The Dictatorship

Supreme Court hears arguments over Trump bid to oust Fed governor Cook

Published

5 days ago

January 22, 2026

Supreme Court hears arguments over Trump bid to oust Fed governor Cook

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s unprecedented bid to reshape the Federal Reserve board is putting the Supreme Court in a familiar position, weighing an emergency appeal from the president’s lawyers in a politically charged case.

The court is hearing arguments Wednesday over Trump’s effort to oust Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook based on allegations she committed mortgage fraud, which she denies.

No president has fired a sitting Fed governor in the agency’s 112-year history.

The true motivation, Trump’s critics say, is the Republican president’s desire to wrest control of U.S. interest rate policy. Trump wants interest rates to fall sharply so the government can borrow more cheaply and Americans can pay lower borrowing costs for new homes, cars or other large purchases, as worries about high costs have soured some voters on his economic management.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the board cut a key interest rate three times in a row in the last four months of 2025, but that’s more slowly than Trump wants. The Fed also suggested it may leave rates unchanged in coming months, concerned about triggering higher inflation.

Powell is expected to be in attendance when the justices take up an emergency plea from the Trump administration to be allowed to remove Cook from her job while her challenge to the firing plays out in court. Judges on lower courts have allowed her to remain in her post as one of seven central bank governors.

If Trump could name someone to take Cook’s place, he would have four of his appointees on the seven-member board. Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s governing board, was appointed in 2022 by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

The justices are being asked to effectively bless Trump’s effort to undermine the Fed’s independence, said Columbia University law professor Lev Menand, who has joined a brief in support of Cook.

“This case is about much more than Cook,” Menand said. “It’s about whether President Trump will be able to take over the Federal Reserve board in the coming months.”

The threat to the Fed’s independence spurred Powell’s three living predecessors, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, to weigh in on Cook’s behalf. They were joined by five former Treasury secretaries appointed by presidents of both political parties and other former high-ranking economic officials.

In their filing, lawyers for the former officials wrote that immediately ousting Cook “would expose the Federal Reserve to political influences, thereby eroding public confidence in the Fed’s independence and jeopardizing the credibility and efficacy of U.S. monetary policy.”

Economists warn that a politicized Fed that caves in to the president’s demands will damage its credibility as an inflation fighter and likely lead investors to demand higher rates before investing in U.S. treasuries.

With Cook’s case under review at the high court, Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Powell and has served the central bank with subpoenas.

Powell himself took the rare step of responding to Trump, calling the threat of criminal charges “pretexts” that mask the real reason, Trump’s frustration over interest rates. The Justice Department has said the dispute is ostensibly about Powell’s testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings.

In Trump’s first year in office, the justices generally, but not always, went along with Trump’s pleas for emergency action to counteract lower-court rulings against him, including allowing the firings of the heads of other governmental agencies at the president’s discretion, with no claim that they did anything wrong.

But the court has sent signals that it is approaching the independence of the nation’s central bank more cautiously, calling the Fed “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”

In Cook’s case, Trump is not asserting that he can fire Fed governors at will.

Cook is one of several people, along with Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who have been accused of mortgage fraud by federal housing official Bill Pulte. They have denied the allegations against them.

The case against Cook stems from allegations she claimed two properties, in Michigan and Georgia, as “primary residences” in June and July 2021, before she joined the Fed board. Such claims can lead to a lower mortgage rate and smaller down payment than if one of them was declared as a rental property or second home.

Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. “There is no fraud, no intent to deceive, nothing whatsoever criminal or remotely a basis to allege mortgage fraud,” a Cook lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi in November.

Cook specified that her Atlanta condo would be a “vacation home,” according to a loan estimate she obtained in May 2021. In a form seeking a security clearance, she described it as a “2nd home.” Lowell wrote that the case against her largely rests on “one stray reference” in a 2021 mortgage document that was “plainly innocuous in light of the several other truthful and more specific disclosures” about the homes she has purchased.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the Trump administration had not satisfied a legal requirement that Fed governors can only be fired “for cause,” which she said was limited to misconduct while in office.

Cobb also held that Trump’s firing would have deprived Cook of her due process, or legal right, to contest the firing.

By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington rejected the Trump administration’s request to let Cook’s firing proceed.

At the Supreme Court, the administration argues Cook has no right to a hearing and courts have no role to play in reviewing Trump’s actions.

Trump lawfully fired Cook, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “after concluding that the American people should not have their interest rates determined by someone who made misrepresentations material to her mortgage rates that appear to have been grossly negligent at best and fraudulent at worst.”

Sauer will face off against Paul Clement, a conservative lawyer who served in Sauer’s role under President George W. Bush and has argued for expanding gun rights, against same-sex marriage and for striking down the Affordable Care Act. Both men once worked as law clerks for Justice Antonin Scalia.

Cook’s fate should not be determined by “untested allegations” or “before any facts are found,” her lawyers told the court. She should be able to remain in her job at least while her case proceeds, they wrote.

___

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

The Dictatorship

Amanda Gorman honors Alex Pretti in new poem

Published

9 hours ago

January 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Amanda Gorman honors Alex Pretti in new poem

Jan. 25, 2026, 5:41 PM EST

Amanda Gorman shared a powerful poem on Instagram that she wrote in honor of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen killed by a federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday.

The poem, “For Alex Jeffrey Pretti,” characterizes Pretti’s killing as a “betrayal” and an “execution.”

Gorman, earlier this month, also paid tribute to Renee Nicole Good, another U.S. citizen killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. In a caption accompanying another poem shared on Instagram, Gorman said she was “horrified by the ongoing violence that ICE wages upon our community. Across our country, we are witnessing discrimination and brutality on an unconscionable scale.”

Her poem says, in part: “You could believe departed to be the dawn/ When the blank night has so long stood./ But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone,/ When they forever are so fiercely Good.”

The 27-year-old writer and activist famously recited her poem, “Blue Light News We Climb,” at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in 2021. Gorman has also written poems in the wake of other tragedies in the country, including “Hymn for the Hurting,” about the Robb Elementary mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. She also performed a poem she wrote about reproductive rights and the Roe V. Wade Supreme Court case in a NowThis video in 2019.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

The Dictatorship

Ted Cruz bashes Vance and Trump in secret recordings

Published

9 hours ago

January 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jan. 25, 2026, 4:01 PM EST

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in recordings obtained by Axiosseems to have a bone to pick with Vice President JD Vance and sometimes, President Donald Trump.

In his remarks, which lasted about 10 minutes and were reportedly made in a private meeting with donors sometime last year, Cruz portrays himself as an economically-minded, pro-interventionist who has the president’s ear.

The Texas senator is also heard criticizing former Fox News personality, Tucker Carlson, and his relationship with the vice president. “Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same,” Cruz told donors.

Cruz, who has clashed with Carlson in the past over foreign intervention policies, bashed the administration’s appointment of Israel critic Daniel Davis to a top national intelligence position. A vocal supporter of Israel himself, Cruz called Davis “a guy who viciously hates Israel,” and credited himself with removing Davis from the job.

The Republican senator also blamed Vance and Carlson for ousting former national security adviser Mike Waltz over similar anti-interventionist sentiments related to Iran.

“[Waltz] supported being vigorous against Iran and bombing Iran — and Tucker and JD took Mike out,” Cruz said.

Cruz also said he has been trying to get the White House to accept a trade agreement with India, but claimed White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, Vance and “sometimes” Trump, are resistant.

Domestically, Cruz cautioned donors about Trump’s tariffs, which he said could result in severe economic and political consequences. Cruz is reportedly heard telling donors that he told the president “if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath.”

Cruz said a conversation he had with Trump about tariffs “did not go well,” and that Trump was “yelling” and “cursing.” Cruz said Trump told him: “F*** you, Ted.”

“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz said. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them.”

In a statement about the recordings, a spokesperson for Cruz said he is “the president’s greatest ally in the Senate and battles every day in the trenches to advance his agenda. Those battles include fights over staffers who try to enter the administration despite disagreeing with the president and seeking to undermine his foreign policy” and that “these attempts at sowing division are pathetic and getting boring.”

In an email responding to MS NOW’s request for comment on Cruz’s reported statements, the White House did not address Cruz’s statements.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

The Dictatorship

The real reason Trump and MAGA are so quick to blame Minneapolis shooting victims

Published

9 hours ago

January 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jan. 25, 2026, 3:02 PM EST

Alex Pretti was shot to death on the sidewalk of a street in Minneapolis after he didn’t leave when federal agents demanded he leave. Renee Good was shot to death in her car on a street in Minneapolis because she tried to leave when federal agents demanded she not.

Advocates of President Donald Trump’s administration will cite this disobedience as a central factor in Pretti and Good’s deaths. Each has been assigned a contrived danger, as well, to reinforce the urgent need for their killings: Pretti had a gun (that he doesn’t appear to have drawn) and Good had her car (that she doesn’t appear to have used as a weapon).

But their central offense, among those eager to champion Trump’s politics and policies, was their failure to be pliant. They were at odds with the state and, well, sometimes that’s punishable by death.

It is stunning, though not surprising, to see the president of the United States and sworn federal officials impugn dead citizens so callously.

It has been posited that the eagerness with which Trump and his allies have defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents against charges of excessive force, and the alacrity with which they assign blame to the victims of those shootings, demonstrates hypocrisy, given their collective willingness to absolve — to beatify! — the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They, too, defied state authority and, in many cases, far more aggressively. But they are hailed as heroes by the current administration.

But this isn’t hypocrisy at all. It’s consistent. If you object to or impede their politics, they will hurt you. That is the consistency and it is why off-duty police were in the mob on Jan. 6 and why Trump supporters defend ICE today. It’s not the badge that matters. It’s the red cap.

The most jarring element of the response to Pretti’s death and to Good’s death is the speed with which the administration has disparaged the victims rather than the perpetrators. Each of them was also immediately asserted to have been a premeditated, violent actor. A terrorist. When each, instead, was at the scene of their unwitting deaths because they were part of and supportive of their community.

It is stunning, though not surprising, to see the president of the United States and sworn federal officials impugn dead citizens so callously. It’s utterly immoral, if not deranged. What flows through their veins is partisanship, and what dominates their thoughts is knocking their opponents and critics back on their heels. Perhaps there are flutters of recognition that this is not how human beings behave, much less political leaders in a democracy. But if those flames flicker into existence, they are quickly snuffed.

And for what! This is the question that continues to baffle me more than any other. Why has the Department of Homeland Security dispatched vans and SUVs filled with masked men to Minneapolis? Most immediately, it seems, it’s because a bad-faith “investigation” from a right-wing media personality made Minnesota a focus of the right’s collective anger. So the president pointed at Minnesota and his shock troops marched.

Their mission has been described in a number of ways, which means that (as with so much else in Trump’s world) the effect was decided before the cause. Maybe it’s about combatting the fraud alleged by the media personality, even though prosecutors had been investigating and securing convictions for social services fraud in Minnesota for years. Or maybe it’s just about uprooting immigrants.

This is the government’s most common explanation. Trump and his aides have repeatedly insisted that the expansive, guerrilla-style raids being conducted by federal agents in Minnesota have been effective at removing the “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants from the area, something it insists that the state’s Democratic leaders had refused to do. (The state disagrees.)

What’s the right ratio here, Mr. President? How many citizens being shot to death is worth this campaign of fear and its sporadic deportations?

At a White House press conference on Jan. 20, Trump held up images of 40 individuals who he claimed had been detained by federal agents in Minnesota. A DHS website titled, “ARRESTED: WORST OF THE WORST,” — identifies just under 500 such people in the state. Some of them (as was the case with Trump’s visual aids) seem less like “the worst of the worst” than like “people with any criminal record at all.” Does having a DUI make you one of the nation’s worst criminals? If you weren’t born here, I guess so.

Even by DHS’ count, though, the government isn’t only targeting “the worst of the worst.” On Jan. 14, the agency put out a press release claiming that they’d arrested 2,500 of the “worst of the worst,” meaning that the website, even with the drunk drivers, is a couple thousand short in its tally. Nationally, of course, ICE has accelerated its detention of people with no criminal records at all. One analysis estimates that 92 out of every 100 people added to ICE detention last year faced no criminal charges and had no past convictions. Besides, violent crime in Minnesota was already on the decline before DHS and ICE showed up (also mirroring national trends).

So the feds rolled up some people with criminal records or maybe pending charges. In doing so, they spread chaos and confusion around the city, shipped a kindergartener off to Texas and sent a baby to the hospital.

In doing so, they killed two residents of Minneapolis, their dying bodies laying at the side of the road.

What’s the right ratio here, Mr. President? How many citizens being shot to death is worth this campaign of fear and its sporadic deportations?

It seems as though the answer is clear by now: As many as can be killed with his base still believing that they were violent opponents of the president’s politics. As long as that belief is sustained, the killings can continue because it means that his supporters’ confidence and trust in him is sustained, too. And that, more even than purifying the populaceis what matters to Trump.

The White House and DHS frequently validate their work by pointing to the killers they’re taking out of the country, outsiders who’d killed Americans. It would be a more effective argument if they weren’t defending the outsiders they brought into Minneapolis who did the same thing.

Philip Bump is a data journalist and MS NOW contributor.