studies will be finalized around six months after September. 'As I said, we're going to begin to have a lot of information by September. We're not going to stop the studies in September,' he added. 'We're going to be definitive. And the more definitive you are, the more it drives public policy.' That's rich from the guy who already, without any proof, claimed earlier this year that rising rates of autism are caused by 'environmental toxins' in food and medicine. — Emine Yücel
Bloomberg
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
The Library of Congress Shake-up Endangers Copyrights
In the wake of President Donald Trump's firing of the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, members of the House and Senate expressed outrage at this apparent infringement on their domain. It worsened matters when a Department of Justice official was appointed as acting librarian. The Library of Congress — as the name would suggest — is not a plaything of the president; it serves the legislative branch. All true. Nonetheless, framing this as a tussle between two branches of government ignores the fact that Trump also fired Shira Perlmutter, who oversees the Copyright Office within the library. That move highlights the outsized role the institution plays in the nation's intellectual life — and the danger posed by the firings.
Associated Press
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Donald Trump's Library of Congress fight is really about the separation of powers
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not really about the books. President Donald Trump's abrupt firing of top officials at the Library of Congress and equally sudden attempt to appoint a slate of loyalists as replacements has instead morphed into an enormous fight over the separation of powers, as the White House tries to wrest control of what has for centuries been a legislative institution. It's a power struggle with potentially vast consequences. The Library of Congress not only stores the world's largest collection of books but also an office overseeing reams of copyrighted material of untold value. There is a research institute that has long been protected from outside influence. Its servers house extremely sensitive information regarding claims of workplace violations on Capitol Hill, as well as payments and other financial data for the legislative branch's more than 30,000 employees. There's even speculation that the whole affair is tied to an ongoing debate over whether big tech companies can use copyrighted material for artificial intelligence systems. Because of this, the battle over control of the Library of Congress has prompted Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to deliver rare pushback against a president who has pressed to expand the boundaries of his own power to enact his priorities. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other Republicans have been talking with the White House about a potential path to détente. This all has left the library in a bizarre state of purgatory. For now, Trump's choices for interim library leaders — most notably Todd Blanche, a deputy attorney general who had represented the president in his criminal proceedings — have not appeared to challenge the assertion by the library that one of its veteran officials would be the acting head. It would be unheard of for an executive branch official such as Blanche to simultaneously serve in the legislative branch, according to experts. 'This egregious overreach into the legislature by the executive branch is just unwarranted and, we believe, unprecedented,' said New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which oversees the Library of Congress. One firing, then another ... then questions about who steps in The controversy began to unfold publicly last week, when Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was fired in a terse email from a White House official. She had just one year left in her 10-year term. Then this week, Blanche was tapped by the White House to be the interim librarian, and two other Justice Department officials were chosen for other senior library posts. Those officials, Brian Nieves and Paul Perkins, tried unsuccessfully to enter the U.S. Copyright Office on Monday, but left voluntarily after library officials called Capitol Police. Thune told The Associated Press that Congress was 'not entirely' consulted ahead of Trump's dismissal of Hayden. Lawmakers want to ensure that 'congressional legislative branch equities are protected,' Thune said. He speculated that discussions with the White House to resolve the standoff would bleed into next week. The White House has said Trump was within his authority to dismiss Hayden, a former head of the library systems in Baltimore. It cited 'quite concerning' behavior from Hayden involving diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as books for children that the White House found inappropriate. A copy of virtually every book published in the U.S. is sent to the Copyright Office, then the library decides whether to include it in the main collection. No one under 16 can get a reader card to access the collection. Existing regulations and past practices call for an acting librarian to come from the Library of Congress' current ranks if there is a vacancy. But the White House has argued that a law governing federal vacancies applies, even though the 1998 law deals with the executive branch, according to two people familiar with the discussions. When Nieves and Perkins showed up on Monday, they held a letter that invoked the vacancies law to justify their appointments, according to one of the people. Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who leads the panel overseeing funding for the Library of Congress, argued that in practice, the librarian is not a legislative branch employee, saying: 'It's an appointment by the president of the United States, because we have to confirm her.' Worries about research services, information about workers, and more Yet there is deep concern among lawmakers and aides about any unjustified intrusion of the administration into the Library of Congress and its operations. Especially worrisome to them is potential meddling with the Congressional Research Service, known as the nonpartisan think tank of Capitol Hill. It fields roughly 75,000 requests from members of Congress every year for research, legal expertise and other information critical for policymaking. The discussions between lawmakers and the Congressional Research Service are considered so sensitive that they are protected under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution, which shields members of Congress from being questioned -– such as in court -– about official legislative acts. The service's 'utility and trustworthiness would be substantially undercut if these inquiries were not protected or the Administration sought to shape responses to reflect its priorities,' said Hope O'Keeffe, a former associate general counsel at the Library of Congress. The library also oversees the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, which functions as the human resources office of the legislative branch, fielding complaints about harassment, discrimination and other workplace violations. It also stores financial information about legislative branch employees, who include not just those at the Library of Congress, lawmakers and their aides, but employees of the Capitol Police, the Architect of the Capitol and the Government Accountability Office. Robert Newlen, the principal deputy librarian, told library staffers shortly after Hayden's firing that he will serve as the acting librarian. He said in a note this week that while the White House had appointed its own acting librarian, 'we have not yet received direction from Congress about how to move forward,' indicating that the library was defying Trump's wishes. California Sen. Alex Padilla, the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, this week said flatly that Newlen is the acting librarian of Congress. Asked whether Blanche was respecting that, Padilla said, 'that's my understanding.' But a White House official stressed on Thursday that Trump selected Blanche to be the acting librarian. The official, granted anonymity because of the ongoing private discussions with lawmakers, said Trump chose Blanche because the president is 'appointing highly-qualified individuals who are wholeheartedly committed to advancing the America-first agenda.' The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Library drama could be linked to AI debate Some suspect that the Copyright Office is the true aim of the administration. Housed in the Library of Congress with a leader chosen by the librarian, the office accepts millions of copies of copyrighted material such as books, artwork and music every year as part of the copyright registration process. Shortly before the director of the office, Shira Perlmutter, was fired, her office released a report that questioned whether it was legal for the tech industry to use copyrighted material to 'train' their artificial intelligence systems. Tech companies contend that doing so is legal when used for educational or research purposes or creating something new. Perlmutter's report said doing so, in some circumstances, would go beyond established boundaries of fair use when the AI-generated content is competing with creative works made by people. The material there is extremely valuable. For instance, copyright violation damages for the office's existing collection — if, for instance, tech companies scraped the material for AI purposes and then later were found liable for copyright infringement — would likely exceed $1.5 trillion, according to a person familiar with the calculations. Morelle noted that the firing came 'one day after, and I doubt there's any coincidence to this, a report which is in many ways at odds with what Elon Musk wants to do around intellectual property and copyright.' Musk is the billionaire outside adviser for Trump who operates his own AI startup, called xAI. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. ___ Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.
