It was bad when President Donald Trump unceremoniously fired Carla Hayden as the Librarian of Congress, the first woman and first African American to be named to the role. But Trump added further insult to injury Monday when he tapped Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as the acting head of the Library of Congress. As you might guess, Blanche, Trump’s personal defense attorney in his criminal cases, has no training in library sciences.
Trump doesn’t trust many people, and he prioritizes loyalty over efficiency.
Notably, Blanche, who’s staying put at the Justice Department, is the latest Trump administration official simultaneously serving in leadership positions for two unrelated offices. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has collected the most side jobs. Most recently he was named interim White House national security adviser, taking on one of the most stressful and consequential jobs in government. He’s also been named the acting national archivist after Trump fired the previous officeholder as part of his grudge against the institution and the acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (more on that later).
Trump doesn’t trust many people, and he prioritizes loyalty over efficiency. Thus, we see him appointing the same people to multiple roles. But the practice also speaks to how few people there are inside Trump’s orbit and willing to work for his administration. For example, as of last month Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll is also the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The New York Times reported that he didn’t have any real interest in the job but was “selected because he was one of the few Senate-confirmed Trump appointees available to take over.”
The domestic additions to Rubio’s portfolio somewhat align with the more catch-all role the earliest secretaries of state played before the U.S. was a global power. However, in his role as acting head of USAID, which Trump has illegally tried to unilaterally dismantle, Rubio has faithfully dispatched with the agency’s contracts and staff in an end-run around Congress, which has sole authority to dismantle USAID if it sees fit.
It’s absurd that Rubio has so many bonus jobs, but the extra roles make some sort of sense alongside his official portfolio as secretary of state. That’s not the case with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who despite being busy trying to negotiate the plethora of trade deals that Trump wants completed ASAP, has also been named acting director of the Office of Special Counsel, which is meant to protect federal workers’ rights, and the Office of Government Ethics, the watchdog for the executive branch. That’s an extremely sketchy arrangement, as House Democrats correctly noted in a letter to Greer. There’s a clear potential for conflicts of interest should, say, some of his own employees in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative need to register a complaint. Meanwhile, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who is spearheading the downsizing of the federal government, is also the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he seeks to shutter. This is not a person with the best interest of the staffers under him, or the people the bureau protects, at heart and yet he has been named its part-time leader.
That lack of Senate-confirmed staffers able to assume acting positions in federal agencies would be a hinderance in most administrations. However, in this case, it provides an opportunity for the Trump administration to further consolidate power in the hands of a few loyalists. Yes, running multiple federal offices would be an incredible challenge for someone who wants to see them all succeed — but it’s not necessarily the case that Trump appointees want their agencies to do well.
But the dwindling MAGA talent pool also speaks to a certain level of weakness of the movement. In his day job at the Justice Department, Blanche and other members of leadership have been forced to take on tasks and cases that would normally be delegated to staff lawyers far down the organization chart. As I argued before, the difficulty in finding qualified lawyers willing to defend the administration in court undercuts any sense that there’s a ton of untapped talent for Trump to draw from down the line.
The librarians Trump appointed Blanche to oversee have not accepted his authority.
Trump’s advisers know they can’t make a case for eliminating the agencies they’ve assigned to temporary, multitasking leaders. And there’s exactly zero energy in Congress to eliminate those offices. Giving agencies to acting heads who already have full plates is a sure way to cause them to weaken them with neglect. And there’s an obvious shortage of those who would be willing to be step in full-time via the normal nomination and confirmation process, given the lack of new nominees to take over for the acting officials.
The librarians Trump appointed Blanche to oversee have not accepted his authority. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the library’s general counsel refused entry to Justice Department staffers Blanche deployed to Congress’s main research library. The library houses the Congressional Research Service, which at times provides confidential information to legislators. That’s why Democratic lawmakers decried the attempted encroachment on their turf.
Trump naming Blanche to take over the Library of Congress makes for a fascinating test case of whether the White House can name agency leaders in bad faith in the hopes that they negatively impact its functions. And the strong pushback from Blanche’s would-be staff shows that while whispering might be appropriate in the stacks, when confronted with a power grab, these librarians aren’t afraid to raise their voices.