The Daily Populous Monday May 12nd, 2025 evening edition
Authored by cbsnews.com and submitted by lunabandida

Acting FEMA head fired after saying agency should not be abolished

The Trump administration has fired the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, two sources familiar with the situation confirmed to CBS News Saturday.

The firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter came after Perlmutter and her office earlier this week issued part three of a lengthy report about artificial intelligence and expressed some concerns and questions about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology.

"It is an open question, however, how much data an AI developer needs, and the marginal effect of more data on a model's capabilities," the report read. "Not everyone agrees that further increases in data and test performance will necessarily lead to continued real world improvements in utility."

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment.

Perlmutter had held the position since October 2020, during the first Trump Administration. She was appointed to the post by now former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who herself was fired by President Trump on Thursday.

Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, said in a statement that Perlmutter's firing was "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis."

Morelle speculated that there was "surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models," in reference to the report released by the Copyright Office this week.

Last month, Musk took to his social media platform X to seemingly express support for the abolition of intellectual property laws. Musk also owns AI startup xAI, with which in February he submitted a failed bid to purchase OpenAI, the company that operates ChatGPT.

Mr. Trump has been a major proponent of AI. Immediately after taking office, he announced a joint venture involving OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle that will invest up to $500 billion in private sector money to build artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The U.S. Copyright Office, which has a staff of approximately 450 people, is a department of the Library of Congress. It is tasked with registering copyright claims, recording copyright ownership information and administering copyright law, among other things.

AppleTree98 on May 12nd, 2025 at 03:43 UTC »

He sure is firing people left and right. Is there a website that tracks all the government heads that are being fired? I know I posted earlier that he fired the Librarian for Congress Friday. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/05/president-donald-trump-fires-librarian-of-congress-carla-hayden/

Edit: Added another name and more details who has been fired..Earlier Thursday, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was pushed out one day after he had testified that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle the organization. Trump has suggested that individual states, not FEMA, should take the lead on responding to hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises.

At the Pentagon, more than a half-dozen top general officers have been fired since January, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. The only two women serving as four-star officers, as well as a disproportionate number of other senior female officers, have also been fired.

__AJK__ on May 12nd, 2025 at 03:40 UTC »

We all know the intellectual property laws are only going to be suspended for the rich and corporations

lunabandida on May 12nd, 2025 at 03:33 UTC »

"...Perlmutter's firing was "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis.... surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models," in reference to the report released by the Copyright Office this week.

Last month, Musk took to his social media platform X to seemingly express support for the abolition of intellectual property laws..."