Inside the battle for control of the Library of Congress
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton There’s been a lot of conversation lately about the Library of Congress. And you’ve written about the current clash between the Trump administration and Congress and the library itself. Can you just give us a quick history of how the Library of Congress came to be and what its relationship normally is?
Kevin Kosar The Library of Congress was born about 225 years ago. It was established by an act of Congress: Members realized that if they were going to legislate and legislate intelligently, it would be very helpful if they had good books to consult so they could deploy reason and evidence in policymaking. And that was the seed from which the whole library grew. It was originally just a collection of books inside the U.S. Capitol. But then eventually over a hundred years, they decided to build it out into a real institution with its own buildings, its own staff performing a whole variety of duties. And they also built within the Library of Congress a number of other agencies, such as the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service and the library’s law library and the U.S. Office of Copyright, just to name a few. So Library of Congress is an enormous institution. It’s one that historically has always been conceived of as what its name implies: that it is a library of Congress, an entity inside the legislative branch. But now it’s in the news that there’s an open question about whether it really is in a legislative branch agency, or maybe it’s an executive branch one.
Terry Gerton So what is the legal framework for that background? As you say, the title sort of implies that it belongs to the legislative branch, but is there governing statute?
Kevin Kosar Their statute does permit the president to appoint the Librarian of Congress with the advice and consent of the Senate. So yes, the president has a role, but on the other hand, the library otherwise operates free from the presidency. The president is not issuing memos directing the library, you know, “get these books, get rid of those books; do operations this way, not that way; buy this software instead of that software.” It’s not at all comparable to the situation in the executive branch where the president has the Office of Management and Budget, and that is a tool for managing the executive-branch agencies. So for example, Library of Congress each year, when it goes through the appropriations process, it submits its budget directly to Congress. It doesn’t have to give its budget to OMB and let them vet it. So, yeah, on the one hand, there’s a presidential appointee, but on the other hand, Library of Congress is very much a legislative branch and agency.
Terry Gerton So what is the kernel of the current conflict between the Trump administration and the Library of Congress?
Kevin Kosar We’re all kind of guessing about it because we’ve not gotten a real clear explanation. The current situation began a couple months ago when Sergio Gor, the personnel director for the Trump administration, shot an email to the Librarian of Congress and said, “thank you for your service, you’re no longer employed.” And then very shortly after that, an email was sent to the head of the Office of Copyright, who is deputy of the librarian. That email also said, “you no longer have a job, thanks for your service.” When press asked, hey, what’s going on here? The only thing we got from the administration was a spokesperson’s statement that the librarian had been removed because they were questions about her pursuit of DEI policy and the stocking of books that are considered inappropriate for children, which the latter part made no sense because the Library of Congress is not a lending library. It’s a research library. It doesn’t serve children. Kids can’t walk in and borrow books. So we’re guessing at what’s going on. And there’s a few hypotheses. One of them is that the president’s team cares deeply about copyright policy, particularly because artificial intelligence engines want to train up their brains on copyright. And so if you have a more permissive copyright policy on permissible or acceptable use of the works of writers and artists and others, then that’s great for the AI industry. So the idea was maybe they’re trying to get rid of the copyright head and put somebody in who’s going to be more pleasing to the AI crowd. Another hypothesis, which I think is equally plausible, if not more so, is that the Trump administration is testing the limits of the unitary presidency theory, namely this belief that there are only three branches of government and any agency that exists is either an executive, legislative, or judicial agency. If it’s executive, it is under complete control of the president. And so by firing the head of the library, firing a deputy, and then trying to put in two acting officials, it was kind of a bold move that was designed to elicit a court challenge, which it has, and maybe get a judicial determination that the administration finds favorable.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Kevin Kosar. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So those are interesting theories. And as you mentioned though, the library is a research library, not a lending library. So AI is not going to train itself on printed books. It needs electronic information. What is the impact on the day-to-day operations of the library and the copyright office?
Kevin Kosar Well, right now, certainly, it’s a little anxiety-provoking for people at the Library of Congress, this kind of peculiar state of, are we suddenly going to find ourselves answering to a new boss in the form of the president? They are more than aware of what’s happened at other executive agencies where the president has sent in people from the Department of Government Efficiency and started turning off people’s computers and telling them not to come into work and canceling contracts and doing any number of other things that are, you know, hugely disruptive to workers’ day-to-day life. So there’s that anxiety there. And if this move by the Trump administration plays out, it’s really hard to see what could ultimately occur. One thing that that’s clear to me is that if you have presidential control of the Library of Congress, then the Congressional Research Service is doomed. For those listeners out there who are not familiar with the Congressional Research Service, this is Congress’ think tank. This is about 600 individual civil servants whose job is to provide nonpartisan research, analysis and facts to legislators and their staff to help them better do their jobs. And if you have a president who takes over the library, that president can point the head of the Congressional Research Service and turn it into basically a presidential tool, which would make it useless.
Terry Gerton And the administration has sort of already said that it puts no stock in CRS’s products.
Kevin Kosar Right. Well, there’s been a larger administrative kind of hammering of the legislative branch support agencies. There’s been criticisms of the Government Accountability Office. They tried to send DOGE into there. There have been criticisms of the Congressional Budget Office, claims that it’s staffed by a whole bunch of wild-eyed liberals whose work can’t be trusted. And then you have the Library of Congress and CRS also in the crosshairs. So it’s certainly a distressing situation.
Terry Gerton What are the members of Congress saying about this takeover?
Kevin Kosar Well, it’s interesting. They’re not saying a lot. When there was the effort to send in acting officials from the executive branch to serve as the Librarian of Congress and serve as a registrar of copyright, both Senator Thune, GOP majority leader, and Speaker Johnson, also GOP, as listeners know, spoke up and they expressed concern. They didn’t say much more than that. What I’m guessing is occurring is that the GOP in Congress does not want to create an open fight with their president about the Library of Congress. They have a strong interest in appearing unified. The better the president looks, the higher the public support, the better their legislator’s odds are in the midterms of doing well, maintaining their majorities. So they’re trying to take this fight behind closed doors and bargain something out. That’s my working hypothesis. Democrats of course see this as just one more Trumpist assault on the existing system, so they are just firing a cannon shot after cannon shot.
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