It’s called the Library of Congress. But Trump claims it’s his.
The case is the latest example of efforts by the Trump administration to erase the traditional lines that separate the branches of government.
May 31, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDT, Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT, 9 min
People stand inside the Library of Congress on May 14. (Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock)
By Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanso
The Trump White House has a new target in its campaign to expand executive power: the Library of Congress. Never mind the name — administration lawyers are now arguing that the main research library of the legislative branch doesn’t actually belong to Congress at all.
A legal push to claim the Library as executive turf isn’t a one-off. It’s the latest move in a broader effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to erase the traditional lines that separate the branches of government. The administration has challenged Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, shrugged off court orders to limit Trump’s powers and unleashed the U.S. DOGE Service on offices outside the executive branch.
Earlier this month, DOGE — the Elon Musk-run cost-cutting effort, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency — sought to “assign a team” to the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog agency, which rejected the request, according to the GAO. In some of its most aggressive attempts to reshape the federal government, DOGE has also tried to infiltrate independent offices such as the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit organization that funds NPR and PBS.
