Who’s a better fit for boss librarian of America’s Library of Congress: A genuine librarian with a University of Chicago Ph.D. in library science, or Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer from his hush-money trial after he slept with porn star Stormy Daniels?
Oh, that’s right — if you answered correctly, you were incorrect, because you were clearly living back in Normal World, that place we used to inhabit before Trump World curved the space-time of the universe.
Everything that seemed right to right-thinking people is now wrong, because the authoritarian president says so.
Except that it’s not, really. And it’s not just right-thinking people such as ourselves who realize our duty to continue to speak up about the evil, daily maliciousness and dangers to our country posed by crazed edicts from this president.
It doesn’t take your expert HR team to suggest that the deposed actual librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, was the best person for the job. From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of the Baltimore library system. She was president of the American Library Association in 2003 and 2004. During that presidency, she led the ALA in opposition to provisions of the nosey United States Patriot Act, which had a chilling effect on public information services.
That’s why she was named the nation’s head librarian in 2016, with a term set to expire next year.
Why the president appointed his personal attorney, Todd Blanche, who lost Trump’s cover-up case, saddling him with 34 felony convictions, to become the nation’s top librarian is not entirely clear.
But it is not just your correspondent, who happens to be the son of a mother with a master’s degree in library science, speaking out against Hayden getting the bum’s rush. Because it’s not the Library of Presidents. It’s the Library of Congress, right?
Which is why, shockingly for the contemporary version of the Republican Party, which mysteriously kowtows to nutty White House moves every day, GOP leaders in the House and Senate — the actual Congress — object to the Blanche appointment.
Asked last Wednesday who is in charge of the library, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Politico, “I’m not sure that’s been determined.” When House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked the same question, he replied: “We want to make sure all the — you know, everything’s followed correctly.”
It’s not.
We’re talking the world’s largest library, with 162 million “cataloged items,” many of them actual books, more than 3,200 employees and 1.6 million visitors annually.
The White House focused on Hayden’s past support of diversity initiatives. OK, we understand that the White House is against diversity. It also fundamentally misunderstands what the Library of Congress is. The Trump team says Hayden was “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” The Library of Congress is not a lending library. It is for researchers, all of whom have to be at least 16 years old. Most of the scholars there are rather older than that.
Beyond the apparent fact that few Trumpies have actually darkened the library’s door, members of Congress very much have. That’s because the library serves as their chief repository for information. Members’ interactions with the Congressional Research Service there are confidential. Or they have been up until now.
The library itself is pushing back, along with Congress. When two assistants to the anti-porn star lawyer showed up last Monday, they were turned away by library staff as they had no clear authority to be there. If GOP congressional leaders didn’t announce support for this standing up to authoritarianism, they didn’t object, either. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is meeting to explore the legal argument that while a president can fire the librarian of Congress, then her assistant serves out her term.
“If they are congressional employees, and I know that there’s a discussion on that, then they belong to Congress and not to the executive branch,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota. He sits on the subcommittee that funds the Library of Congress. As legislators play their library cards and point out the Qatari 747 kleptocracy, he’s part of a new rebellion against the Empire, and the Emperor.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
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