• Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.)has denounced President Trump’s removal of Shira Perlmutter as an unprecedented power grab, suggesting it was done following a report that found that AI companies sometimes breach copyright laws. Major AI firms like OpenAI, which Elon Musk cofounded, are facing ongoing lawsuits over alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in their model training.

A top Democrat has called the recent firing of director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, "a brazen, unprecedented power grab."

In a press release, Rep. Joe Morelle said: “Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is 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.

“Register Perlmutter is a patriot, and her tenure has propelled the Copyright Office into the 21st century by comprehensively modernizing its operations and setting global standards on the intersection of AI and intellectual property," he said in the statement, adding the action violates Congress’s Article One authority and risks throwing a trillion-dollar industry into chaos.