from the firing-anyone-competent dept
The Trump administration last week fired one of the most respected librarians in America because she allegedly put “inappropriate books” in a library that basically gets copies of nearly all books and doesn’t even allow children to check out books.
Carla Hayden, the astoundingly effective Librarian of Congress for the past nine years, was abruptly fired one year short of completing her term, continuing Trump’s pattern of removing qualified public servants based on manufactured culture war bullshit.
The firing comes amid an increasingly aggressive nationwide campaign targeting any competent federal employee who isn’t a fawning, obsequious, Trump-fluffing sycophant. While it’s hitting across the government, it seems particularly harshly executed when the targets are related to culture and education, as is the case here.
Hayden had been celebrated after she replaced James Billington, who was the Librarian of Congress for decades and was so disliked that the people who worked for him cheered when he finally agreed to retire. Hayden, on the other hand, was (1) an actual librarian, and (2) widely respected and loved from folks I’ve spoken to.
As for why she was fired… well, the administration is coming up with a bunch of utter nonsense about “DEI.”
That’s White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responding to a question about her firing by saying:
We felt she did not fit the needs of the American people. 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.
So, almost all of that is complete and utter bullshit (the Karoline Leavitt propaganda special). There was nothing concerning she did other than be a qualified Black woman who has done an amazing job at the Library of Congress for nine years.
The claim about “putting inappropriate books in the library for children” is one of those lies that’s so stupid it’s almost pointless to debunk, but just for the record: almost every new book goes into the Library of Congress, and thousands of new books are added every day. But more importantly, children are not allowed to access books in the library.
The Library of Congress is a research library, and books are used only on the premises by members of the public. Anyone age 16 and older may use the collections.
So, no, she’s not adding inappropriate books for children to the library.
So why is this happening?
It may have something to do with a sketchy dark money group whose entire purpose seems to be about creating “DEI watch lists” that seem to simply be lists of federal government employees who are Black. That group recently put together an entire website with a “report” about “partisan bias at the Library of Congress,” (which I’m not linking to, because fuck that), but the claims are beyond ridiculous. That website targeted two individuals as proof of “bias”: Hayden and the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, who was also fired this weekend.
The entire claim about why Hayden is “partisan” is that she hosted an event in 2023 with author and history professor David Brinkley. Apparently, a year earlier, totally unrelated to his appearance at the Library of Congress, Brinkley had lightly praised [checks notes] Republican Trump critics Liz Cheney and Casey Hutchinson.
That is literally their most damning piece of evidence. From there, it gets even dumber. Would you believe that the Librarian of Congress once [*gasp*] moderated a panel at… The American Library Association’s conference! Bring me my fainting couch!
And then they include an entire page trying to (weakly) prove that the ALA is “left-wing” (not Carla Hayden, just the ALA).
That’s how fucking weak the argument is. This group has absolutely nothing to pin on Hayden, but they still complained, and Trump went ahead and fired her and Leavitt lied about it. As for Perlmutter, the entire claim about her “bias” appears to be that (1) she has donated to Democrats (2) her appointment was cheered on by Jerry Nadler and (3) her sister is involved in progressive activism. They don’t seem to mention her Nobel Prize-winning brother. They also mention her support of questionable copyright policies, but they ignore that support for those policies was distinctly bipartisan with strong Republican support as well. We’ve been critical of Perlmutter (who has worked for legacy copyright interests) for years, but this is complete nonsense.
The whole thing is sketchy on another level too, since the Library of Congress is in this quasi-weird state where it’s partly in the Legislative Branch (hello “of Congress”) and partly in the Executive Branch, but multiple people have noted that since the President has the power to appoint the Librarian, that probably does mean he has the ability to fire them. The Librarian, though, is also usually who appoints the Register of Copyright (indeed, Hayden somewhat infamously fired a previous Register). So it’s possible that the Trump admin felt the need to fire Hayden to get to Perlmutter.
In the grand scheme of things, firing the Librarian of Congress may seem minor, but this was yet another example of a highly qualified, dedicated public servant that Trump fired for no good reason.
Filed Under: carla hayden, dark money, dei, education, karoline leavitt, learning, library of congress
