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For a historian who writes about war, Rick Atkinson is surprisingly optimistic. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former journalist — who recently released the second volume in a trilogy of books about the American Revolution — believes that the bedrock of American democracy is solid enough to withstand any assaults on its founding principles.

As the guest of honor at a Sunday night dinner sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles as part of its biennial Literary Feasts fundraiser, Atkinson was the most upbeat person at the event, which took place just before Election Day. Speaking to about 18 guests gathered around two circular tables carefully laid out on the back patio at the home of fellow writers and hosts Meenakshi and Liaquat Ahamed, Atkinson buoyed the flagging spirits of those certain that the country was currently dangling on the precipice of disaster at the hands of the Trump administration.

Book lovers attend a Literary Feast dinner featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson at the home of writers Meenakshi and Liaquat Ahamed.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“We’re the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that founding generation, and it includes strictures on how to divide power and keep it from concentrating in the hands of authoritarians who think primarily of themselves,” Atkinson said with the cheery aplomb of a man who has spent the bulk of his time burrowing deep inside archives filled with harrowing stories of the darkest days the world has ever seen. “We can’t let that slip away. We can’t allow it to be taken away, and we can’t allow ourselves to forget the hundreds of thousands who’ve given their lives to affirm and sustain it over the past 250 years.”

The questions and conversation that followed Atkinson’s rousing speech about the history of the Revolution — including riveting details about key players like George Washington who Atkinson noted had “remarkably dead eyes” in order to not give away a scintilla of his inner life to curious onlookers — was what the evening’s book-loving guests had come for.

“We’re the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that founding generation,” said Rick Atkinson.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A total of 40 authors are hosted at salon-style events at 40 houses with more than 750 guests over the course of a single evening, raising more than $2 million for the Library Foundation, which is a separate entity from the public library. Founded in 1992 in the wake of the devastating 1986 fire at downtown’s Central Library, which destroyed more than 400,000 books, the foundation seeks to continue the community-driven mission of the library when funding runs short, including supporting adult education, early literacy programs for children, and services for immigrants and the unhoused.

“I often describe it as the dream-fueling work, the life-changing work,” said Stacy Lieberman, the Library Foundation’s president and chief executive. “Because it’s a lot of the one-on-one support that people will get.”

The Foundation typically raises about $7 million to $8 million a year, with an operating budget of nearly $11 million, so money raised through the Literary Feasts is a significant slice of the funding pie. The feasts began in 1997 and have continued apace every other year since then, featuring a who’s who of literary accomplishment across every genre. Writers past and present include Sue Grafton, Jane Fonda, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Abraham Verghese, Scott Turow and Michael Connelly.

Dinner hosts fund the events themselves — no small outlay considering the lavish offerings.

Guests were served steak with roasted carrots, turnips and potatoes.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Ahameds delighted guests with a tangy grapefruit and greens salad, followed by tender steak with roasted carrots, turnips and potatoes; a dessert of hot apple tart à la mode drizzled with caramel sauce; and plenty of crisp red and white wine. Both hosts are literary luminaries in their own right: Liaquat, a former investment manager, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book “Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World” and Meenakshi recently published “Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America.”

The couple travels in bookish circles and enjoys hosting salons at their home, including one earlier this year in support of New Yorker political columnist Susan Glasser and her husband, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. As friends of Atkinson, the Ahameds did their part to introduce him, and later tried their best to entice him to stop taking questions and eat his dinner.

The guest of honor could not be persuaded. There was too much to say. “The Fate of the Day,” which explores the bloody middle years of the Revolution from 1777 to 1780, was released in April, and Atkinson has spent the past eight months touring and speaking on panels with documentarian Ken Burns to promote Burns’ six-part documentary series “The American Revolution,” which premieres Nov. 16 on PBS.

Atkinson is a featured speaker in the series and has been involved with it for about four years.

The dinner featuring Rick Atkinson was one of 40 taking place across town that evening. The events raised $2 million for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The week before the Literary Feast, Atkinson and Burns spoke to members of Congress in Washington, D.C., and also screened a 40-minute clip at Mount Vernon where Atkinson discussed Washington’s unique talents as a general.

“I’ve seen the whole thing several times and it’s fantastic,” Atkinson said of the 12-hour film. “It’s as you would expect: beautifully filmed, wonderfully told, great narrative.”

The country is now more than four months into its semiquincentennial, which Atkinson joked “sounds like a medical procedure,” but is actually the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. It’s well known that Trump is planning a splashy party, with festivities and commemorations intensifying over the next eight months, culminating in a grand celebration in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2026.

Rick Atkinson’s book “The Fate of the Day,” which explores the bloody middle years of the Revolution from 1777 to 1780, was released in April.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“My hope is that as a country, we use the opportunity to reflect on those basic questions of who we are, where we came from, what our forebears believed and what they were willing to die for,” said Atkinson. “I’m optimistic because I’m a historian, because I know our history. No matter how grim things seem in 2025, we have faced grimmer times in the past, existential threats of the first order, starting with the Revolution.”

The politically deflated might also consider World War II — the subject of Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy — the second volume of which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history. The writer knows his stuff. Guests — and readers — take heart.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to fire the director of the U.S. Copyright Office.

The administration’s newest emergency appeal to the high court was filed a month and a half after a federal appeals court in Washington held that the official, Shira Perlmutter, could not be unilaterally fired.

Nearly four weeks ago, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to reconsider that ruling.

The case is the latest that relates to Trump’s authority to install his own people at the head of federal agencies. The Supreme Court has largely allowed Trump to fire officials, even as court challenges proceed.

But this case concerns an office that is within the Library of Congress. Perlmutter is the register of copyrights and also advises Congress on copyright issues.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his filing Monday that despite the ties to Congress, the register “wields executive power” in regulating copyrights.

Perlmutter claims Trump fired her in May because he disapproved of advice she gave to Congress in a report related to artificial intelligence. Perlmutter had received an email from the White House notifying her that “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately,” her office said.

A divided appellate panel ruled that Perlmutter could keep her job while the case moves forward.

“The Executive’s alleged blatant interference with the work of a Legislative Branch official, as she performs statutorily authorized duties to advise Congress, strikes us as a violation of the separation of powers that is significantly different in kind and in degree from the cases that have come before,” Judge Florence Pan wrote for the appeals court. Judge Michelle Childs joined the opinion. Democratic President Biden appointed both judges to the appeals court.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, wrote in dissent that Perlmutter “exercises executive power in a host of ways.”

Perlmutter’s attorneys have argued that she is a renowned copyright expert. She has served as register of copyrights since then-Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed her to the job in October 2020.

Trump appointed Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche to replace Hayden at the Library of Congress. The White House fired Hayden amid criticism from conservatives that she was advancing a “woke” agenda.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 27 (UPI) — The White House asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow President Donald Trump to fire a top official in the Library of Congress after a lower court ruled against it.

Shira Perlmutter, director of the U.S. Copyright Office, was dismissed from her role by Trump just days after the president removed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in May. Hayden was replaced by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on an interim basis.

In September, a federal appeals court ordered Perlmutter reinstated to her role under the legislative branch, not the executive branch, at the Library of Congress.

On Monday, the Trump administration told the high court in its appeal that the D.C. appeal circuit’s ruling contravened “settled precedent and misconceives the Librarian’s and Register’s legal status.”

“Treating the Librarian and Register as legislative officers would set much of federal copyright law on a collision course with the basic principle that Congress may not vest the power to execute the laws in itself or its officers,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in an emergency filing.

Meanwhile, Robert Newlen is listed as the acting Librarian of Congress.

They had come to hear plans for the privately funded rebuilding of the Palisades Recreation Center that was badly damaged in the January fire that tore through Pacific Palisades.

Most of the hundreds crammed into the rec center’s old gym cheered about plans for new park space, pickleball courts and basketball hoops to be paid for by some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest and most prominent philanthropists.

But that Tuesday night — nine months to the day since the Palisades fire began — they were angry, too. With City Hall.

During public comments, Jeremy Padawer, whose home in the Palisades burned, said of the city-owned rec center: “We need this. We need churches, we need synagogues, we need grocery stores. We need hope.”

But he said he didn’t trust the municipal government to run the beloved rec center and reminded the crowd that the city, which is navigating the complex recovery from one of the costliest and most destructive fire in its history, is “a billion dollars in debt.”

Firefighters extinguish hot spots at the Community United Methodist Church of Pacific Palisades on Jan. 12.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“What are they going to do with this brand new facility when [philanthropists] turn the keys over to them?” he asked. “Do we trust them?”

“No!” the crowd shouted.

He added: “Where is Mayor Bass?” The audience cheered. Someone hollered back: “Lost cause!”

Bass and other city leaders dispute they have neglected the fire-ravaged Palisades, but the scene encapsulated the anger and disappointment with City Hall that has been building in one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest neighborhoods. There, scores of yard signs depict the mayor wearing clown makeup à la the Joker. On one cleared lot, an enormous sign, roughly 7 feet tall, stands where a home once did, declaring: “KAREN BASS RESIGN NOW.”

Residents have blamed city leaders for a confusing rebuilding process that they say is being carried out by so many government agencies and consultants that it’s difficult to discern who is in charge. They also say that the city is moving too slowly — a charge that Bass and her team vehemently reject.

Kenny Cooper, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, speaks during a news conference announcing the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht in connection with the Palisades fire on Wednesday.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

On Wednesday, a day after the meeting at the rec center, federal prosecutors announced that the deadly Palisades fire was a flare-up of a small arson fire that had smoldered for six days, even after city firefighters thought they had it contained. Authorities said they had arrested Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver who is suspected of setting the initial fire on New Year’s Day.

Hours after the arrest was announced, the Los Angeles Fire Department — which failed to pre-deploy engines despite extreme wind warnings — released its long-awaited after-action report that said firefighters were hampered by an ineffective process for recalling them back to work, as well as poor communication, inexperienced leadership, and a lack of resources.

Many Palisadians had already suspected the fire was a rekindling of the smaller blaze, said Maryam Zar, who runs the citizen-led Palisades Recovery Coalition. But the onslaught of news landed “like a ton of bricks” in the frustrated community.

Zar got home late after attending the meeting at the rec center Tuesday night. Then, on Wednesday morning, her phone buzzed with text message chains from Palisadians telling one another to brace for a traumatic day — not necessarily because they would learn how the fire started, “but because we all knew that it was so unnecessary,” she said.

While people were happy there was “finally some accountability” with the arrest, she said, conversations in the Palisades quickly turned to: “Had the city been prepared, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Zar, who has spent more than a decade serving on and founding volunteer organizations and task forces in Pacific Palisades, said she was well accustomed to byzantine government processes.

“But for the first time, I’m worried because the wheels just aren’t turning,” she said.

A large sign on a fire-scorched lot at Alma Real Drive and El Cerco Place in Pacific Palisades calls on Mayor Karen Bass to resign.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

One project that has, for some, become surprisingly emblematic of working with the city is the promised-but-delayed installation of a small temporary space for the Palisades Branch Library, which stood next to the rec center campus before it was destroyed.

Cameron Pfizenmaier, president of the volunteer group Friends of the Palisades Library, said Los Angeles Public Library officials told her in July that the city would be placing a 60-by-60-foot prefabricated building — essentially a large trailer — on a grassy space at the entrance to the rec center.

It would include lockers for patrons to pick up books ordered online, computers, printers and scanners, and public meeting space. The building, she said she was told, would be up and running by August.

Then, she said, the building’s installation was delayed to October. And the location was changed, with the temporary space — which probably will stand for several years while the library is being rebuilt — now set to be placed atop two tennis courts at the rec center.

In an email to The Times this week, Bass’ office said that the building’s installation is expected to begin in November and that it should open by the end of January.

“The community is losing faith that the city is actually able to do anything,” said Pfizenmaier, who lost her home. “It’s such a missed opportunity for good news and hope.

“It’s not that hard to drop a bungalow and hook it into power. … The only thing that’s making it hard is the bureaucracy that’s preventing it.”

People play tennis at the Palisades Recreation Center on Oct. 5.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Yet Palisadeans themselves seem divided on the library, with some decrying the proposed use of the rec center’s grassy expanse, a rare green oasis in the charred neighborhood. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home, posted a photo of the space on Instagram, complaining that “Karen Bass and her city goons want to put a temporary library on top of it” and that he figured “the library will be designed in the shape of an empty water reservoir.”

Others have blasted the decision to place the structure atop the popular tennis courts.

In a statement to The Times, Bass’ office said the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and the Los Angeles Public Library are gathering community feedback about the modular building, which the two agencies will share. They also are still determining how to hook up plumbing, sewage and electricity on site and are ordering books, computers, supplies and furniture, the mayor’s office said.

“This effort needed to be coordinated with and adjusted to the plans to redesign and rebuild the Palisades Rec Center to ensure the temporary site would not impede future construction,” Bass’ office said.

From the days just after the fire through July, the library lot on Alma Real Drive served as a staging area for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s emergency response, including distributing water and providing electric vehicle charging stations for Palisades residents, Bass’ office said.

Bass has issued a swath of executive orders to aid recovery, including providing tax relief for fire-affected businesses and streamlining permitting. And she has touted the speed with which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency, cleared debris from the library lot, citing her own “call to prioritize public spaces in the debris removal operation.”

The lot was cleared in April in six days — 24 days ahead of schedule.

Bass’ office said the L.A. Public Library is working to select an architect from a list of preapproved contractors through the Bureau of Engineering “to expedite the rebuilding of the permanent library.”

Joyce Cooper, director of branch library services for the library, said in an interview that the Palisades Branch Library held more than 34,000 items, including books, audiobooks, DVDs and CDs.

“Pretty much our entire collection — everything was lost,” Cooper said. “It was a community hub. When the fire destroyed the branch, it took that away from everybody.”

The city established limited library services in the nascent Pacific Palisades in the 1920s, and the community got its first branch library in 1952.

The most recent facility opened in 2003 and was damaged by a 2020 electrical fire that destroyed much of the children’s collection, said Laura Schneider, a board member and former longtime president for Friends of the Library.

After a long closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, volunteers worked hard to draw people back to the library, Schneider said. Children and teenagers competed in writing contests, volunteers hosted big weekend book sales, and older people sought help with computers.

Schneider — whose still-uninhabitable home was damaged by the January fire — was first drawn to the library as a young mom. She moved to the Palisades when her son, now 23, was 2 years old and was enchanted by the big, circular window with a window seat in the fairy-tale-themed children’s section.

“I really believe it’s the heart of the Palisades,” Schneider said. “It’s a place that welcomes everyone. … There’s no community center. There’s no senior center in the Palisades. The library is as close to that as it comes.”

At the start of Tuesday night’s meeting at the Palisades Recreation Center, Jimmy Kim, general manager of the city’s cash-strapped parks department, made clear that questions about the location of the temporary library were “outside the scope” of the gathering and would not be answered. Many in the audience groaned.

The recreation center will be rebuilt through a public-private partnership that Bass and her onetime political adversary, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, promoted in a joint appearance in the spring. There, Bass told reporters that the city’s job was to ensure the project was able to move quickly through the permitting process and that “the role of government is to get out of the way.”

Private donations from Caruso’s philanthropic group Steadfast LA will help pay for the roughly $30-million rebuilding of the rec center. Another major donor is LA Strong Sports, a group started by Lakers coach JJ Redick, a Palisades resident who coached a youth basketball team at the center and appeared at the Tuesday meeting.

Speaker after speaker praised the private donors for making speed a priority.

“I’m so grateful that this is going through private [development] and not city because otherwise it would not be up for another 10 years,” said one woman, who said she had lived in the Palisades for two decades and had an 8-year-old boy who used the park often.

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She added: “I just want to thank Rick Caruso for being the savior of our community.”

Caruso — who defeated Bass in the Palisades by wide a margin in the 2022 mayoral election — smiled and waved at her from the front of the room as the audience clapped.

A 15-year-old girl came to the microphone and said the rec center was where she learned to ride a bike and where her brothers played Saturday basketball games. Please, she pleaded with the donors in the room, hurry.

“Please don’t let us age out,” she said. “Please don’t let this take so long that kids never get to experience what I have. We’re ready to come back stronger. We just need help getting there.”

Caruso told the audience he expected construction to begin in January and for the center to reopen in January 2027. He said his group will not operate the space — the city will — but that he thought it would be in better hands if a community foundation took it over from the government.

At the end of the meeting, a City Hall staff member told the crowd that Bass had sent several staffers that night. The mayor, she promised, was listening.

At a time when its leadership is in question and its mission challenged, the Library of Congress has named a new U.S. poet laureate, the much-honored author and translator Arthur Sze.

The library announced Monday that the 74-year-old Sze had been appointed to a one-year term, starting this fall. The author of 12 poetry collections and recipient last year of a lifetime achievement award from the library, he succeeds Ada Limón, who had served for three years. Previous laureates also include Joy Harjo, Louise Glück and Billy Collins.

Speaking during a recent Zoom interview with the Associated Press, Sze acknowledged some misgivings when Rob Casper, who heads the library’s poetry and literature center, called him in June about becoming the next laureate.

He wondered about the level of responsibilities and worried about the upheaval since President Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in May. After thinking about it overnight, he called Casper back and happily accepted.

“I think it was the opportunity to give something back to poetry, to something that I’ve spent my life doing,” he explained, speaking from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. “So many people have helped me along the way. Poetry has just helped me grow so much, in every way.”

Sze’s new job begins during a tumultuous year for the library, a 200-year-old, nonpartisan institution that holds a massive archive of books published in the United States. Trump abruptly fired Hayden after conservative activists accused her of imposing a “woke” agenda, criticism that Trump has expressed often as he seeks sweeping changes at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian museums and other cultural institutions.

Hayden’s ouster was sharply criticized by congressional Democrats, leaders in the library and scholarly community and such former laureates as Limón and Harjo.

Although the White House announced that it had named Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche as the acting librarian, daily operations are being run by a longtime official at the library, Robert Randolph Newlen. Events such as the annual National Book Festival have continued without interruption or revision.

Laureates are forbidden to take political positions, although the tradition was breached in 2003 when Collins publicly stated his objections to President George W. Bush’s push for war against Iraq.

Newlen is identified in Monday’s announcement as acting librarian, a position he was in line for according to the institution’s guidelines. He praised Sze, whose influences range from ancient Chinese poets to Wallace Stevens, for his “distinctly American” portraits of the Southwest landscapes and for his “great formal innovation.”

“Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences — and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space,” his statement reads in part.

Sze’s official title is poet laureate consultant in poetry, a 1985 renaming of a position established in 1937 as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. The mission is loosely defined as a kind of literary ambassador, to “raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”

Sze wants to focus on a passion going back more than a half-century to his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley — translation.

He remembers reading some English-language editions of Chinese poetry, finding the work “antiquated and dated” and deciding to translate some of it himself, writing out the Chinese characters and engaging with them “on a much deeper level” than he had expected. Besides his own poetry, he has published “The Silk Dragon: Translations From the Chinese.”

“I personally learned my own craft of writing poetry through translating poetry,” he says. “I often think that people think of poetry as intimidating, or difficult, which isn’t necessarily true. And I think one way to deepen the appreciation of poetry is to approach it through translation.”

Sze is a New York City native and son of Chinese immigrants who in such collections as “Sight Lines” and “Compass Rose” explores themes of cultural and environmental diversity and what he calls “coexisting.”

In a given poem, he might shift from rocks above a pond to people begging in a subway, from a firing squad in China to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia. His many prizes include the National Book Award for “Sight Lines.”

He loves poetry from around the world but feels at home writing in English, if only for the “richness of the vocabulary” and the wonders of its origins.

“I was just looking at the word ‘ketchup,’ which started from southern China, went to Malaysia, was taken to England, where it became a tomato-based sauce, and then, of course, to America,” he says. “And I was just thinking days ago, that’s a word we use every day without recognizing its ancestry, how it’s crossed borders, how it’s entered into the English language and enriched it.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Former President Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

Biden’s library team has the daunting task of raising money for the 46th president’s legacy project at a moment when his party has become fragmented about the way ahead and many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.

It also remains to be seen whether corporations and institutional donors that have historically donated to presidential library projects — regardless of the party of the former president — will be more hesitant to contribute, with President Trump maligning Biden on a daily basis and savaging groups he deems left-leaning.

The political climate has changed

“There’s certainly folks — folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” Gifford, who was named chairman of the library board, told The Associated Press. “That being said … we’re not going to create a budget, we’re not going to set a goal for ourselves that we don’t believe we can hit.”

The cost of presidential libraries has soared over the decades.

The George H.W. Bush library’s construction cost came in at about $43 million when it opened in 1997. Bill Clinton’s cost about $165 million. George W. Bush’s team met its $500 million fundraising goal before the library was dedicated.

The Obama Foundation has set a whopping $1.6 billion fundraising goal for construction, sustaining global programming and seeding an endowment for the Chicago presidential center that is slated to open next year.

Biden’s library team is still in the early stages of planning, but Gifford predicted that the cost of the project would probably “end up somewhere in the middle” of the Obama Presidential Center and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Biden advisers have met with officials operating 12 of the 13 presidential libraries with a bricks and mortar presence that the National Archives and Records Administration manages. (They skipped the Herbert Hoover library in Iowa, which is closed for renovations.) They’ve also met Obama library officials to discuss programming and location considerations and have begun talks with Delaware leaders to assess potential partnerships.

Private money builds them

Construction and support for programming for the libraries are paid for with private funds donated to the nonprofit organizations established by the former president.

The initial vision is for the Biden library to include an immersive museum detailing Biden’s four years in office.

The Bidens also want it to be a hub for leadership, service and civic engagement that will include educational and event space to host policy gatherings.

Biden, who ended his bid for a second White House term 107 days before last year’s election, has been relatively slow to move on presidential library planning compared with most of his recent predecessors.

Clinton announced Little Rock, Arkansas, would host his library weeks into his second term. Barack Obama selected Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side as the site for his presidential center before he left office, and George W. Bush selected Southern Methodist University in Dallas before finishing his second term.

One-termer George H.W. Bush announced in 1991, more than a year before he would lose his reelection bid, that he would establish his presidential library at Texas A&M University after he left office.

Trump taps legal settlements for his

Trump was mostly quiet about plans for a presidential library after losing to Biden in 2020 and has remained so since his return to the White House this year. But the Republican has won millions of dollars in lawsuits against Paramount Global, ABC News, Meta and X in which parts of those settlements are directed for a future Trump library.

Trump has also accepted a free Air Force One replacement from the Qatar government. He says the $400 million plane would be donated to his future presidential library, similar to how the Boeing 707 used by President Ronald Reagan was decommissioned and put on display as a museum piece, once he leaves office.

Others named to Biden’s library board are former senior White House aides Elizabeth Alexander, Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón and Cedric Richmond; David Cohen, a former ambassador to Canada and telecom executive; Tatiana Brandt Copeland, a Delaware philanthropist; Jeff Peck, Biden Foundation treasurer and former Senate aide; Fred C. Sears II, Biden’s longtime friend; former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh; former Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young; and former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell.

Biden has deep ties to Pennsylvania but ultimately settled on Delaware, the state that was the launching pad for his political career. He was first elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and spent 36 years representing Delaware in the Senate before serving as Obama’s vice president.

The president was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he lived until age 10. He left when his father, struggling to make ends meet, moved the family to Delaware after landing a job there selling cars.

Working-class Scranton became a touchstone in Biden’s political narrative during his long political career. He also served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania after his vice presidency, leading a center on diplomacy and global engagement at the school named after him.

Gifford said ultimately the Bidens felt that Delaware was where the library should be because the state has “propelled his entire political career.”

Elected officials in Delaware are cheering Biden’s move.

“To Delaware, he will always be our favorite son,” Gov. Matt Meyer said. “The new presidential library here in Delaware will give future generations the chance to see his story of resilience, family, and never forgetting your roots.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

Put down the book, pick up the phone.

So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London.

From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience .

“This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting at least 80 years of continued decline in reading for pleasure,” the paper states.

Jill Sonke, one of the study’s authors, said in an interview Tuesday that the decline is concerning in part because “we know that reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior. It is associated with relaxation, well-being, mental health, quality of life.”

“We’re losing a low-hanging fruit in our health toolkit when we’re reading or participating in the arts less,” added Sonke, the director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the university’s EpiArts Lab.

The reading decline comes as most Americans have more access to books than ever before. Because of Libby and other e-book apps, people do not need to travel to libraries or bookstores. They can check out books from multiple libraries and read them on their tablets or phones.

But other forms of digital media are crowding out the free moments that people could devote to books. More time spent scrolling dank memes and reels on social media or bingeing the “King of the Hill” reboot on Hulu means less time for the latest pick from Oprah’s Book Club.

But researchers say there are factors besides digital distraction at play, including a national decline in leisure time overall and uneven access to books and libraries.

The study analyzed data from 236,270 Americans age 15 and older who completed the American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2003 and 2023. [The year 2020 was excluded because data collection was briefly paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.]

Participants were asked to provide granular detail of their activities beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. the day of the interview.

Researchers found that people who do read for pleasure are doing so for longer stretches of time — from 1 hour 23 minutes per day in 2003 to 1 hour 37 minutes per day in 2023.

But the percentage of Americans who leisure-read on a typical day has dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to a low of 16% in 2023.

Researchers said there was an especially concerning disparity between Black and white Americans.

The percentage of Black adults who read for pleasure peaked at about 20% in 2004 and fell to about 9% in 2023. The percentage of white adults who picked up a book for fun peaked at about 29% in 2004 and dropped to roughly 18% in 2023.

The study showed that women read for fun more than men. And that people who live in rural areas had a slightly steeper drop in pleasure reading than urban denizens over the last two decades.

In rural places, people have less access not only to bookstores and libraries, but also reliable internet connections, which can contribute to different reading habits, Kate Laughlin, executive director of the Seattle-based Assn. for Rural and Small Libraries, said in an interview Tuesday.

Although there have been concerted national efforts to focus on literacy in children, less attention is paid to adults, especially in small towns, Laughlin said.

“When you say ‘reading for pleasure,’ you make the assumption that reading is pleasurable,” Laughlin said. “If someone struggles with the act of actually reading and interpreting the words, that’s not leisure; that feels like work.”

As rural America shifts away from the extraction-based industries that once defined it — such as logging, coal mining and fishing — adults struggling with basic literacy are trying to play catch-up with the digital literacy needed in the modern workforce, Laughlin said.

Rural librarians, she said, often see adults in their late 20s and older coming in not to read but to learn how to use a keyboard and mouse and set up their first email address so they can apply for work online.

According to the study, the percentage of adults reading to children has not declined over the last two decades. But “rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day.”

Of the participants whose data the researchers analyzed, 21% had a child under 9 at home.

The low percentage of adults reading with kids “is concerning given that regular reading during childhood is a strong determinant of reading ability and engagement later in life,” the study read. “The low rates of reading with children may thus contribute to future declines in reading among adults.”

Researchers noted some limitations in their ability to interpret the data from the American Time Use Survey. Some pleasure reading might have been categorized, mistakenly, as digital activity, they wrote.

E-books were not included in the reading category until 2011, and audiobooks were not included until 2021.

From 2003 to 2006, reading the Bible and other religious texts was included in reading in personal interest — but was recategorized afterward and grouped with other participation in religious practice.

Further, reading on tablets, computers and smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether survey participants included it as leisure reading or technology use.

“This may mean that we underestimated rates of total engagement, although … we expect any such misclassifications to have minimal effects on our findings,” they wrote.

Lisa Berns, the niece of retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, passed by a newsstand in Los Angeles over the weekend and found herself reacting with dread and alarm to the news that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had just been assassinated.

The Orange County woman’s reaction surfaced again Wednesday, when her uncle announced he would not be running for President, a decision that, in Berns’ words, “hasn’t ruined my day. . . . It takes a lot of the pressure off of us. It takes the worry away.”

“People in public office just put themselves at risk every day, so I’m not unhappy that he decided not to run,” she said.

Lisa Berns’ mother, Marilyn Berns, whose only sibling is Powell, said she had never discussed the dangers of running for office with her brother, “But I know that it concerned us–my husband and our family. I think Colin’s decision was made prior” to Saturday’s tragedy in Israel.

“I wasn’t surprised [by Wednesday’s announcement] because Colin called me [Tuesday] night and told me what his decision was,” said Marilyn Berns, 64, a teacher at Martin Elementary School in Santa Ana until her retirement in June. “I’m pleased about the decision. It’s important to us that he do the thing he feels most comfortable with. . . . We were all getting very edgy about it.”

Berns said that her brother’s consideration of seeking the presidency had left his family subject to prolonged stress.

“There was this monumental decision that had to be made,” Marilyn Berns said. “Both of them [Powell and his wife, Alma], along with their kids, were just meeting and meeting and thinking it over. I didn’t realize until I spoke to him the gravity of what my brother was dealing with. That was very disturbing to me. I got a little teary over that.”

Elsewhere in Orange County, the response was less personal and more political as Democratic and Republican leaders found a common ground: Albeit for their own reasons, both parties agreed that Powell had done the right thing–the only thing he could do, really–in not seeking the White House.

But private citizens throughout the county reacted glumly, saying that Powell’s decision deprived American voters of a candidate whom many felt was potentially the best President of anyone in public life.

Others expressed relief, however, saying the timing just didn’t feel right.

Numerous political pundits said Wednesday that Powell’s wife had been “adamant” about having him decline, language with which both Berns women took issue.

Marilyn Berns said that her sister-in-law “has a lot of input” into her husband’s choices and that “they do things together as a team”–to a point.

Even if Alma Powell had strongly resisted her husband’s running, “she’s not the type of woman who is so forceful that she would ram her views down someone’s throat. That’s not Alma Powell’s style. She gives her input, and that’s it. She doesn’t beat a dead horse.”

“I haven’t talked to my aunt [Alma, Powell’s wife]. I don’t know that she’s adamant about him not running,” said Lisa Berns, a computer saleswoman in Orange County, “but I don’t think she’s got a burning desire for him to run.

“I don’t know what she feels precisely about Rabin’s assassination. I don’t know that it played a big part in their decision, but I will tell you this: I was in L.A. over the weekend visiting friends. I hadn’t been watching the news, or reading the newspaper.

“But at 5 o’clock when I walked by a newsstand and saw that Rabin had been assassinated, my heart sank. I don’t know if anybody else in the family had it cross their minds, but it certainly crossed mine.”

The Berns family is so concerned about its own privacy that both mother and daughter asked not to have published the name of the Orange County community where the family lives.

Despite her uncle’s decision, “I think he would have been great” as President, Lisa Berns said. “I think he would be good at anything he sets out to do. He’s obviously very bright, very well spoken, level-headed, cool. . . . He knows how to work under tremendous pressure in various capacities. He’s a fair person, an eminently decent person.”

On other fronts, Democrats and Republicans across the county were not about to try to persuade Powell to change his mind.

“If he had run, it would have made the Republican [presidential] race even uglier than it is already,” by pitting the moderate Powell against GOP conservatives, said Irvine attorney Jim Toledano, chairman of the Democratic Party in Orange County.

“The announcement comes as no surprise to me,” countered Thomas A. Fuentes, chairman of the Republican Party in Orange County. “I never met a party activist who was favorable to [Powell’s] nomination during all the time the press was touting it.”

It was always the media and never the GOP constituency who wanted Powell to run, Fuentes said, claiming the negative feeling was far more prevalent in the ultraconservative, Republican stronghold of Orange County.

“If there were ever a media-contrived candidacy, this was the best example,” Fuentes said. “To carry our banner requires some time of service to the party and also the full embrace of the values and ideals of the party–and that was lacking.”

Fuentes suggested that party regulars felt the would-be candidate had not yet paid his dues, noting that Powell’s most trusted advisers “obviously shared with him the reality that there was no Powell ground network. There has to be some structure, some network, some reality to a campaign. That not being in place, I think he just came to grips with reality.”

But some people reacted to Wednesday’s news with disappointment.

At the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, about 150 people watched Powell’s announcement on a big-screen television. Many were both surprised and crestfallen at his decision. “I really thought he had the impetus and the appeal to win,” said 54-year-old Beverly Nocas of Pasadena. “He’s very articulate and I think he could have done a lot for us.”

Norma Canova, a 50-year-old resident of Yorba Linda, said, “I think he could have had a great role in healing racial problems in this country.”

But several onlookers, who had gathered to watch a fashion show called “Dressing the First Lady,” expressed relief.

“I couldn’t vote for him because I don’t know what he stands for,” said 81-year-old Henry Boney of San Diego. “I know that he’s a good salesman though. He created a lot of publicity for his book.”

Newport Beach resident Elaine Parks said she was “very impressed” with Powell, but was heartened by his decision to stay out of the race.

“It would have been divisive to the party, and we need complete unity to beat the current President, which I sincerely hope happens,” Parks said.

President Trump’s future presidential library has a growing list of corporate sponsors, and Democratic lawmakers are sounding alarms.

To settle Trump’s lawsuit over edits to a CBS “60 Minutes” broadcast, Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to help finance the future library and cover the president’s legal fees.

Walt Disney Co. earlier pledged $15 million to Trump’s library to resolve a defamation lawsuit over inaccurate statements about Trump by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. And this spring, the nation of Qatar donated a $400-million Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner for Trump’s use — a gift that ultimately will be registered to his library, whatever form it takes.

On Wednesday, a group of progressive lawmakers, led by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), introduced the Presidential Library Anti-Corruption Act, a proposed measure that would require transparency and impose restrictions on donations to presidential libraries.

“This new bill will close the loopholes that allow presidential libraries to be used as a tool for corruption and bribery,” Warren told reporters on a Zoom call. “Slamming the door shut on apparent corruption at the highest levels of government is an important step forward and something everyone should get behind.”

For now, the lawmakers — including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) — lack support from Republicans in Congress.

Still, the measure is needed, the lawmakers said, because there are no rules that specifically target solicitation of gifts or payments by individuals and companies to try to curry favor with the president.

The bill would create a cap on contributions, prohibit donations from lobbyists and foreign governments and delay fundraising until a president leaves office, with a carve-out for nonprofits.

Violators would risk criminal or civil penalties, which could equal as much as the value of the gift.

The measure also would prohibit the conversion of a donation to personal use, as some have feared will happen with the acceptance of the Qatar plane.

“What is Qatar getting in exchange? … Nobody knows,” Warren said. “All of this shady stuff is happening because there are essentially no rules for presidential library donations.”

Under the legislation, quarterly disclosures would be required.

“People have a right to know who is, in effect, gaining favor with a president in office through donations to a library,” Blumenthal said. “These kinds of requirements ought to apply to both Republican[s] and Democrat[s], because the donation can be problematic no matter which party the president may belong to.”

Critics blasted former President Clinton for pardoning late fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich after his wife donated $450,000 to Clinton’s library.

In addition to the CBS “60 Minutes” and ABC settlements, Facebook parent company Meta donated $22 million to Trump’s library. The payment was part of Meta’s $25-million settlement to a lawsuit brought after Facebook banned Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, donated $10 million.

Contributions to Trump’s inaugural celebrations this year that went beyond money spent are expected to be steered to the library as well as money raised from people who want to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Warren’s office said.

Warren and others previously raised the notion that Paramount’s settlement with Trump, in particular, could constitute a bribe. It has been widely believed that resolving the legal dispute with Trump was a prerequisite for getting the company’s pending $8-billion merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media cleared by the Federal Communications Commission.

These are such crazy times that when I found myself desperate to cover some good news amid deportations and Trump overreach, I visited … Huntington Beach?!

MAGA-by-the-Sea? The Orange County city that once elected MMA legend Tito Ortiz to its governing body, which currently includes guys named Chad and Butch? Where Mayor Pat Burns presides over council meetings with a small white bust of Donald Trump in front of him?

The coastal community that’s been a hotbed of neo-Nazi activity for decades? Whose factory setting is whiny gringo rage? Whose former city attorney, Michael Gates, sued California to keep out of his hometown everything from sanctuary state policies to affordable housing mandates and is now a deputy U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, which is like putting a butcher in charge of a vegan picnic?

Can that Huntington Beach teach the rest of us a thing — or thirty — not just about how to stand up to despotism, but how to beat it back?

Yep!

Earlier this month, Surf City voters overwhelmingly passed two ballot initiatives addressing their libraries. Measure A nixed a parent review board, created by the City Council, that would have taken the power to select children’s books away from librarians. Measure B barred the privatization of the city’s library system, after the council had considered the idea.

It was a resounding rebuke of H.B.’s conservatives, who had steamrolled over city politics for the past two and a half years and turned what was a 4-3 Democratic council majority three years ago into a 7-0 MAGA supermajority.

Among the pet projects for the new guard was the library, which council members alleged was little better than a smut shop because the young adult section featured books about puberty and LGBTQ+ issues. Earlier this year, the council approved a plaque commemorating the library’s 50th anniversary that will read, “Magical. Alluring. Galvanizing. Adventurous.”

MAGA.

“They went too far, too fast, and it’s not what people signed up for,” said Oscar Rodriguez, an H.B. native.

We were at a private residence near downtown H.B. that was hosting a victory party for the library measures. The line to get in stretched onto the sidewalk. A sign near the door proclaimed, “Not All of Us in H.B. Wear Red Hats.” A banner on the balcony of the two-story home screamed, “Protect Our Kids From Chad,” referring to City Councilmember Chad Williams, who bankrolled much-ridiculed “Protect Children from Porn” signs against Measures A and B.

“Look, Huntington Beach is very conservative, very MAGA — always will be,” Rodriguez continued. We stood in the kitchen as people loaded their plates with salad and pizza. Canvas bags emblazoned with “Protect HB” and the Huntington Beach Pier — the logo for the coalition that pushed for the measures — hung from many shoulders. “But people of all politics were finally disgusted and did something together to stand up.”

People line up to enter a house in Huntington Beach that hosted a victory pary for the passage of Measures A and B, which addressed issues with the city’s library.

(John McCoy/For The Times)

“On election night, I was jumping up and down, because it was happening here,” said former Councilmember Natalie Moser, who lost her reelection bid last year and volunteered for Protect HB. “It creates joy and enthusiasm, and I hope others can see what we did and take hope.”

There was no chatter about the ICE raids that were terrorizing swaths of Southern California. A Spotify mix blared “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” AC/DC and the ever-annoying “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train. The crowd of about 90 volunteers was mostly white and boomers. More than a few bore tans so dark that they were browner than me.

We were in Huntington Beach, after all.

And yet these were the folks that fueled Protect HB’s successful campaign. They leaned on social media outreach, door knocking, rallies and a nonpartisan message stressing the common good that was the city library.

Christine Padesky and Cindy Forsthoff staffed tables around the city in the lead-up to Election Day.

“Time and time again, I had people come up to me say, ‘We’re Republican, we’re Christian, we voted for this council, but they’ve gone too far,’” Padesky said.

Forsthoff, a Huntington Beach resident for 36 years, agreed. She had never participated in a political campaign before Measures A and B. “When they [politicians] take such extreme steps, people will come,” she said.

The bro-rock soundtrack faded out and the program began.

“My gosh, we did this!” exclaimed Protect HB co-chair Pat Goodman, who had been checking people in at the door just a few moments earlier.

“I don’t think those neighbors know who we are,” cracked Protect HB co-chair Cathey Ryder, hinting at the uphill battle they faced in a city where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats. “Show them you’re a supporter of good government.”

She led everyone in the cheesy, liberty-minded chant that had inspired volunteers throughout the campaign.

What do we want to do?

Read!

How do we want to read?

Free!

We were in Huntington Beach, after all.

The speeches lasted no more than seven minutes total. The volunteers wanted to enjoy the brisk evening and gather around an outdoor fireplace to make S’mores and enjoy a beer or two. Besides, they deserved to revel in their accomplishment and discuss what was next — not just in Huntington Beach, but how to translate what happened there into a replicable lesson for others outside the city.

The key, according to Dave Rynerson, is to accept political differences and remind everyone that what’s happening in this country — whether on the Huntington Beach City Council or in the White House — isn’t normal.

“As bad as things may seem, you can’t give up,” the retired systems engineer said. “You have to remind people this is our country, our lives, and we need to take care of it together.”

Mayor of Huntington Beach Pat Burns listens to speakers discuss the city’s plan to make Huntington Beach “a non-sanctuary city for illegal immigration” during the Huntington Beach City Council meeting at the Huntington Beach City Hall in Huntington Beach.

(James Carbone/For the Daily Pilot)

Huntington Beach isn’t going to turn into Berkeley anytime soon. It’s one of the few California cities that has declared itself a nonsanctuary city and fully in support of Trump’s immigration policies. The architect of MAGA’s Huntington Beach takeover, Tony Strickland, was elected to the state senate earlier this year. His acolyte, Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, plans to run for assembly next year.

But feeling the happiness at the Protect HB dinner, even if just for an evening, was a much-needed balm at a time when it seems nothing can stop Trump. And meeting regular people like Greg and Carryl Hytopoulos should inspire anyone to get involved.

Married for 50 years and Surf City residents for 44, they own a water pipeline protection service and had never bothered with city politics. But the council’s censorious plans for the library made them “outraged, and this was enough,” said Carryl. “We needed to make an impact, and we couldn’t just sit idly by.”

They outfitted one of their work trucks with large poster boards in favor of Measures A and B and parked it around the city. More crucially, the couple, both Democrats, talked about the issue with their neighbors in Huntington Harbour, an exclusive neighborhood that Trump easily won in 2024.

“When we explained what were the stakes, they listened,” Greg said.

Carryl smiled.

“There’s a quiet majority that, when provoked, can rise up and save the day.”

Libraries across the United States are cutting back on ebooks, audiobooks and loan programs after the Trump administration suspended millions of dollars in federal grants as it tries to dissolve the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Federal judges have issued temporary orders to block the Trump administration from taking any further steps toward gutting the agency. But the unexpected slashing of grants has delivered a significant blow to many libraries, which are reshuffling budgets and looking at different ways to raise money.

Maine has laid off a fifth of its staff and temporarily closed its state library after not receiving the remainder of its annual funding. Libraries in Mississippi have indefinitely stopped offering a popular ebook service, and the South Dakota state library has suspended its interlibrary loan program.

Ebook and audiobook programs are especially vulnerable to budget cuts, even though those offerings have exploded in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think everyone should know the cost of providing digital sources is too expensive for most libraries,” said Cindy Hohl, president of the American Library Assn. “It’s a continuous and growing need.”

Library officials caught off guard by Trump’s cuts

President Trump issued an executive order March 14 to dismantle the IMLS before firing nearly all of its employees.

One month later, the Maine State Library announced it was issuing layoff notices for workers funded through an IMLS grant program.

“It came as quite a surprise to all of us,” said Spencer Davis, a library generalist at the Maine State Library who is one of eight employees who were laid off May 8 because of the suspended funding.

In April, California, Washington and Connecticut were the only three states to receive letters stating the remainder of their funding for the year was canceled, Hohl said. For others, the money hasn’t been distributed yet. The three states all filed formal objections with the IMLS.

Rebecca Wendt, California state library director, said she was never told why California’s funding was terminated while the other remaining states did not receive the same notice.

“We are mystified,” Wendt said.

The agency did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Popular digital offerings on the chopping block

Most libraries are funded by city and county governments, but receive a smaller portion of their budget from their state libraries, which receive federal dollars every year to help pay for summer reading programs, interlibrary loan services and digital books. Libraries in rural areas rely on federal grants more than those in cities.

Many states use the funding to pay for ebooks and audiobooks, which are increasingly popular, and costly, offerings. In 2023, more than 660 million people globally borrowed ebooks, audiobooks and digital magazines, up from 19% in 2022, according to OverDrive, the main distributor of digital content for libraries and schools.

In Mississippi, the state library helped fund its statewide ebook program.

For a few days, Erin Busbea was the bearer of bad news for readers at her Mississippi library: Hoopla, a popular app to check out ebooks and audiobooks, had been suspended indefinitely in Lowndes and DeSoto counties due to the funding freeze.

“People have been calling and asking, ‘Why can’t I access my books on Hoopla?’” said Busbea, library director of the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System in Columbus, a majority-Black city northeast of Jackson.

The library system also had to pause parts of its interlibrary loan system allowing readers to borrow books from other states when they aren’t available locally.

“For most libraries that were using federal dollars, they had to curtail those activities,” said Hulen Bivins, the Mississippi Library Commission executive director.

States are fighting the funding freeze

The funding freeze came after the agency’s roughly 70 staff members were placed on administrative leave in March.

Attorneys general in 21 states and the American Library Assn. have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration for seeking to dismantle the agency.

The institute’s annual budget is below $300 million and distributes less than half of that to state libraries across the country. In California, the state library was notified that about 20%, or $3 million, of its $15-million grant had been terminated.

“The small library systems are not able to pay for the ebooks themselves,” said Wendt, the California state librarian.

In South Dakota, the state’s interlibrary loan program is on hold, according to Nancy Van Der Weide, a spokesperson for the South Dakota Department of Education.

The institute, founded in 1996 by a Republican-controlled Congress, also supports a national library training program named after former first lady Laura Bush that seeks to recruit and train librarians from diverse or underrepresented backgrounds. A spokesperson for Bush did not return a request seeking comment.

“Library funding is never robust. It’s always a point of discussion. It’s always something you need to advocate for,” said Liz Doucett, library director at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine. “It’s adding to just general anxiety.”

Lathan writes for the Associated Press.