Who is in charge of the Library of Congress: Congress or the president? Until recently, the settled answer in Washington was that the world’s largest library was, as its name states, a legislative branch agency.

President Donald Trump’s administration disagrees and insists that the nearly 225-year-old entity across the street from the Capitol is under his direction. Some legislators, including top congressional Republicans, have expressed their reservations, and the matter has spilled into the courts.

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The dispute began on May 8, when the Trump administration emailed Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress since 2018, and told her she was fired. Hayden’s deputy, Robert Newlen, became acting director per library regulations.

Two days later, the administration fired one of Newlen’s deputies, Shira Perlmutter, the head of the library’s U.S. Copyright Office. Team Trump also declared that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who, as an attorney in private practice, defended Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, was now the acting librarian of Congress.

The confrontation turned physical on May 12 when Paul Perkins and Brian Nieves, two Justice Department officials, showed up at the Library of Congress to start work. Perkins, it has been reported, claimed that he was the new acting head of the Copyright Office. Library officials turned them away, and Newlen continued as director.

Why the Trump administration started this fight is unclear. A Trump spokesperson contended that Hayden was removed for putting “inappropriate books in the library for children.” It was a nonsensical explanation, seeing as the library stocks nearly every book submitted for copyright and does not lend copies to children.

No reason was given for Perlmutter’s removal. Media have speculated that Trump administration officials who are friendly with the heads of artificial intelligence companies have called for the ax. Shortly before Perlmutter was fired, her office issued a draft report stating that some training of AI on copyrighted materials infringed copyright protections. Trump himself muddied matters further when he shared somebody’s Truth Social post protesting Perlmutter’s firing at the behest of “tech bros.”

Perlmutter, for her part, filed a lawsuit protesting her removal. Partly, she contends she was wrongly fired. But the larger matter alleged is an unconstitutional power grab that violates the separation of powers.

“The President seeks to seize control of the Library of Congress by purporting unilaterally to appoint a new Librarian of Congress and to terminate… the lawfully appointed register of Copyrights,” one filing reads. The administration, she alleges, “fails to identify any lawful authority, statutory or constitutional, for their actions.”

The Trump administration responded bluntly. “The Constitution creates three branches of Government. There is Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary. … The Library of Congress is not an autonomous organization free from political supervision. It is part of the executive branch and subject to presidential control.”

The librarian is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and copyright is an inherently executive activity. Hence, according to the filing, the president may fire an employee of the agency and replace them with an acting appointee until a permanent replacement is selected. The filing notes that President Andrew Jackson canned Librarian George Watterston, a Whig sympathizer, in 1829 and replaced him with a Democrat.

Indeed, a president has always had the authority to choose the librarian of Congress. An 1802 law first created the job, stating “that a librarian to be appointed by the President of the United States solely, shall take charge of the said library.” But that does not mean that this appointment power made the library into an executive agency. Indeed, history argues the Library of Congress is just that — the Library of Congress.

Congress authorized the library in 1800. It got going big-time in 1815, when former President Thomas Jefferson sold his 6,500-volume library to Congress to replace the one that was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol on Aug. 24, 1814.

The idea was that books would be kept as a library within the Capitol. Oversight of the library would fall to a joint committee comprising legislators from the House of Representatives and the Senate. That committee still exists today.

The 1802 statute gave the president appointment power, but it also authorized Congress to issue the library’s regulations and made its leader beholden to it. The librarian would be paid from congressional funds and would have to post a personal bond to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House to ensure that the cost of any lost library materials would be reimbursed. Thirty years later, Congress passed a law creating a law library inside the library, giving lawmakers a well-organized collection of legal tomes to consult.

Over time, Congress cemented its authority over the library. An 1897 law requires a president’s pick for the librarian to be approved by the Senate. While it granted the Bureau of the Budget and the succeeding Office of Management and Budget various authorities over executive agency spending, it kept the library’s finances under congressional control. And unlike the bureaucrats at the Transportation or Commerce departments, library staff members do not have to answer to the Office of Personnel Management, or, for that matter, to the Department of Government Efficiency.

Congress added further legislative duties to the library in 1914. It created the Legislative Reference Service, which provided reference support. In 1970, Congress turned this agency into the Congressional Research Service, a full-blown think tank for Congress, complete with subject-area experts in hundreds of subject matters. By law, the CRS renders nonpartisan and frequently confidential assistance to congressional committees and legislators alone.

Certainly, the Trump administration has a point that the Copyright Office is a regulatory body, and regulating bodies almost inevitably are not in the legislative branch. Copyright, however, is only part of the library’s total operations. The library itself holds 178 million books, films, maps, and other items, and the cataloging and preserving of such items cannot plausibly be called executive in nature. Nor can that be claimed about the library’s and CRS’s various reference and research activities in support of Congress.

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A U.S. district court judge in the District of Columbia, Timothy Kelly, recently ruled against Perlmutter on the narrow matter of her removal. But Kelly, a Trump appointee during the president’s first White House term, did not decide on the larger separation of powers issues. When asked about the case, Trump spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, “President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own executive branch who exert his executive authority.” Additional legal rulings may soon follow.

Congressional Republicans are trying to de-escalate the confrontation between the branches. They did not submit a brief in support of Perlmutter’s claim, and they have mostly quit talking about it. Possibly, lawmakers are considering legislation to move the Copyright Office into the Commerce Department and deem the librarian of Congress an appointee of Congress alone, as is done with the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office.

Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.