President Donald Trump on Monday named the No. 2 official at the Justice Department and his former personal lawyer to serve as the acting librarian of Congress, initiating a shake-up at the main research library of the legislative branch that prompted an instant revolt among the staff.

Trump named Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was his lead defense lawyer in his criminal trial in Manhattan last year, to take over from Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress whom the president abruptly fired late last week.

But staff members at the Library of Congress pushed back, insisting that Congress must have input and refusing to give two other top Justice Department officials whom Blanche chose for senior positions there access to the agency’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The lockout led to a brief standoff across from the Capitol and became the latest flashpoint in a battle over where Congress’ authority ends and the White House’s begins. The people who described it did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

Around 9 a.m., the two Justice Department officials arrived at the library’s James Madison Memorial Building and sought access to the U.S. Copyright Office, which is housed there.

They brought a letter from the White House declaring that Blanche was the acting librarian and that he had selected the two men for top roles at the agency.

They were Paul Perkins, an associate deputy attorney general who the letter said would serve as the acting register of copyrights and the director of the Copyright Office, and Brian Nieves, a deputy chief of staff and senior policy counsel who had been designated as the acting deputy librarian. Trump also fired the previous director of the Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, over the weekend, one of the people said.

Staff members at the library balked and called the U.S. Capitol Police as well as their general counsel, Meg Williams, who told the two officials that they were not allowed access to the Copyright Office and asked them to leave, one of the people said.

Perkins and Nieves then left the building willingly, accompanied to the door by Williams. The library’s staff is recognizing Robert Newlen, the principal deputy librarian who was Hayden’s No. 2, as the acting librarian until it gets direction from Congress, one of the people familiar with the situation said.

EEOC moves to ax noncompliant judge

The federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights has moved to terminate a New York administrative judge who has resisted compliance with directives from the White House, including President Donald Trump’s executive order decreeing male and female as two “immutable” sexes.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in response to Trump’s order has moved to drop at least seven of its own pending cases representing transgender workers alleging discrimination, and is classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority, signaling a major departure from its prior interpretation of civil rights law.

EEOC Administrative Judge Karen Ortiz, who in February criticized the agency’s Trump-appointed head, Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, in an email copied to more than 1,000 colleagues, on Wednesday was placed on administrative leave. She also received notice that the EEOC leadership sought to fire her, accusing her of “profoundly unprofessional” conduct.

Agency to scrap appliance regulations

The Energy Department said Monday that it was preparing to roll back energy and water conservation standards for a long list of electric and gas appliances, targeting 47 regulations that it said were “driving up costs and lowering quality of life for the American people.”

The moves follow an executive order last week from President Donald Trump directing the Energy Department to “eliminate restrictive water pressure and efficiency rules that make household appliances less effective and more expensive.”

But energy-efficiency experts and climate advocates said the Energy Department’s moves would increase the cost of running household appliances like dehumidifiers and portable air-conditioners as well as air compressors used in industry.

“If this attack on consumers succeeds, President Trump would be raising costs dramatically for families as manufacturers dump energy- and water-wasting products into the market,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a coalition of environmental and consumer groups, utilities and government agencies.

The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is planning to eliminate Energy Star, the popular energy-efficiency certification for dishwashers, refrigerators, dryers and other home appliances.

Judge won’t block IRS from ICE data sharing

A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Internal Revenue Service from sharing immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S.

In a win for the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups. They argued that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country.

Friedrich, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, had previously refused to grant a temporary order in the case.

The decision comes less than a month after former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal allowing ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

Harvard notes reforms, stands by ‘principles’

Harvard University responded Monday to recent threats from the Education Department to halt its grant funding, highlighting reforms it was undertaking but warning it won’t budge on “its core, legally-protected principles” over fears of retaliation.

A letter from Harvard President Alan Garber detailed how the institution had made significant changes to its leadership and governance over the past year and a half. Among the reforms, Garber said, was a broad “strategy to combat antisemitism and other bigotry.”

Last week, the Department of Education threatened a grant freeze in a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school. The administration previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard, and Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status.

Garber warned that its efforts to change were being “undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law.”

Burgum: Uranium mine will be fast-tracked

The Interior Department said it would fast-track the permitting process for a uranium mine in Utah as part of President Donald Trump’s plan to shorten environmental reviews and speed the construction of certain types of energy projects.

An environmental assessment of the Velvet-Wood mine project will be completed in 14 days, the agency announced. Such a review would typically take about one year.

Critics have called the plan to drastically shrink the review time dangerous, and projects that are approved under such a compressed process are likely to face legal challenges.

In a statement, Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said the expedited process had been established to fix what he called an “alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration’s Climate Extremist policies.”

— News service reports