Last week, President Trump fired Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, who had been appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2016 for a 10-year term, which was set to expire next year. The move enraged Democrats, but was seen as a welcome development by some conservative groups. The American Accountability Foundation, for example, had long called for her to be shown the door over her “woke, anti-trump” positions and for promoting the “trans-ing” of children.
Exactly right. 👏🏼👏🏼 Thank you @PressSec and @POTUS! https://t.co/QxSExdm4ZW
— American Accountability Foundation (@Theswampmonitor) May 9, 2025
But it wasn’t just the removal of Hayden the AAF called for—the conservative nonprofit also believed Shira Perlmutter should be fired from her post heading the U.S. Copyright Office.
"The President and his team have done an admirable and long-needed job cleaning out deep state liberals from the federal government," AAF’s president, Tom Jones, told The Daily Mail last month. "It is time they show Carla Hayden and Shira Perlmutter the door and return an America First agenda to the nation’s intellectual property regulation.”
Well, on Saturday, the White House sent Perlmutter an email informing her “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.”
Perlmutter’s office recently released a report examining whether artificial intelligence companies can use copyrighted materials to "train" their AI systems.
The report followed a review that started in 2023 with opinions from thousands of individuals, including AI developers, actors and country singers.
The Copyright Office clarified its approach in January, as one based on the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections. The Copyright Office takes in about a half a million copyright applications each year, covering millions of creative works.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," Perlmutter said in January. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine... would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright." (Fox News)
Democrats blasted her termination.
You can read Ranking Member @RepJoeMorelle's full statement on the abrupt firing of Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, here: https://t.co/A2yK57YyPx https://t.co/vvdaMdz11R
— Committee on House Admn. Democrats (@HouseAdm_Dems) May 10, 2025
