Trump Is Waging a Culture War on the Library of Congress. It’s Been Done Before. – Politico
History Dept.
Trump Is Waging a Culture War on the Library of Congress. It’s Been Done Before.
A visitor tours the Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress on Oct. 8, 2012. | Alex Wong / Getty Images
Thomas Jefferson wanted to donate his personal collection of books to the Library of Congress. But critics thought those books were un-American.
By Rebecca Brenner Graham, 05/18/2025 04:00 PM EDT
Rebecca Brenner Graham is author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (Kensington, January 2025) and a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University, coordinating Brown 2026: Marking 250 Years of American Democracy.
On May 8, President Donald Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, because, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, Hayden “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,” Leavitt said, “and we don’t believe that she was serving the interest of the American taxpayer.”
First, the Library of Congress is primarily a research library where patrons must be 16 years or older to do research on site. Still, Trump’s firing of Hayden was just the latest move that made books and libraries a front in the administration’s culture war against diversity, equity and inclusion.
But in fact, a war has already been waged over the books in the Library of Congress’ collection and whether they aligned with broader ideas of American identity — over whether the books should defer to tradition or show openness to new ideas and different cultures. There was already a declared winner of that war — and ironically, Trump is placing himself at odds with the vision that won and has defined the collection since the early 1800s.
The original Library of Congress was founded in 1800 inside the Capitol and contained a small collection mostly made up of legal texts and parliamentary proceedings for lawmakers to consult. In August 1814, amid the War of 1812, British troops burned the Executive Mansion, the Capitol — including the library — and other public buildings in Washington.
The second-ever Librarian of Congress, Patrick Magruder, was on vacation, and his second-in-command, Assistant Librarian J. T. Frost, was responsible for looking after the library. Frost received advanced notice of the burning in time to send a trusted assistant with four oxen and a cart carrying one copy of each book to safety in northern Virginia. With one copy of each book carted to safety, no knowledge was lost when their duplicates burned.
Read more: Trump Is Waging a Culture War on the Library of Congress. It’s Been Done Before. – PoliticoSource Links: Carla Hayden Firing: The Library of Congress Has Always Been a Battleground for American Culture Wars – POLITICO
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