Trump fired the director of the US Library of Congress

Afp and Ap

La Jornada Newspaper, Saturday, May 10, 2025, p. 5

Washington. US President Donald Trump has fired Carla Hayden, director of the Library of Congress. Hayden became the first Black woman to hold the position in 2016, according to an email shared yesterday by Democratic Senator Martin Heinrichel.

Since returning to the White House on January 20, Trump has fired officials from Washington's cultural institutions, the vast majority of whom were appointed by his Democratic predecessors Barack Obama (2009-2017) and Joe Biden (2021-2025).

In February, he announced the dismissal of several members of the Kennedy Center's board of directors who did not share his vision of a golden age of arts and culture, and appointed himself head of the famed concert hall.

Then, in March, he signed an executive order to regain control of the contents of museums and the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, which he accuses of engaging in racially motivated indoctrination .

Carla, on behalf of President Trump, I am writing to inform you that your appointment as Librarian of Congress is ending effective immediately , according to the text shared by Heinrichel, dated Thursday and signed by a White House official.

The Democratic senator deplored the Republican president's decision, noting in a statement that Trump "is taking his attack on America's libraries to the next level. While the president wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read—or not read at all—Dr. Hayden has dedicated her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge accessible to everyone," he added.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ordered all military leaders and commands to remove from armed forces libraries educational materials that promote divisive concepts and gender ideology, inconsistent with the Department's core mission . The memo adds that they should quickly identify books that are inconsistent with that mission and remove them by May 21.

By then, the release said, guidance will be provided on how to refine that initial list, determine what needs to be removed, and determine an appropriate final disposition for those materials.

It does not specify whether the books will be stored or destroyed. According to the memo, a Temporary Committee of Academic Libraries will provide input on the review and decisions regarding the texts.

This is the most sweeping and detailed directive yet in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's campaign to eliminate diversity and equity programs, policies, and educational materials from the military, and follows similar efforts to remove hundreds of volumes from military academy libraries.

Early last month, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, removed nearly 400 titles from its library after receiving instructions from Hegseth's office. Two weeks later, the Army and Air Force libraries were ordered to review their collections. The purge led to the removal of books on the Holocaust, feminism, civil rights, and racism, as well as Maya Angelou's famous autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ."