WASHINGTON — US Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook will file a lawsuit to prevent President Donald J. Trump from firing her, a lawyer for the embattled central bank official said on Tuesday, kicking off what could be a protracted legal fight over the White House’s effort to shape US monetary policy.

“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,” Ms. Cook’s lawyer, prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.

The statement was issued a day after Mr. Trump said he would fire Ms. Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the central bank’s governing body, for alleged “deceitful and potential criminal conduct” related to mortgages she took out in 2021.

Mr. Trump’s attempt to remove her, unprecedented in the 111-year history of the nominally independent US Federal Reserve Board, is consistent with his style of breaking norms and prompting opponents to challenge him in court.

It follows other largely successful efforts to bring other elements of the US government under his direct control. Since returning to office in January, the President has overseen the departure of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, dismantled several agencies and withheld billions of dollars of spending authorized by Congress.

“We need people that are 100% above board and it doesn’t seem like she was,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a meeting. He said he had several “good people” in mind to replace Ms. Cook but would abide by any court decision that left her in her job.

Mr. Trump pressured the Fed to lower interest rates during his first term in the White House and he has escalated that campaign in recent months. The President has demanded that rates be cut by several percentage points and threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, although he recently backed down from that.

Ms. Cook’s departure would allow Mr. Trump to pick a majority of the Fed’s seven-member board, including two incumbents and the pending nomination of White House economist Stephen Miran. Mr. Trump said he may consider Mr. Miran, whom he nominated for a temporary seat on the Fed board that is due to expire in January, for Ms. Cook’s seat should it become vacant. The Wall Street Journal reported that former World Bank Group President David Malpass, a long-time Mr. Trump ally, was also discussed for the job.

The Fed said in a statement that Ms. Cook and other board members serve 14-year tenures and cannot be removed easily from office, in order to ensure that monetary policy decisions are based on economic data and “the long-term interests of the American people.”

Though Mr. Trump on Monday said Ms. Cook’s firing was “effective immediately,” the Fed’s statement indicates that it sees Ms. Cook’s status as unchanged. The central bank next meets to set interest rates on Sept. 16–17, and based on the Fed’s statement it appears it would take a court ruling between now and then for her to be prevented from participating.

The attempt to influence US monetary policy has shaken confidence in the dollar and US sovereign debt and sparked fears of global financial turmoil.

Wall Street’s main equities indexes closed slightly higher on Tuesday, while the dollar dropped. The yield curve on US Treasuries steepened on Tuesday as Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire Ms. Cook raised concerns about the US central bank’s independence and the prospect of a potentially more dovish composition of Fed policymakers.

Mr. Trump said in a letter to Ms. Cook on Monday that he had “sufficient cause” to fire her because she had described separate properties in Michigan and Georgia as primary residences on mortgage applications before she joined the Fed in 2022.

In recent months Mr. Trump has fired several Black women who held senior government positions, including the head of the Library of Congress and the chair of the National Labor Relations Board.

MORTGAGE QUESTIONS
William Pulte, a Trump appointee who is director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, first raised questions about Ms. Cook’s mortgages last week and referred the matter to US Attorney General Pamela Bondi for investigation. Ms. Bondi has yet to say whether the Justice department will take action.

Ms. Cook took out the two mortgages in question when she was an academic.

She is due to serve on the Fed board through 2038, but the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 allows removal of a sitting governor “for cause.”

Until now, that power has not been tested. US presidents have largely taken a hands-off approach to Fed matters to ensure confidence in monetary policy.

Peter Conti-Brown, a scholar of the Fed’s history at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, noted that the mortgage transactions preceded her appointment to the Fed and were in the public record when she was vetted and confirmed by the Senate.

“The idea that you can then reach back, turn the clock backward and say, you know, ‘All these things that have happened before now constitute fireable offenses from your official position’ is to me incongruous with the entire concept of ‘for cause’ removal,” Mr. Conti-Brown said.

Academic research has found that policymakers who are allowed to manage inflation independent of political meddling generally achieve better outcomes.

“The Fed as an institution escaped harm in the first Trump administration, and will not be so fortunate this time around,” said Tim Duy, chief US economist at SGH Macro Advisors. — Reuters

HUSSAM AL-MASRI, the Reuters journalist killed by Israeli fire on Monday while operating a live video feed at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, reported on the war’s civilian suffering while himself living in a tent and struggling to find food for his family.

Mr. Masri, 49, was an experienced cameraman whose positive approach in the most dangerous situations made him popular among Gaza’s tight-knit community of reporters, journalist colleagues said.

“Tomorrow will be better,” he would say, even as conditions in the Palestinian enclave descended further into hunger and desperation in the months leading up to his death.

That was how he ended his last conversation with Mohamed Salem, a senior visuals journalist for Reuters who had known Mr. Masri since 2003 and worked alongside him in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, last year.

Mr. Salem, who left Gaza later in 2024 but was in daily touch with Mr. Masri until Monday morning, said his optimism and smiles made him a pleasure to work with.

Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said “Hussam was deeply devoted to telling the story of Gaza to the world.”

“He was strong, steady and courageous in the most challenging of circumstances. His loss is deeply felt by all of those in this newsroom who worked with him.”

Mr. Masri’s body was recovered alongside his camera in an external stairwell at the hospital, from where he had been broadcasting the view across Khan Younis when the Israeli strike hit, Reuters video shows. A second blast on the stairwell minutes later killed at least 19 people, including rescue workers and four journalists who had worked for outlets including the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and others. One of the four, Moaz Abu Taha, provided visuals to Reuters and others.

Reuters photographer Hatem Khaled was injured in the second attack while on the stairs filming the aftermath of the first blast.

Israel’s military told Reuters on Tuesday that the journalists for Reuters and the Associated Press were not “a target of the strike.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel deeply regretted what he called the “tragic mishap” at the hospital.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which said after the strikes it had documented a total of 189 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel during the war in Gaza, has called for the international community to hold Israel accountable and on Monday said “the perpetrators must no longer be allowed to act with impunity.”

Mr. Masri’s wife, Samaher, 39, has cancer and he had been trying to get her out of Gaza for treatment before he was killed. The couple had four children: Shahd, 23, Mohammed, 22, Shatha, 18 and Ahmad, 15.

Mr. Masri was born and raised in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He earned a diploma in journalism before starting work as a freelancer in 1998 including for the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. His passion for journalism stemmed from a desire to show the world what was happening in Gaza, his wife said.

“This was Hussam’s role in the media: to deliver the truth to the outlets,” said his brother, Ezzeldin al-Masri. “The camera is recording, whether for or against us. The camera recorded whether there were Palestinian gunmen or Israeli occupation forces.”

The family fled their home when Israel’s military ordered all civilians to leave Khan Younis as it expanded its offensive there shortly after the war started in response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023.

The family later learned their home had been destroyed.

In a video he recorded of himself and posted to a WhatsApp group shared with other journalists last year, Mr. Masri described his grief at the loss of his home and neighborhood.

“Nothing remains but ruins — ruins we weep over,” he said. The family returned to Khan Younis in July of last year, taking shelter in a tent.

LIVE BROADCASTS
Mr. Masri began working for Reuters as a contractor in Rafah near the frontier with Egypt in May 2024, eight months into the conflict. In his role, he was involved in live broadcasting from displacement camps and recording the entry of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing.

Since returning to Khan Younis he was responsible for the feed Reuters broadcast daily from Nasser Hospital, which provided a constant real-time display of Gaza and was used by Reuters media clients around the world.

“Hussam has done this gruelling task day in and day out for months, mainly from Nasser Hospital but also from Rafah when the story merited it,” said Labib Nasir, Reuters’ visual editor for the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. Masri also reported stories around southern Gaza, often using contacts he had developed at the hospital to provide vivid accounts of the unfolding humanitarian disaster including stories on malnutrition in Gaza, parts of which are officially in famine.

His last such story, filmed on Saturday, showed families mourning over bodies of relatives, including children, killed in Israeli strikes that have taken at least 62,000 Palestinian lives in the war.

Mr. Masri had chosen to look after the live feed at Nasser Hospital in part because he believed it was the safest place he could operate from, said Mr. Salem, who spoke to him each morning as he set up his camera.

During their final conversation, Mr. Masri described how difficult life had become in Gaza and the struggle to find food.

Hours later, in an image captured by Reuters, his body was laid out on a stretcher. — Reuters

JAKARTA — The United States has agreed in principle to exempt Indonesian exports of cocoa, palm oil and rubber from the 19% tariff imposed by President Donald J. Trump since Aug. 7, Indonesia’s top trade negotiator said on Tuesday.

The exemption will take effect once both sides reach a final agreement, but no timeline has been set because the US is busy in tariff talks with other countries, Airlangga Hartarto, who is also the chief economic minister, told Reuters.

The two countries also discussed potential US investment in fuel storage in Indonesia in partnership with the Southeast Asian nation’s sovereign wealth fund Danantara and state energy firm Pertamina, Airlangga said in an interview.

“We are waiting for their response, but during the meeting, basically, the principal (exemption) has been agreed for products not produced in the US, such as palm oil and cocoa and rubber… it will be zero or close to zero,” he added.

The US embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of palm oil and a major rubber supplier.

Indonesia, the region’s largest economy, was among the first nations to strike a tariff deal with Mr. Trump in July, but Jakarta ended up facing the same rate as some other countries, such as Thailand and Malaysia, and just below Vietnam’s figure of 20%.

During the talks, Indonesia offered billions of dollars worth of investment in the US and purchases of American crude, liquefied petroleum gas, planes and farm products. It also promised zero tariffs on almost all US goods entering its market.

Airlangga said certainty over US tariffs and recent progress in talks about a free trade agreement with the European Union could boost Indonesia’s economic growth, helping the government reach a 5.4% target for 2026, up from an estimate of about 5% this year.

“They bring an optimistic perception from the global market since most investors are looking for certainty and Indonesia is one of the countries that provide global certainty,” he said.

Jakarta wants to draw foreign investors to help develop industrial facilities, particularly in the processing of its key commodities, Airlangga said, replicating the success the country has seen in bringing Chinese investment into nickel projects.

Airlangga said the government is also keen to boost investment in silica sand processing, including the production of solar panels and wafers for semiconductors. — Reuters