Senate Democrats condemn Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Cook
Senate Democrats are denouncing Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that the president is “playing a dangerous game of Jenga with a key pillar of our economy.”
“This brazen power grab must be stopped by the courts before Trump does permanent damage to national, state, and local economies,” he wrote in a statement late last night.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said that Trump is “desperate” for a “scapegoat to cover for his own failure to lower costs for Americans,” and described the move as an “authoritarian power grab.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said on social media that the move was “outrageous and unprecedented” and was being pursued “on the flimsiest of unproven pretexts.” He said Trump’s effort “is clearly the latest scheme from a president determined to subvert the institutions that have kept our democracy strong and our economy the envy of the world.”
Judge orders Kari Lake to sit for a deposition to avoid a contempt trial
Gary Grumbach and Megan Lebowitz
A federal judge has ordered Kari Lake, the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to sit for a deposition if she wants to avoid a contempt trial.
The agency oversees media outlets including the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have been largely kneecapped by the White House’s efforts to slash their funding. The administration’s effort, though, is being challenged in court.
Judge Royce Lamberth said in a filing yesterday that the depositions would “allow the defendants one final opportunity, short of a contempt trial, to provide such explanation” for their responses to the court thus far, which he said have been lacking.
Lamberth said in the filing that the U.S. Agency for Global Media defendants did not provide information to show cause or “explain how they are in compliance” with his April preliminary injunction and order that the White House restore agency employees who were laid off after Trump’s March executive order to cut its funding.
Agency adviser Frank Waco and Leili Soltani, a division director at Voice of America, were also ordered to sit for depositions, which Lamberth wrote must take place no later than Sept. 15.
Flag burning incident near White House leads to arrest hours after Trump’s executive order
WASHINGTON — Federal authorities Monday arrested a man across the street from the White House after he set an American flag on fire the day Trump signed an executive order intended to crack down on flag burning.
The man, who identified himself as a 20-year combat veteran in a video posted to social media by the news outlet The Bulwark, said, “I’m burning this flag as a protest to that illegal fascist president that sits in that House,” as he pointed toward the White House from Lafayette Square.
Trump says he’s removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, citing his administration’s allegations of mortgage fraud
Trump is removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook effective immediately, according to a letter he posted last night on Truth Social.
In the letter, Trump writes: “Pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, as amended, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately.”
Trump cites a “criminal referral” from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte, in which Pulte accused Cook of mortgage fraud.
The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Utah judge orders new congressional maps for 2026 in another redistricting twist
‘Maybe they will, maybe they won’t’: Trump voices doubt over Zelenskyy-Putin talks
Reporting from Washington
Trump is signaling fresh doubts about whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet anytime soon as momentum toward a summit between the warring countries appears to be fading.
“I don’t know that they’ll meet — maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” Trump said yesterday at the White House during a meeting in the Oval Office with South Korean leader Lee Jae Myung. “It’s going to be up to them. It takes two to tango. I always say it. And they should meet, I think, before I have a meeting and probably close the deal, but I think it’s appropriate.”
Trump praised Putin for traveling to the United States for talks, a move he said Putin was reluctant to make, but he acknowledged that the efforts to broker peace seem to have slowed.
That marks a shift in tone just over a week after Trump hosted Putin in Alaska for a whirlwind summit aimed at breaking through the three-year stalemate in the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump had initially suggested that back-to-back meetings between the key parties could occur within a matter of days or weeks.