SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
lisa cook
Powell Gives Extraordinary Show of Support to Fed Governor Targeted by Trump
The president is trying to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud. Critics say he's targeting another one of his political foes.
Jan 19, 2026
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reportedly plans to attend Wednesday's US Supreme Court oral arguments in the case involving President Donald Trump's attempt to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook.
A "person familiar with the matter" told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Powell would attend the high court session in the face of Trump's unprecedented effort to oust one of the seven members of the Fed's governing board.
Last August, Trump announced his termination of Cook—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—for alleged fraud, accusing her of signing two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other. An investigation published last month by ProPublica revealed that Trump did the same thing that he's accusing Cook of doing.
Cook denies any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime, and has filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempt to fire her. In October, the Supreme Court declined to immediately remove Cook and agreed to hear oral arguments in the case.
In what many critics allege is an attempt by Trump to strong-arm the Fed into further interest rate cuts, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this month served the central bank with grand jury subpoenas related to Powell's congressional testimony on renovations to Fed headquarters in Washington, DC.
Powell—who was nominated by Trump in 2017 and whose four-year term as Fed chair ends May 15—responded by alleging that “the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president."
"This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation," he added.
Trump is trying to install his puppets at the Fed.First by trying to fire Lisa Cook and rushing in his top econ adviser.Now by abusing the law to try to push Jerome Powell out for good.Next he'll nominate a new Chair—and Trump says “anybody that disagrees" with him is out.
[image or embed]
— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) January 15, 2026 at 7:54 AM
In addition to Cook, Trump has targeted a number of Democrats with what critics say are dubious mortgage fraud claims.
Last November, a federal judge dismissed a DOJ criminal case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was charged with bank fraud and false statements regarding a property in Virginia. Critics called the charges against James—who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial crimes—baseless and politically motivated. A federal grand jury subsequently rejected another administration attempt to indict James.
The president has accused other political foes, including US Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell—both California Democrats who played key roles in both of the president’s House impeachments—of similar fraud. Swalwell is currently under formal criminal investigation. Both lawmakers deny the allegations.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Grave Danger': Warnings as Supreme Court Looks Ready to Hand Trump Even More Unchecked Power
The court's right-wing majority signaled a willingness to overturn the 90-year-old precedent Humphrey’s Executor—a move that would "enable Donald Trump’s corrupt march toward oligarchy," said one critic.
Dec 08, 2025
The warnings on Monday from the US Supreme Court’s liberal justices were stark as the Trump administration argued in favor of allowing the president to easily fire top officials at federal agencies—a move that would reverse nearly a century of precedent that originated with a unanimous ruling known as Humphrey's Executor in 1935.
"You're asking us to destroy the structure of government," Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration that Humphrey's Executor limits presidential authority in an unconstitutional way even following rulings by the conservative majority that have weakened the decision.
Justice Elena Kagan added that setting aside the precedent and allowing President Donald Trump to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) board members and other federal agency leaders would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”
"Once you're down this road, it's a little bit hard to see how you stop," Kagan said.
But the court's right-wing majority signaled little concern about the unchecked authority it could give the president should it rule in Trump's favor in the coming months in Trump v. Slaughter, which centers on the White House's firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a strong defender of consumer rights in March.
Slaughter has said she was dismissed for being "inconsistent with [the] administration's priorities" as the Department of Government Efficiency was gutting federal agencies and rooting out programs and employees that were also viewed as being in the way of Trump's right-wing agenda.
But under Humphrey's Executor, which was decided after former President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to remove an FTC member, a president can fire a board member only for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office," in accordance with a law passed by Congress in 1914.
The ruling established that the president can remove executive officials without cause, but not at independent agencies that are "neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative," such as the FTC.
Sauer wrote in a court document that the ruling "was always egregiously wrong," furthering the argument made by right-wing proponents of the "unitary executive" theory—a view that holds that the president should hold absolute power over federal agencies, including by firing leaders they view as opposed to their agenda.
A lawyer for Slaughter, Amit Agarwal of Protect Democracy, told the justices on Monday that "dozens of institutions that have been around for a long time, that have withstood the test of time, that embody a distillation of human wisdom and experience, all of those would go south” if the court allowed the president to hold complete control over agencies.
Undoing Humphrey's Executor would “profoundly destabilize institutions that are now inextricably intertwined with the fabric of American governance," Slaughter's lawyers have argued.
Chief Justice John Roberts signaled an unwillingness to preserve the 90-year-old precedent, calling the ruling a "dried husk" at one point. Right-wing courts and justices have worked to weaken the precedent for more than a decade, with Roberts writing in a 2010 opinion that the president's power should be understood to include “the authority to remove those who assist him in carrying out his duties."
A decade later, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the CFPB's structure itself was unconstitutional because the president does not have the authority to fire the director of the independent agency without just cause.
On Monday, Josh Orton, director of judiciary reform group Demand Justice, said there was "grave danger in what the Supreme Court appears willing to do today: hand giant corporations and Donald Trump’s billionaire class unchecked power over our economic system, gutting one of the few institutions left that’s charged with ensuring fairness, stability, and competition in our economy.
“For generations, independent federal agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, have proven essential to the long-term stability of our country and markets—all to the benefit of workers, consumers, and businesses alike," said Orton.
A lower court ruled earlier this year that Slaughter had been illegally fired, but the Supreme Court in September allowed the dismissal to stand with an emergency order, until the case could be heard.
The Supreme Court has also permitted Trump to move forward, at least temporarily, with the firings of officials at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The justices on Monday signaled that even if they allow the president's firing of Slaughter and the other officials, they may not approve the dismissal of Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, who the court has permitted to stay in her role despite Trump's attempt to fire her. The court is scheduled to hear a separate case in January regarding Cook's firing.
But Kate Judge, a professor at Columbia Law School, said an overruling of Humphrey's Executor would ultimately have an impact on the Federal Reserve even if the justices carve out an exception.
"[The] Fed's practical independence and the legitimacy needed to sustain it grew alongside the independence of other agencies," said Judge. "It will be hard to maintain faith in one technocratic body while saying the rest are legitimate only because they are directly answerable to the president."
With or without an exception, Orton argued that "a Supreme Court that overturns Humphrey’s Executor and 90 years of precedent to enable Donald Trump’s corrupt march toward oligarchy is simply not a sustainable or legitimate institution.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Records Shows That Trump, By His Own Definition, Is Guilty of Mortgage Fraud
“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said one mortgage law expert.
Dec 08, 2025
As US President Donald Trump targets political opponents with dubious allegations of mortgage fraud, an investigation published Monday revealed the Republican leader once did the same thing as a senior official he is trying to fire.
In an August letter, Trump announced his termination of Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—for alleged fraud, accusing her of signing two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other.
Cook, who denies any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime and has filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's attempt to fire her. In October, the US Supreme Court declined to immediately remove Cook and agreed to hear oral arguments on the case in January.
Trump called Cook's actions "deceitful and potentially criminal." However, ProPublica reviewed records showing that Trump "did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of."
Trump committed mortgage fraud, according to Trump.Somehow I doubt his DOJ will go after him the way he instructed his DOJ to go after his political enemies over this.Every Republican accusation is a confession.
[image or embed]
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 5:47 AM
According to the publication:
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent—exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud...
Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.
"Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance, told ProPublica. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, responded to ProPublica's analysis in a statement slamming "Trump's mortgage fraud witch hunt."
"The cruel and lawless hypocrisy of Donald Trump using the levers of government to dig up so-called mortgage fraud on his perceived political opponents, while doing the very same, is blatant," Gilbert said in a statement.
A federal judge recently dismissed the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) criminal case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was charged with bank fraud and false statements regarding a property in Virginia. Critics called the charges against James—who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial crimes—baseless and politically motivated. A federal grand jury subsequently rejected another administration attempt to indict James.
“The administration has used the idea of claiming a home as your primary residence without residing there to justify DOJ takedowns of Lisa Cook, Tish James, and more," Gilbert added. "If this is how they really feel, and the ProPublica reporting is accurate, then Donald Trump should be next in the DOJ crosshairs.”
ProPublica said that Trump hung up on one of its reporters who asked about similarities between his Florida mortgages and those of people targeted by his administration.
“President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender," a White House spokesperson subsequently told the outlet. "There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”
“President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law," the spokesperson falsely added.
Trump has accused other political foes, including US Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell—both California Democrats who played key roles in both of the president's House impeachments—of similar fraud. Swalwell is currently under formal criminal investigation. Both lawmakers deny the allegations.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular