‘No cause exists under the law’: Federal Reserve governor responds to Trump’s move to fire her
Lisa Cook responded to Trump’s plan to remove her from the Federal Reserve board of governors “effective immediately”.
In a statement emailed to reporters through the office of the lawyer Abbe Lowell, she said that “no cause exists under the law, and he [Trump] has no authority” to remove her from the job to which she was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022. A reminder that Cook was ultimately appointed for a 14-year term.
“I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022,” she said in the statement.
Key events
We’ll hear from the president at 11am ET today, when he hosts a meeting with his cabinet. He’ll take questions from the press, so we’ll make sure to bring you the latest when that kicks off.
The president is also set to meet with Indiana Republican lawmakers later today, around 1pm ET, to talk more about the redistricting push in the state.
The United States has agreed in principle to exempt Indonesian exports of cocoa, palm oil and rubber from the 19% tariff imposed by president Donald Trump since 7 August, Indonesia’s top trade negotiator said on Tuesday.
The exemption will take effect once both sides reach a final agreement, but no timeline has been set because the US is busy in tariff talks with other countries, Airlangga Hartarto, who is also the chief economic minister, told Reuters.
The two countries also discussed potential US investment in fuel storage in Indonesia in partnership with the Southeast Asian nation’s sovereign wealth fund Danantara and state energy firm Pertamina, Airlangga said in an interview.
“We are waiting for their response, but during the meeting, basically, the principal [exemption] has been agreed for products not produced in the US, such as palm oil and cocoa and rubber … it will be zero or close to zero,” he added.
Fed expert calls Trump’s attempt to fire Cook is ‘procedurally invalid removal’
Lev Menand, a law professor at Columbia law school, said Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve chief Lisa Cook is a “procedurally invalid removal under the statute”.
Menand, who authored a book about the Fed’s actions during the coronavirus pandemic, also said for-cause firings are typically related to misconduct while in office, rather than based on private misconduct from before an official’s appointment.
“This is a procedurally invalid removal under the statute,” he said. “This is not someone convicted of a crime. This is not someone who is not carrying out their duties.”
Edward Helmore
A Republican-led congressional committee has subpoenaed documents from the estate of the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to a release on Monday.
The subpoena was signed by congressman James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee. The estate is registered in the US Virgin Islands.
The letter demands that Epstein’s estate produce documents including a book that was compiled with notes from friends for his 50th birthday, his last will and testament, agreements he signed with prosecutors, his contacts, “Black Book”, any non-disclosure agreements, and his financial transactions and holdings.
The move is the latest twist in a flurry of events surrounding the convicted sex trafficker’s links to rich and powerful people, especially Donald Trump whose rightwing base has long been consumed by conspiracy theories around Epstein.
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday instructing federal prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against individuals who burn American flags during protests.
The order tells the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to look at cases where people burned flags and see if they can be charged with other crimes like disturbing the peace or breaking environmental laws.
It’s an attempt by Trump to go around a supreme court decision from 1989, when the court ruled 5-4 in Texas v Johnson that destroying the flag is protected political expression under the first amendment.
That court ruling threw out flag-burning laws in 48 states and made it clear that people have the right to burn flags as a way to express their political views.
Trump says he hopes to meet Kim Jong-un and raises prospect of US taking over some South Korean land
Justin McCurry
Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, possibly this year, in an attempt to revive the failed nuclear diplomacy of his first term as US president.
“I’d like to have a meeting. I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future,” Trump said during an occasionally awkward meeting at the Oval Office with South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, in which he raised the prospect of taking ownership of South Korean land that hosts a US military base.
Trump, who met Kim three times in his first term, hailed his relationship with the totalitarian leader and said he knew him “better than anybody, almost, other than his sister” – a reference to Kim’s younger sibling and confidante Kim Yo-jong. “Someday I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me,” Trump told reporters, saying he hoped the talks would take place this year.
Lee said the US president, who has attempted to bring peace – so far unsuccessfully – to longstanding disputes in Ukraine and the Middle East, was the “only person” who could end the decades-old standoff between South and North Korea, whose three-year war in the early 1950s ended in a truce but not a peace treaty.
“I look forward to your meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un and construction of Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf,” Lee said.
Maanvi Singh
After a multi-state lawsuit over Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to freeze more than $6.8bn in education funding to US schools, the Trump administration has agreed to restore the funds for a range of educational services, including after school and summer learning, teacher training, and support for English-learners.
The administration did not give a clear explanation as to why it had withheld the congressionally-allocated funds, though a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget had indicated that review found instances of federal education money being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda”.
Following a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of California and 22 other states, as well as the governors of two states, the administration released some funding. On Monday, California attorney general Rob Bonta announced that the states secured an agreement to have the funding fully restored.
“The Trump administration upended school programs across the country when it recklessly withheld vital education funding just weeks before the school year was set to begin,” Bonta said. “Fortunately, after we filed our lawsuit, the Trump Administration backed down and released the funding it had previously withheld … Our kids deserve so much better than what this anti-education administration has to offer, and we will continue to fight to protect them from this president’s relentless attacks.”
Donald Trump has said he is firing Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, in a move viewed as a sharp escalation in his battle to exert greater control over the independent institution.
Trump said in a letter posted on his Truth Social platform that he is firing Cook because of allegations she committed mortgage fraud. The allegation was made last week by Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the Federal Housing Administration, an agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Cook previously said she would not leave her post.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting its short-term interest rate, and even threatened to fire him. Powell, who has previously warned that tariffs will push up inflation, told the Jackson Hole economic symposium in Wyoming last week that the Fed could soon change its policy stance.
Powell’s caution has infuriated Trump, who has demanded the Fed cut borrowing costs to spur the economy and reduce the interest rates the federal government pays on its debt. Trump has also accused Powell of mismanaging the US central bank’s $2.5bn building renovation project.
Firing the Fed chair or forcing out a governor threatens the Fed’s venerated independence, which has long been supported by most economists and Wall Street investors. Here is an explainer of what Trump’s move to fire Fed governor means for central bank’s independence:
Utah congressional map, which helps Republicans, must be redrawn, judge rules
The Utah legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled on Monday that the Republican-controlled body drew them in violation of voters’ rights.
The current map, drawn in 2021, divides Salt Lake county – the state’s population center and a Democratic stronghold – among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.
District court judge Dianna Gibson declared the map unlawful because the legislature circumvented a commission established by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.
New maps will need to be drawn quickly for the 2026 midterm elections. Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, the state’s top elections official, asked the courts for the case to be finalized by November to leave time for the process before candidates start filing in early January.
But appeals promised by Republican lawmakers could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.
President Donald Trump on Monday threatened countries that have digital taxes with “subsequent additional tariffs” on their goods, if those nations do not remove such legislation.
“With this TRUTH, I put all Countries with Digital Taxes, Legislation, Rules, or Regulations, on notice that unless these discriminatory actions are removed, I, as President of the United States, will impose substantial additional Tariffs on that Country’s Exports to the U.S.A., and institute Export restrictions on our Highly Protected Technology and Chips,” Trump said in a social media post.
Who is Bill Pulte? The Trump appointee leading attacks against Lisa Cook
The Trump administration’s attack on Lisa Cook’s future at the Fed was led by Bill Pulte, a Trump-appointed official leading the US Federal Housing Finance Agency, who alleged she had claimed two different properties were her primary residences when obtaining mortgages in 2021.
“How can this woman be in charge of interest rates if she is allegedly lying to help her own interest rates?” Pulte wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He referred the case to the Department of Justice for investigation.
Trump seized on the claims before Cook had responded, writing on Wednesday on Truth Social, his social network, that she “must resign, now!!!”.
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, criticised Trump’s move against Cook. “Donald Trump is playing a dangerous game of Jenga with a key pillar of our economy,” he said.
“This brazen power grab must be stopped by the courts before Trump does permanent damage to national, state and local economies. And if the economy comes crashing down, if families lose their savings and Main Street pays the price, Donald Trump will own every ounce of the wreckage and devastation families feel.”
Trump accused of ‘cobbling together’ mortgage fraud allegations to fire Lisa Cook
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump has been accused of “cobbling together” allegations to fire Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook.
The president said she would lose her job over allegations she committed mortgage fraud – an extraordinary move that marks the latest escalation in Trump’s attack on the central bank’s independence.
Trump wrote to Cook on Monday, telling her that he was removing her from her position “effective immediately”, based on the allegation from one of his allies that she had obtained a mortgage on a second home she incorrectly described as her primary residence.
Top Democrat on the US House of Representatives committee on financial services Maxine Waters said Trump’s attack on Cook was a clear continuation of his ongoing effort to “undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve” and deflect attention to signs of economic challenges caused by his policies. Waters said:
Their latest target is Dr Lisa Cook, a highly qualified, trailblazing economist, and the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors since Congress created it in 1913.
Let me be very clear, the allegations against Dr Cook have been cobbled together as a pretext to try to replace her with someone who will be loyal first to Trump instead of the US Constitution or US law.
Cook responded several hours later in a statement emailed to reporters through the law office of the lawyer Abbe Lowell, saying of Trump that “no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority” to remove her from the job to which she was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022.
She said:
I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy.
Lowell said Trump’s “demands lacked any proper process, basis or legal authority”, adding:
We will take whatever actions are needed to prevent his attempted illegal action.
Trump posted the full text of the letter on social media on Monday night. In it, he said that he found “sufficient cause” in the allegation against her to remove her from her position.
Meanwhile, top Democratic lawmakers furiously denounced Trump’s attempt to fire Cook. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator and ranking member on the Senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee, called it “the latest example of a desperate president searching for a scapegoat to cover for his own failure to lower costs for Americans”.
“It’s an authoritarian power grab that blatantly violates the Federal Reserve Act, and must be overturned in court,” Warren said.
Read our full report here:
In other developments:
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Unprompted, Trump said three times that he plans to rebrand the “Department of Defense” by returning to the pre-1947 name, the “Department of War”.
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In a court filing, the Trump administration said that it intends to withdraw federal approval for an offshore wind farm off the coasts of Maryland and Delaware.
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A large bruise on the back on Trump’s right hand, which the president appeared to be hiding, poorly, under a daub of makeup last week, was clearly visible during public appearances, renewing speculation that the White House might be concealing information about his health.
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California Republicans went to court to challenge a plan devised by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to redraw congressional boundaries in response to a redistricting plan that aims to give Republicans in Texas five more US House seats.
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Video recorded for a Fox News streaming documentary about Trump proves that the president lied when he told reporters that Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, had hugged and praised him at the Army-Navy football game in December.
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The Utah legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body drew them in violation of voters’ rights.
