Two Trump appointees escorted out of Library of Congress amid White House takeover, report says

[NJCher]

Trump’s firing of the head of the Library of Congress comes as White House officials can’t say what agency does

John Bowden
in Washington, D.C.
Monday 12 May 2025 18:11 ED

snip
On Monday, Trump reportedly selected Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as the acting agency director. But employees at the agency, seeking guidance from Congress, refused entry to two other Department of Justice officials tapped for supporting roles at the Library of Congress early Monday morning.

The “stand-off,” as it was described by The New York Times, involved Associate Deputy Attorney General Paul Perkins, who was appointed to serve as acting director of the US Copyright Office, and Brian Nieves, who was set to be acting deputy librarian under Blanche.

Their entry was reportedly refused by the agency’s general counsel and staffers, who called U.S. Capitol Police to defuse the situation. But Nieves and Perkins left the building before police arrived, according to reports, and a statement from a U.S. Capitol Police spokesperson confirmed that officers were not involved in denying anyone entry or escorting anyone from the building.

Democrats say that Trump’s unprecedented move to exert control over the typically independent Library of Congress is related to a race-oriented effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) language and rhetoric from the federal government. Hayden was the first Black American and first woman to run the Library of Congress.

snip

Link to story at the Independent

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Wired story:

Two Men Claiming to Be Trump Appointees Blocked From Entering US Copyright Office
The men appeared at the US Copyright Office days after after the Trump administration fired its leader, who had just published a report about the use of copyrighted materials for AI training.

snip

Two men claiming to be newly appointed Trump administration officials tried to enter the US Copyright Office in Washington, DC on Monday, but left before gaining access to the building, sources tell WIRED. Their appearance comes days after the White House fired the director of the copyright office, Shira Perlmutter, who had held the job since 2020. Perlmutter was removed from her post on Saturday, one day after the agency released a report that raised concerns about the legality in certain cases of using copyrighted materials to train artificial intelligence.
A source familiar with the matter tells WIRED that the two men who tried to enter the Copyright Office showed security at the building a document stating that they had been appointed by the White House to new roles within the office. The source identified the men as Brian Nieves, who claimed he was the new deputy librarian, and Paul Perkins, who said he was the new acting director of the Copyright Office, as well as acting Registrar. It is unclear whether the men accurately identified themselves.
There is an official with the name Brian Nieves currently employed as deputy chief of staff at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, and a Paul Perkins is currently employed as an associate deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, according to their LinkedIn profiles. The Department of Justice and the White House did not immediately respond to questions from WIRED about whether the two officials had been appointed to work in the Copyright Office.

Sources told WIRED that Capitol Police prevented the men from entering the copyright office, but a spokesperson for the law enforcement agency denied that officers escorted anyone out or denied them entry.

snip

Link to story at Wired (archive.org)

[NJCher]

1. more info

Looks like NY Times mostly focused on the appointment by trump.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143457945

[NJCher]

2. illegal firings and people are not allowing this bully

to move his people in. As I type this, Rachel is featuring a story on this at Consumer Affairs. More shortly.

[orangecrush]

3. Kick

[NJCher]

4. Story Rachel is Covering at 10:05 p.m.

Covered by Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/09/consumer-product-safety-commission-firings-trump/

snip

CPSC Democratic Commissioners Mary Boyle, a longtime agency employee before her appointment, and Richard L. Trumka Jr., who gained national attention in 2023 for suggesting that the CPSC could ban gas stoves because of their indoor air pollution, said in statements that they received emails from the White House on Thursday notifying them of their firings. The third Democrat, Alex Hoehn-Saric, who served as the CPSC’s chairman until earlier this year, said acting chairman Peter Feldman, a Republican, told him Friday that the president was also seeking to remove him.

Trump’s actions leave the safety regulator with just two members on its five-member board — Feldman and fellow Republican Douglas Dziak.

Four U.S. senators — Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) — wrote to Trump on Friday urging him to reverse his decision, calling it an “illegal order.”

The CPSC regulates the safety of everyday consumer products, such as strollers, toasters and bicycles. It enforces safety standards and coordinates product safety recalls, such as banning dangerous phthalate chemicals from plastic children’s toys and pushing companies to recall furniture that tips, creating a crushing hazard for children, or jogging strollers at risk of falling apart.

snip

checking for archives link since I don't see a gift link at Washington Post.

[NJCher]

5. NY Times has covered the "standoff" aspect

of this story. Here's the headline:

Trump Installs Top Justice Dept. Official at Library of Congress, Prompting a Standoff

The president named Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, as the acting librarian. But staff members refused access to two department officials he chose for key roles at Congress’s main research arm.

[ShazzieB]

6. It just figures.

So the Trump administration fired 2 different people: Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (the first woman and the first Black person to hold the position) and Shira Perlmutter, director of the copyright office (a government agency within the Library of Congress that administers the nation's copyright laws).

From the Wired article:

The Department of Justice announced Monday that [Todd] Blanche would be replacing Hayden, who had been in the job for nearly a decade. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Hayden’s firing stemmed from “quite concerning things she had done at the Library of Congress in pursuit of DEI.

Anyone surprised by this? No? Me, neither! I was just about positive DEI was involved. If Schlump gets his way (and let's all hope to he doesn't) the next thing will be an effort to purge the Library of Congress of books about black history and the history of race relations in the U.S., works on feminism and LGBTQ issues, biographies of prominent POC and members of other oppressed groups, etc., etc. What a travesty that would be! Let's all cross our fingers and hope it never happens! *shakes fist angrily*

Here's what the same article says about the Copyright Office Director's firing:

The Trump Administration has not commented so far on why Perlmutter was fired. Some lawmakers have speculated that her ouster is connected to the report on copyright and AI that her office had released.

“Donald Trump’s termination of the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” Representative Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the committee that oversees the Library of Congress, said in a statement on Saturday. “It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Translation: Eloon wants to be able to mine tons of copyrighted works to train AI, and the Copyright Office has other ideas...so of course Schlump's reaction is to fire the director and replace her with one of his flying monkeys!

I don't know which one of these firings makes me crazier. They both suck, and the whole thing stinks worse than partially decomposed road kill!