Trump fires head of Copyright Office after firing Librarian of Congress

The Trump administration fired Shira Perlmutter from her post heading the U.S. Copyright Office, just days after booting the nation’s Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden.

A spokesperson from the Copyright Office confirmed on Sunday that the White House sent Perlmutter an email on Saturday, saying, “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.”

The move comes after President Trump fired Thursday Carla Hayden, the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office. Hayden was the first woman and first African American to serve as Librarian of Congress.

Hayden, who was confirmed to her post in 2016, tapped Perlmutter to head the Copyright Office in October 2020. Perlmutter had previously been a policy director at the Patent and Trademark Office, The Associated Press reported, and brought expertise in copyright and other areas of intellectual property.

Perlmutter and Hayden both faced scrutiny from a conservative nonprofit, American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which called for their firings late last month.

“The President and his team have done an admirable and long-needed job cleaning out deep state liberals from the federal government. 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,” AAF’s president, Tom Jones, told the Daily Mail in late April.