By
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The crusade against Cook is apparently moving forward: “The Justice Department has taken additional steps in its investigation into mortgage fraud allegations against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.”
* The White House turns to SCOTUS (again): “We could learn fairly soon what the Supreme Court thinks of Donald Trump’s tariff powers. His administration filed a petition to the justices Wednesday night seeking high court review, as well as a motion to expedite the case. The latter filing said the plaintiffs who just beat the administration at the appeals court don’t oppose the justices hearing the case or doing so on an expedited basis.”
* In related news: “President Trump took his fight to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leaders without cause to the Supreme Court on Thursday, a move that could prompt the justices to overrule a key precedent blessing removal protections at the agency for decades.”
* A case worth watching: “The city of Washington has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the military over the deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital. Trump, the suit says, ‘has run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.’”
* In Chicago: “The Pentagon has approved the use of a Navy base on the outskirts of Chicago as a staging ground from which the Trump administration can launch operations against undocumented immigrants, said two defense officials familiar with the issue.”
* “Booming” does not appear to be the appropriate adjective to describe the economy: “U.S. manufacturing contracted for a sixth straight month in August as factories dealt with the fallout from the Trump administration’s import tariffs, with some manufacturers describing the current business environment as ‘much worse than the Great Recession.’”
* I’m struggling to think of a benign motivation for this: “The U.S. Department of Justice has requested access to voting equipment used in the 2020 election in two Missouri counties in what appears to be a wide-ranging effort to more closely monitor election processes around the country. A DOJ official in August contacted the county clerks and asked for access to their Dominion Voting Systems equipment, according to a memo from the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities that was shared Wednesday with The Associated Press.”
See you tomorrow.