While obviously I don't know what's going on in the grizzled piece of hamburger Trump calls his brain, I think the other shoe just dropped after Trump's bizarrely timed firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden last Thursday. Why? Because Trump just also fired one of Hayden's key appointees, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, mere days after her office released a report considered unfavorable to Broligarch fascist-owned AI companies.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-director-of-u-s-copyright-office-shira-perlmutter-sources/

Trump fires director of U.S. Copyright Office, sources say

"Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, said in a statement that Perlmutter's firing was "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis."

Morelle speculated that there was "surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models," in reference to the report released by the Copyright Office this week.

Last month, Musk took to his social media platform X to seemingly express support for the abolition of intellectual property laws. Musk also owns AI startup xAI, with which in February he submitted a failed bid to purchase OpenAI, the company that operates ChatGPT."

I think most observers in the media simply presumed Trump's firing of now former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was absurd fascist culture war stuff; as highlighted by the fact that numerous pro-Trump propagandists took to the media to justify her removal by implying Hayden was putting "bad, woke books" into the hands of children somehow - a hilariously false accusation because the Library of Congress is a reference archive of published books in America, and does not loan books out to children (or anyone else either.) As I've pointed out numerous times before however, these nazis use the whole cow, and it's now clear that removing Hayden was a set up play to clear the path for Trump to then fire Perlmutter on behalf of the billionaire tech bro fascists who paid to put Trump in the White House; not the least of whom is Trump's "first buddy" Elon Musk.

I suspect that folks who haven't been following the AI bubble closely have no idea how much money all the same fascist tech billionaires who literally think sacrificing humanity to get AI-created "gods" is an acceptable tradeoff, and a wealthy investor class that controls much of American politics, ultimately have invested in this scam. We're talking billions, if not trillions of dollars here, and a Trump administration report indicating that there are problems with just letting these companies steal every creative work in human history to further this business model, threatens those investments. Trump has fired a lot of people, for far less lucrative reasons; I see no valid excuse for Trump's behavior here aside from bog standard corruption. This is a lawless president engaging in a retaliatory firing on behalf of his billionaire cult of AI donors. Given that context, I think we can safely assume that Trump's next pick for Librarian of Congress will pick a pro-AI Register of Copyrights and as Musk desires, all US intellectual property law is now in danger.

@knud Meanwhile I found a better source which is explaining why "fine" can't be the word for the situation: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/president-trump-fires-librarian-of-congress-carla-hayden/3910007/ @bookstodon
@petergleick

@Jennifer The #LibraryOfCongress #LOC is one of the best and most important #archives and #libraries worldwide for research. https://www.loc.gov/ They collect everything with *any* contact to the USA.

I once searched lost forgotten books (since more than 200 yrs) of a famous French author for a French museum. They had them only because he once had started an expedition in the USA. And they gave a copy to our museum.

@overholt

Dr. Hayden became the #librarian of #Congress after a lengthy run as the chief librarian in #Baltimore, her longtime home, where she had overhauled the city’s struggling public #library system.

She had known #Obama since her early days as a librarian working in the #Chicago #PublicLibrary. She started as a librarian in Chicago in 1973 & ultimately became the city’s chief librarian.

But she harbored a special appreciation for the #LibraryOfCongress, which she called a “treasure chest.”

#Books including “To Kill a Mockingbird,”the novel by #HarperLee about #racism in the Depression-era South, were purged from #schools run by the #Defense Dept, acc/to a lawsuit filed by the #ACLU.
The #LibraryOfCongress, which describes itself as the world’s largest #library, is home to millions of items, w/collections of books on foreign languages & world history, as well as music, films & newspapers. It serves as the #research arm of #Congress & is open to the public.
#Trump #sexism #idiocracy

The #Trump admin fired the #librarian of #Congress, Dr. Carla D. Hayden, on Thurs, drawing swift outcry from #Democrats. Hayden was the 1st #AfricanAmerican & 1st #woman to serve as the head of the institution.

Hayden, appointed as the 14th librarian of Congress by Pres Barack #Obama in 2016, had overseen the library through Trump’s first term. The #LibraryOfCongress, the oldest govt-run cultural institution in the #UnitedStates, only rarely gets a new leader. Hayden was its 1st since 1987.