‘Trump has no authority’: Lisa Cook’s lawyer vows to sue administration over attempted firing of Fed governor – live | Trump administration
Top congressional Democrats fire back against Trump’s plans to remove Federal Reserve governor
A slew of leading Democratic lawmakers have fired back at Donald Trump’s plans to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
Chuck Schumer, the senate minority leader, accused the president of playing “a dangerous game of Jenga with a key pillar of our economy.” Schumer said that by attempting to remove Cook and install a loyalist, Trump would “shred” the Fed of its independence, and put “every American’s savings and mortgage at risk.”
The ranking member on senate banking committee, Elizabeth Warren, called Trump’s letter announcing Cook’s firing an “authoritarian power grab that blatantly violates the Federal Reserve Act, and must be overturned in court.”
As my colleague, Callum Jones, notes, the supreme court suggested earlier this year that the president did not have power to fire, without cause, governors of the US central bank. The Federal Reserve acts as an independent agency, whose members do not serve at the pleasure of the president.
Meanwhile house minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said that Trump was trying to remove Lisa Cook from her position without “a shred of credible evidence that she has done anything wrong”. Jeffries noted Cook’s achievement as the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve board, and added that “to the extent anyone is unfit to serve in a position of responsibility because of deceitful and potentially criminal conduct, it is the current occupant of the White House.”
Key events
Trump says he’d “like to be asked” to send troops into blue cities
The president just said that Democratic governors should call him after witnessing the administration’s federal takeover of the police and deployment of the National Guard.
“I’d say, ‘President Trump, we need your help’,” he said. “This is going to be the safest place on earth. And we’ll do the same thing in Chicago. But I’d like to be asked, as opposed to just going in and doing it. Because you know, when you go in and do it, then they start screaming, ‘oh, he shouldn’t be here’.”
Trump went on to say that he “would love” for Illinois governor JB Pritzker to call him for help. “We will stop that problem in Chicago in two months, maybe less, two months, we’ll stop it,” he said. The president added that he hoped other Democratic governors and mayors would ask him to send troops to their cities to quell, what he characterizes as, rampant crime.
Donald Trump is now saying that Democrats are “against crime prevention”, and conflates this argument with trans athletes playing sports. It’s been a common refrain from the president when asked about Democrats’ pushback to his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital.
He goes on to say that “crime will be the big subject of the midterms and will be the big subject of the next election”.
Trump says he’s prepared for legal fight from Lisa Cook
The president says he’s prepared for a lawsuit from Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – whose lawyer said that she plans to pursue legal action challenging the president’s move to fire her.
“She seems to have had an infraction, and she can’t have an infraction,” Trump said. “She’s in charge of, if you think about it, mortgages, and we need people that are 100% above board, and it doesn’t seem like she was.”
Cook has not been charged with any crime. Her counsel, Abbe Lowell, said earlier that Trump had “no authority” to remove her from the Fed’s board of governors. Lowell added that the president’s attempt to fire Cook was “based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis”.
Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting has been going on for more than two hours. The president was scheduled to meet with Indiana Republicans at 1pm ET today, but there’s not been any word on if/when that might take place later.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth says the military, America’s largest employer, is now “merit-based, gender neutral, color blind”.
This, he claims, is a marked difference from the previous administration, which was managed by “social justice”, “political correctness” and “divisive ideologies seeping into the ranks and changing how well we do to our job”.
He goes on to express support for the president’s suggestions this week to rename the Department of Defense as the ‘Department of War’:
George Washington started the Department of War because he wanted us to win our war … Our founders didn’t want endless foreign entanglements. They didn’t want endless contingencies and deployments. They wanted an empowered military, that was the handcuffs were taken off to fight, to win, and then bring those troops home.
Bessent also praised the president for “restoring confidence in government” when it comes to Trump’s targeting of the Federal Reserve.
“The Federal Reserve’s independence comes from a political arrangement between itself and the American public. Having the public’s trust is the only thing that gives it credibility,” Bessent said. “You, sir, are restoring trust to government. You are weeding out the waste, fraud and abuse and the old ways of doing things are not good enough.”
Bessent says tariff revenue could reach ‘half a trillion’ a year
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent just projected that revenue from tariffs could reach half a trillion dollars a year.
“On the international front, you have leveled the international trading system whereby countries took advantage of us, and that’s over,” Bessent said, praising Donald Trump.
He added:
I had been saying we were running at a rate of $300bn a year. You chastised me for saying that that number is too low. And as usual, you’re right. We had a substantial jump from July to August, and I think we’re going to see a bigger jump from August to September. So, I think we could be on our way to well over half a trillion, maybe towards a trillion dollar number.
Elon Musk’s Doge put sensitive social security data at risk, whistleblower says
Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) copied and uploaded sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) data to a vulnerable cloud server, potentially risking the safety of hundreds of millions of Americans and violating federal privacy laws, according to a whistleblower complaint filed on Tuesday.
The complaint from Charles Borges, the chief data officer at the SSA, alleges that Doge staffers effectively created a live copy of the entire country’s social security data from its numerical identification system database. The information is a goldmine for bad actors, the complaint alleges, and was placed on a server without independent oversight that only Doge officials could access.
“These actions constitute violations of laws, rules, and regulations, abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, and creation of a substantial and specific threat to public health and safety,” the complaint states.
The whistleblower complaint, first reported by the New York Times, is one of the most high-profile insider accounts of how Doge staffers have allegedly taken confidential government information and used it for their own ends, at great risk to the public. The database that Doge officials allegedly uploaded to the cloud contains highly personal information about hundreds of millions of US citizens and residents. It includes details such as names, place and date of birth, race and ethnicity, names of family members, phone numbers, addresses and social security numbers.
The Social Security Administration denied that the sensitive data had been compromised and stated that it takes all whistleblower complaints seriously.
Trump administration will seek death penalty in DC homicide cases, president says
As part of his vision for “a crime-free city” Donald Trump has just said that his administration will be seeking the death penalty for homicide in Washington DC.
He told the cabinet meeting:
Anybody murders something [sic] in the capital, capital punishment. Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington DC, we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative, and everybody that’s heard it agrees with it.
I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country, but we have no choice.
So in DC – states are going to have to make their own decision – but if somebody kills somebody … it’s the death penalty, OK?
Trump again claims that some people would ‘rather have a dictator’ – and again insists he isn’t one
For the second day running Trump has claimed that some people would prefer to have a dictator in office – and again insisted that he isn’t one. He told his cabinet meeting:
The line is that I’m a dictator. But I stop crime. So a lot of people say, you know, ‘If that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’
But I’m not a dictator. I just know how to stop crime.
The president made similar remarks yesterday when referring to critics of his deployment of the national guard to Washington DC and his threats to send the troops to Chicago. He said from the Oval Office:
They say, ‘We don’t need him. Freedom. Freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.’
A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.
HHS asks 46 states and territories to remove ‘gender ideology’ content from sex ed materials
The US Department of Health and Human Services has asked 46 states and territories to remove all references to gender ideology from a federally funded program that provides sexual health education, or risk losing millions in funding, Reuters reports.
The directive, issued through the agency’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), gives the states and territories 60 days to revise materials used in the Personal Responsibility Education Program (Prep).
The Prep program educates young people on abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, with particular focus on children who are homeless or living in foster care or in areas with high teen birth rates.
The states and territories include Alabama, Massachusetts, New York, Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington DC.
Last week, the HHS terminated California’s federal PREP grant, citing the state’s refusal to remove “radical gender ideology” from its curricula.
The PREP statute “includes no mention of gender ideology, which is … irrelevant to teaching abstinence and contraception,” the ACF said in its letter to California.
Failure to comply with the directive could result in similar enforcement actions, including suspension or termination of federal Prep funding, the HHS said today.
Overall, the 46 states and territories have about $81m in remaining funds.
It follows a series of executive orders that Donald Trump has signed since taking office in January, including banning transgender people from serving in the military, barring transgender girls and women from competing in female sports and ordering an end to federal funding for school programs that include “gender ideology”.
The United States is in negotiations with 14 companies over its plan to implement Trump’s so-called most-favored-nation pricing on pharmaceutical drugs, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has told the cabinet meeting.
Polling memo reveals risk for Indiana Republicans as they weigh redistricting – Politico
As we told you earlier, the president is set to meet with Indiana Republican lawmakers later today, around 1pm ET, to talk more about the redistricting push in the state. But ahead of that meeting, Politico reports on poll findings that indicate the risks for the Indiana GOP if they press ahead with Trump’s plan à la Texas, as a majority of Indiana voters oppose mid-decade redistricting in their state.
In a survey from left-leaning firm Change Research, Politico reports: “52% of registered voters in Indiana – which Trump won by 19 points last year – said they are against Republicans revising their maps, with 43% ‘strongly’ opposing the effort. That opposition rises to 60% after voters are informed of arguments for and against redistricting.” More from Politico’s story:
Nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents said gerrymandering should be illegal. And a full two-thirds expressed opposition to Washington politicians meddling in their state’s politics. While Indiana is considered ruby-red, registered independents make up a larger share of the electorate than Republicans or Democrats.
Meanwhile, an overwhelming 81% of respondents agreed with a Democratic argument in the survey that redistricting “should be conducted in a balanced way to ensure fairness and that our communities are not disenfranchised for political gain” – versus the Republican argument provided to respondents that because Indiana is a mostly Republican state, “the majority should be able to draw our districts in a way that benefits Republicans whenever they want.” That included 68% of Republicans, and more than 90% of independents and Democrats.
CDC quietly scales back surveillance program for food-borne illnesses – NBC News
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly scaled back a critical surveillance program for food-borne illnesses nearly two months ago, NBC News reports.
Per NBC’s report:
As of 1 July, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program – a federal-state partnership – has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the CDC told NBC News.
Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns, pregnant people, and those who have weakened immune systems.
Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.
Trump’s cabinet meeting is under way now, we’ll bring you any key news lines here.
As Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting gets going, here’s a recap of the day so far
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The lawyer for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who Donald Trump has moved to fire, said she will file a lawsuit challenging the president’s attempt to remove her from her position. Abbe Lowell, Cook’s counsel, said in a statement to reporters that Trump’s “attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this action.”
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Earlier, Cook was steadfast in dismissing Trump’s letter that called for her removal “effective immediately”. The Federal Reserve governor is serving a 14-year terms, and said that she will not resign. “I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022,” she added.
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Since the president posted Cook’s firing letter, a slew of leading Democratic lawmakers have fired back at Trump’s plans to remove the Federal Reserve governor. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, accused the president of playing “a dangerous game of Jenga with a key pillar of our economy”.
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The Trump administration’s ongoing showdown with the judiciary continued today, when A federal judge in Virginia has dismissed an unprecedented lawsuit, filed by the justice department, against the entire federal district bench in Maryland. The justice department sued all 15 judges over two standing orders that slowed down the administration’s deportation efforts. Since the government had sued all the Maryland justices, Judge Thomas Cullen – a Trump appointee who normally sits in Virginia – presided over the case. In his ruling, Cullen said that the executive branch should appeal the district court’s order, saying suing was an inappropriate course of action.
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Back in DC, attorney general Pam Bondi said that there had been 1,094 arrests in nation’s capital since the federal law enforcement surge that began earlier this month. Bondi also noted that “not a single carjacking has occurred over the past week.”
Lisa Cook’s lawyer says that she plans to file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempted firing
The lawyer for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who Donal Trump has moved to fire, said she will file a lawsuit challenging the president’s attempt to remove her from her position.
“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook,” lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement emailed to reporters. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this action.”
Judge dismisses unprecedented DoJ lawsuit against all Maryland federal judges
A federal judge in Virginia has dismissed an unprecedented lawsuit, filed by the justice department, against the entire federal district bench in Maryland.
It comes after the Maryland chief judge, George L Russell III, issued two standing orders in May which slowed down the Trump administration’s efforts to quickly deport immigrants. The DoJ argued that this ultimately impeded the president from enforcing immigration laws.
Since the government had sued all the Maryland justices, Judge Thomas Cullen – a Trump appointee who normally sits in Virginia – presided over the case. In his ruling, Cullen said that the executive branch should appeal the district court’s order, instead of suing all 15 judges. Cullen described the litigation as “novel and potentially calamitous”.
“Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns,” Cullen wrote.
He also noted that the “concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges” is “both unprecedented and unfortunate”.
Oliver Milman
The Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, has hit back at Donald Trump for commenting on his weight, saying the Republican president is himself “not in good shape” amid escalating tension over the possible deployment of the national guard on the streets of Chicago.
Trump said on Monday that Pritzker “ought to spend more time in the gym”. While successfully campaigning in 2024 for a second presidency that began in January, Trump said that the Illinois governor was “too busy eating” to lead his state.
But Pritzker responded forcefully to Trump’s scorn, telling reporters that: “It takes one to know one on the weight question. And the president, of course, himself, is not in good shape. So, he ought to respond to that from me.”
Pritzker added Trump does not read and only watches television – so the governor called upon Fox News or Newsmax to relay his comments to the president.
“I would say also that his personal attacks on me are just evidence of a guy who’s still living in fifth grade,” Pritzker said. “He’s the kind of bully that throws invectives at people – because he knows that what he’s saying is actually commentary on himself.”
The traded insults between the two politicians come as Trump considers whether to federalize the national guard and deploy it upon the streets of Chicago to combat what he portrays as a crime wave in the city. Leaders of Chicago and Illinois have said such a move would be unnecessary overreach.