President Donald Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on Thursday as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.

Hayden was notified in an email late Thursday from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, according to an email obtained by the Associated Press. Confirmed by the Senate in 2016, Hayden was the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress.

“Carla,” the email began. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” A spokesperson for the Library of Congress confirmed that the White House told Hayden she was dismissed.

Hayden, whose 10-year term was set to expire next year, had come under backlash from a conservative advocacy group that accused her and other library leaders of promoting children’s books with “radical” content and literary material authored by Trump opponents.

“The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” the group, American Accountability Foundation, said on its X account earlier Thursday, just hours before the firing was made public. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

The unexpected move infuriated congressional Democrats, who initially disclosed the firing.

NOAA won’t track cost of disasters

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday said it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those that cause at least $1 billion in damage.

The move would leave insurance companies, researchers and government policymakers without information to help understand the patterns of major disasters such as hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences, starting this year. Those events are becoming more frequent or severe as the planet grows hotter, although not all disasters are linked to climate change.

It’s the latest effort from the Trump administration to restrict or eliminate climate research. In recent weeks, the administration has dismissed the authors working on the nation’s biggest climate assessment; planned to eliminate National Parks grants focused on climate change; and released a budget plan that would cut significantly climate science from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy and Defense departments.

Researchers and lawmakers criticized Thursday’s decision.

Jesse M. Keenan, associate professor and director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University in New Orleans, said ending the data collection would cripple efforts by federal and state governments to set budgets or make decisions on investment in infrastructure.

Trump endorsing tax hike on wealthy

President Donald Trump has asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to include a tax hike on rich Americans in the sprawling fiscal package lawmakers are putting together, according to two people familiar with the request, reviving an idea that many Republicans have opposed.

Trump wants to create a new top income bracket for people making more than $2.5 million per year, the people said, and to tax income above that level at a rate of 39.6%. Trump brought up the idea to Johnson in a call Wednesday, one of the people said.

Such a change would roll back one of the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That measure reduced the rate on income earned in the top bracket to 37% from 39.6%. This year, the top income bracket starts at $626,350 for an individual. Trump is effectively seeking to restore the previous top rate, but at a much higher income level.

Trump has been flirting with some kind of tax hike on the rich for weeks, alarming Republicans who, as a general matter, like to cut taxes. Conservatives have aggressively lobbied against the idea, and last month, Trump proclaimed that a so-called millionaires tax would be “very disruptive.”

Pentagon sacking transgender troops

The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify under a new directive issued Thursday.

Buoyed by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defense Department will begin going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who issued the latest memo, made his views clear after the court’s decision.

“No More Trans @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth said that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind.

“No more pronouns,” he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa, Fla. “No more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that s---.”

Prairie chicken protections targeted

The Trump administration has moved to end federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a showy grouse with the misfortune of inhabiting southern and central grasslands long sought-after for agriculture and energy development.

In a court filing Wednesday, officials said the Fish and Wildlife Service had erred in a Biden-era decision that placed the bird on the endangered species list.

It’s the latest in a blur of actions by the White House seeking to weaken or eliminate environmental regulations that constrain President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda.

And it’s the latest twist for a species whose fate has been fought over for three decades.

Lesser prairie chickens — known for the males’ quirky courtship displays — have declined from historic estimates of hundreds of thousands or even millions to only about 30,000 today. Habitat loss is the main culprit.

Trump asks justices for deportation OKs

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to proceed with a plan to revoke deportation protections for migrants from four troubled countries.

In an emergency application to the justices, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to lift a block imposed by a lower court on its effort to reverse a Biden administration program that had allowed migrants from certain countries to fly into the United States and remain temporarily.

“This court’s immediate intervention is warranted,” Sauer wrote in the application, adding that a lower court had “nullified one of the administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions.”

The Biden administration introduced the program, known as humanitarian parole, in early 2023. Under the policy, migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela could fly into the United States if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks.

House Republicans back ‘Gulf of America’

The Republican-led House passed a bill Thursday that would rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and direct federal agencies to update their documents and maps to incorporate the new name.

President Donald Trump already signed an executive order during his first day in office to rename the Gulf. House Republicans are looking to show their support, though it is unclear whether he Senate will go along.

The body of water has shared borders between the United States and Mexico. Trump’s order only carries authority within the U.S. Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.

Democrats said the vote demonstrated Republicans are not focusing on the priorities of most Americans. New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House’s top Democrat, asked Democrats to vote against this “silly, small-minded and sycophantic piece of legislation.”

— News service reports