Trump news at a glance: president hints he already has replacement in mind for Fed governor Lisa Cook
Fed governor to sue over Trump attempt to fire her
The Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook will sue the Trump administration over its bid to fire her over unconfirmed allegations of mortgage fraud, her attorney has said.
Donald Trump announced he was firing Cook on Monday night, in an extraordinary move that marks the latest escalation in the US president’s attack on the central bank’s independence.
But Trump has “no authority” to remove her from the Fed’s board of governors, Cook’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, argued in a statement to reporters, saying: “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 illegal action.”
Trump says he wants ‘nothing less than $500m’ from Harvard
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration “wants nothing less than $500m from Harvard” as a condition for restoring billions of dollars in federal funding to the Ivy League university.
“Don’t negotiate with them, they’ve been very bad,” Trump told his education secretary, Linda McMahon, in a cabinet meeting.
Texas sued for allegedly stripping Black voters of political power
Texas’s redrawn congressional maps have drawn a lawsuit from the NAACP, accusing the state of committing a racial gerrymander with its maps that strip Black voters of their political power.
Court tosses Trump lawsuit against Maryland judges over US deportations
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed an unprecedented lawsuit filed by the Trump administration earlier in the summer against all 15 judges serving on Maryland’s federal district court – a case that opposed pausing some deportations from the state.
In a 37-page ruling, US district judge Thomas Cullen of Virginia’s western district – nominated and confirmed to his position during Donald Trump’s first presidency – wrote that “any fair reading of the legal authorities cited by defendants leads to the ineluctable conclusion that this court has no alternative but to dismiss”.
US envoy sparks uproar after telling Lebanese journalists to ‘act civilised’
Journalists in Lebanon have demanded an apology from a senior US envoy after he told them to “act civilized” and not be “animalistic”.
What else happened today:
The Trump administration is cancelling another $175m in funding for California’s high-speed rail, marking another setback for the state’s much-delayed project.
Melania Trump on Tuesday invited schools students to participate in a government-sponsored nationwide contest that is designed to encourage them to work together to use artificial intelligence tools to solve community issues.
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 has welcomed Cracker Barrell’s decision to reverse changes to its logo that were considered “woke”.