WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has asked an appeals court to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors by Monday, before the central bank’s next vote on interest rates.

The request represents an extraordinary effort by the White House to shape the board before the Fed’s interest rate-setting committee meets next Tuesday and Wednesday. At the same time, Senate Republicans are pushing to confirm Stephen Miran, President Donald Trump’s nominee to an open spot on the Fed’s board, which could happen as soon as Monday.

Trump sought to fire Cook Aug. 25, but a federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the removal was illegal and reinstated her to the Fed’s board. Trump has accused Cook of mortgage fraud because she appeared to claim two properties as “primary residences” in July 2021, before she joined the 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 the charges.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the 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. Cook did not join the Fed’s board until 2022.

In their emergency appeal, Trump’s lawyers argued that even if the conduct occurred before her time as governor, her alleged action “indisputably calls into question Cook’s trustworthiness and whether she can be a responsible steward of the interest rates and economy.”

The administration asked an appeals court to issue an emergency decision reversing the lower court by Monday. If their appeal is succesful, Cook would be removed from the Fed’s board until her case is ultimately resolved in the courts, and she would miss next week’s meeting.

If the appeals court rules in Cook’s favor, the administration could seek an emergency ruling from the Supreme Court.

Either way, the Fed is expected to cut its benchmark interest rate next week by a quarter-point to about 4.1%. When the Fed reduces its key rate, it often, over time, lowers borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans. Some of those rates have already fallen in anticipation of cuts from the Fed.

Should Miran, a top economic adviser to Trump, win approval in time to join the Fed next week, he could push for a steeper half-point reduction to the Fed’s rate.

Yet there are 12 officials who vote on whether and by how much to cut, including the seven members of the Fed’s board as well as five of the Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents, who vote on a rotating basis.

Trump’s two other appointees to the Fed — Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman — might also support a half-point cut, but several of the Fed’s bank presidents have expressed concern about stubbornly elevated inflation and would almost certainly oppose such a large reduction.

If the Fed approves a quarter-point cut, it is possible there could be dissenting votes both from officials who preferred no cut and from those who support a half-point.

A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy.

Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha ruled on ​Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning three of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty.

Delivering her decisive vote, Rocha denounced what she called an attempt to “sow the malignant seed of anti-democracy” in Brazil – but celebrated how the country’s institutions had survived and were fighting back.

“Brazilian democracy was not shaken,” Rocha told a court in the capital, Brasília, warning of the spread of “the virus of authoritarianism”.

On Tuesday, two other judges, Alexandre de Moraes and Flávio Dino, also declared the 70-year-old politician guilty of leading what the former called “a criminal organisation” that had sought to plunge the South American country back into dictatorship.

“Jair Bolsonaro was leader of this criminal structure,” Moraes said during a five-hour address in which he offered a comprehensive account of the slow-burn conspiracy against Brazilian democracy.

“The victim is the Brazilian state,” said Moraes, claiming the plot had unfolded between July 2021 and January 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through Brasília after the election’s leftwing winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took power.

A fourth judge, Luiz Fux, voted to absolve Bolsonaro on Wednesday, claiming there was “absolutely no proof” the former president had been aware or part of an alleged plot to assassinate Lula and Moraes in late 2022, or had tried to stage a coup.

Fux called the 8 January 2023 uprising – when hardcore Bolsonaristas ransacked the supreme court, presidential palace and congress – a “barbaric act” that had caused “damage of an Amazonian-scale”. But the judge, who also controversially argued that the court lacked jurisdiction over the case, claimed there was no proof Bolsonaro was to blame for inciting the riots.

Fux did, however, vote to convict two of Bolsonaro’s closest allies – his former defence minister Gen Walter Braga Netto and his former aide-de-camp Lt Col Mauro Cid – for the crime of violently attempting to abolish Brazilian democracy. The judge concluded that the pair had helped plan and bankroll a plot to murder Moraes in order to generate social mayhem they hoped would trigger a military intervention.

Bolsonaro’s sentence is expected to be set on Friday after the remaining judge, Cristiano Zanin, has cast his vote. Experts say the sentence for crimes including engineering a coup d’état and violently attempting to abolish Brazil’s democracy could be as high as 43 years. The former president did not attend court this week, remaining in his nearby mansion, where he is under house arrest and where police officers have been stationed to ensure he does not flee to one of Brasília’s foreign embassies.

Progressive elation at the downfall of a president blamed for rampant environment destruction, hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and attacks on minorities, has been tempered by the realisation that his political movement remains very much alive. Some fear Fux’s questioning of the judges’ authority over the case could open the door to legal challenges and even the trial’s annulment in the future.

“I wouldn’t declare Jair Bolsonaro’s political death,” said Dr Camila Rocha, a political scientist from the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning who studies the Brazilian right.

Rocha expected supporters of the former president to keep fighting to rescue their leader from jail. Likely strategies included trying to elect a large number of rightwing senators in next year’s elections who could impeach members of the supreme court considered Bolsonaro’s foes; petitioning Donald Trump to heap more pressure on Brazil over Bolsonaro’s plight; and trying to ensure that a pro-Bolsonaro candidate beats Lula in the 2026 presidential election. Their hope was that a rightwing president might grant Bolsonaro a pardon, although the supreme court could torpedo those plans, she said.

“I think they’ll continue trying various ways of getting Bolsonaro out of jail and to uphold his leadership and keep him visible,” she predicted.

In recent weeks, pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have been pushing the idea of an amnesty for their leader and others who were involved in the coup attempt and the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília. They claim such forgiveness would help “pacify” a politically divided country.

But Fabio Victor, the author of a book about military involvement in Brazilian politics called Camouflaged Power, said he believed an amnesty would serve as an “incentive to illegality”. “It would send an awful signal – it would undoubtedly represent a setback to democracy,” he warned.

More details soon…