President Donald Trump is replacing the nation’s top librarian with someone he trusts implicitly—because that someone once defended him in court.
The White House confirmed to Forbes that Trump intends to name Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney, as the acting librarian of Congress. The move, first reported by CBS News, comes just days after Trump fired Carla Hayden, a highly respected librarian who’d held the role since 2016, in what critics are calling a naked political purge.
Blanche isn’t just any Justice Department official—he was one of Trump’s lead lawyers in the president’s criminal hush money trial, where a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. Now a man with no apparent background in library science is being tapped to oversee one of America’s oldest and most essential cultural institutions.
It’s a classic Trump play: sideline a longtime public servant, then hand the keys to a loyalist. The shake-up fits a broader pattern of Trump staffing powerful posts with allies while torching diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across government.
Hayden—the first woman and first Black person to lead the Library of Congress—was dismissed last week under vague and incendiary accusations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed she was fired for allegedly pursuing diversity initiatives and providing “inappropriate books” to children—a bizarre charge given that the Library of Congress isn’t a lending library and doesn’t serve patrons under 16 unless they’re accompanied by an adult.
Carla Hayden, the former librarian of Congress whom President Donald Trump fired.
In reality, Hayden, who was nine years into her 10-year term, had earned broad acclaim for modernizing the library and making its vast collections more accessible. But in today’s MAGA world, being a Black woman with a track record of reform made her an easy target for right-wing smears.
Just before her dismissal, the conservative American Accountability Foundation attacked Hayden as “anti-Trump” and accused her of “trans-ing kids,” urging the White House to “get her OUT and hire a new guy.”
They got exactly that. And yes, it matters that the “new guy” is a white man whose main qualification appears to be helping Trump dodge prison time.
Hayden’s firing is part of a wider assault by the Trump administration on civil servants seen as disloyal—or simply too independent.
In recent weeks, Trump has purged multiple officials as part of what critics are calling a crusade against diversity and dissent. Over the weekend, Trump also fired U.S. Copyright Office Director Shira Perlmutter, who was appointed by Hayden in 2020. Her ouster came very shortly after her office released a report on copyright protections and AI, raising suspicions that even data-driven policy work is now politically risky.
Democrats slammed Trump’s firing of Hayden. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for stripping the presidency of appointment power over the position altogether.
Presidents shouldn’t “treat federal appointments like reality TV prizes,” he said, calling the dismissal an assault on institutional integrity.
The librarian of Congress isn’t some ceremonial figurehead. The role oversees vital arms of government, including the U.S. Copyright Office and the Congressional Research Service. It’s a post rooted in scholarship, preservation, and public service—at least, it used to be.
Trump, meanwhile, has long harbored animosity toward the arts and humanities. He’s repeatedly sought to slash funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And now the backlash is starting to spill over. CNN reported that multiple performers from the upcoming “Les Misérables” production at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center plan to boycott the June 11 performance if Trump attends.
Blanche will take over from Principal deputy librarian Robert Newlen, who briefly stepped in after Hayden’s dismissal. But the message is unmistakable: Trump isn’t just rewriting history—he’s installing yes-men to control the archives.
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