White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt doesn’t seem to have a clue what the Librarian of Congress actually does.

When questioned about President Donald Trump’s removal of Carla Hayden from the position late last week, Leavitt claimed during a May 9 briefing that “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.”

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As Politico notes, federal law requires U.S. publishers to submit copies of all works to the Library of Congress for potential acquisition. However, the Library of Congress doesn’t operate like a local public library in that it doesn’t lend books to children, or even adults.

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Its Young Readers Center does at times host talks with children’s book authors and has online resources to promote reading among young people.

Leavitt provided no further details about the books she may have been referring to, what made them “inappropriate” for children, or why their mere inclusion in the Library of Congress’s collection of over 170 million items was “concerning.”

Hayden’s May 8 firing comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to reshape federal agencies and cultural institutions by firing anyone the president perceives to oppose his far-right agenda. Since late April, Hayden, the first Black person and the first woman ever to be named Librarian of Congress, has been the focus of a campaign by conservative advocacy group the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) to have her removed.

The group appears to have taken issue with Hayden’s criticism of book-banning efforts across the country, which have largely targeted titles by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

“The books about sexual identity have seemed to be targeted the most recently. And that is concerning in many ways,” Hayden told Smithsonian Magazine in 2023.

In social media posts, the AAF has accused Hayden of using her tenure at the Library of Congress to “push to indoctrinate America’s children with radical sexual ideologies.” The group also blasted Hayden for allowing pop and R&B star Lizzo to play a crystal flute once owned by President James Madison.

Just hours before news of her removal was reported last Thursday, the AAF suggested in an X post that Trump replace Hayden with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” the group wrote. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

The Trump administration has not commented on the AAF’s campaign to have Hayden ousted, and it remains unclear whether the president took he cue from the organization. However, Politico reports that three people close to members of congressional committees with jurisdiction over the Library of Congress said that lawmakers had not recommended Hayden’s removal. “The president acted on his own in this decision,” a source told the outlet.

Hayden’s ouster was widely criticized by PEN America, the American Library Association, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

“Controlling cultural institutions is part of the authoritarian playbook,” Hadar Harris, managing director of PEN America’s Washington, D.C., office said in a May 9 press release that likened Hayden’s removal to Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center earlier this year. “The firing of Dr. Hayden is a Kremlineque move to suppress ideas and to send a chill through the leadership of cultural and educational institutions. The message seems obvious: Comply or be fired.” 

In a May 8 statement, Jeffries described Hayden’s firing as “a disgrace and the latest in [Trump’s] ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock.”

“The Library of Congress is the People’s Library,” Jeffries said. “There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later.”

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