Good morning. It is August 26th. It is a sparkling sunny morning in New York City. And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

President Donald Trump yesterday made a declaration in which he purported to fire Lisa Cook, one of the members of the board of governors of the federal reserve, even though such a firing is illegal under both the actual written law and the made-up Trump-friendly law that his Supreme Court tried to craft for him, when the court decided to violate its own standing precedent and grant Trump the power to fire the heads of independent agencies, it included a specific unexplained and unjustified carve-out stipulating that the extra-legal license did not extend to the Federal Reserve. Nevertheless, after a fishing expedition through Cook's Federal Housing Administration personal mortgage records, the Trump administration claimed she had committed mortgage fraud and that therefore he had the power to fire her. This is one of those Trump news stories that's a real headache for news writers. Many publications simply went ahead and reported that Trump had fired Cook, as happened with his previous attempts to illegally fire people.

Cook, however, has rejected the idea that she's been fired and her lawyer says she plans to file a lawsuit, arguing that the would-be firing lacks any factual or legal basis, according to a statement from her attorney. 

The US dollar dropped like a stone on the overnight markets when the news broke, only to once again start climbing up again, as the people investing in currency, like the people in all the other markets, once again convinced themselves that an objectively catastrophic piece of news about Trump's actions would probably somehow turn out fine. By the morning bell, the U.S. stock market investors were content to keep the prices just going up. 

The New York Times is reporting that Elon Musk's doge staffers put everyone's private social security information at risk of exposure. The Times writes, “Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistleblower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration's Chief Data Officer. The database,” The Times Continues, “contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals' full names, addresses, and birthdates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation's most sensitive repositories of personal information. The whistleblower's report includes internal communications. Drawing on one of those,” the Times writes, “‘I have determined the business need is higher than the security risk associated with this implementation, and I accept all risks,’ wrote Aram Moghadasi, who worked at two of Mr. Musk's companies, X and Neuralink, before becoming Social Security's chief information officer in a July 15th memo.”

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story is, “With Subtle Hand, Beijing Steers New York Elections / City’s Heritage Clubs Help Upend Careers of Candidates Opposed to China.” It is a nice and deeply reported look at how the Chinese consulate in New York applies political pressure to punish local politicians for expressing any support of Taiwan, but, thanks to the Times' own inept news judgment, the part of the story that matters most in New York politics, goes in a single paragraph well after the jump, about Eric Adams. “Mr. Adams, the Times writes, whose former aide resigned amid an investigation into China's possible intrusion in the last mayoral race, has secured endorsements from the leaders of at least nine hometown groups, those are the organizations through which the consulate exerts its pressure, in his tough campaign for reelection. That aid and another Adam supporter also caused a stir after reports last week that they had given red envelopes of cash to some journalists at his events this summer.”

Those reports last week that the Times mentions were, first of all, The City's fantastic breaking news story that we discussed on the podcast about how its reporter Katie Honan was handed a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips with an envelope of cash stuffed inside it by Winnie Greco, the mayor's former Asian affairs advisor, and then a bizarre follow-up story from the Times in which it got around to informing the readers that its reporters and photographers had also witnessed Adams Associates handing out cash bribes in red envelopes on three separate occasions in July. In a total abdication of its responsibility to cover the city and a humiliating failure of news judgment, the Times sat on that information, holding it back with the aim of delivering it as a minor colorful detail in a prestige investigative story. 

The New York Times did not think that the mayor, in the midst of his reelection campaign, having his people hand out cash bribes in public, was anything that its readership might need to know in a timely manner. They got scooped on the news simply because the bribery was so widespread and so blatant that another outlet, one that actually cares about reporting on the city, bumped into a bribe on its own. 

Now that the Times' big China-influenced story is out, it's clear that the cash bribes were not even an integral part of the big story that they were busy writing. There's no sign that any harm would have come to the reporting on this story if they had just published the news when they had the news, but they didn't.

The rest of the top of the front page is taken up by what was breaking news yesterday morning. There's a big picture of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia on his way into the appointment at which he would be arrested by immigration authorities. After his arrest, his lawyers filed a habeas petition, and the judge who has been handling the case told the Trump administration that it is forbidden from trying to remove him to Uganda or anywhere else while the case proceeds. The Times writes that the judge declared the government was barred from re-expelling Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is now being held in an ICE facility in Virginia. Given that the Justice Department lawyers on the case have a long history of flouting her orders, the judge made sure they understood her. Your clients, she told them, referring to administration officials, are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States. 

Also there above the fold is the news of yesterday's Israeli attack on a hospital that killed 20 people, including five journalists. For some reason, Israel seems to be embarrassed by this particular iteration of its ongoing campaign of war crimes. The Times writes, “the military acknowledged carrying out a strike in the area of Nasr hospital without saying what the target was. In a statement, it said that it regretted any harm to uninvolved individuals and that its chief of staff had ordered an immediate inquiry. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who generally casts civilian deaths in Gaza as a regrettable but unavoidable part of war suggested that those on Monday were the result of a military blunder. ‘Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital,’ the office said. In a statement, it went on to say that Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians.” The story then notes that nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza and that those deaths include intentional attacks and that the Israeli military has significantly loosened safeguards meant to protect civilians. 

Below the fold, there's a visit to a federal courtroom in Washington, DC, where a judge was working through cases in which people who'd committed minor infractions were clobbered with heavy federal charges. As the president's occupying law enforcement task force tried to manufacture reasons for its being in the city, one man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol, the Times writes. Another had been charged with threatening the president, after delivering a drunken outburst after his arrest on vandalism charges, and one defendant's gun case so alarmed prosecutors that they intend to drop it. That last bit is a little mangled. The case, in fact, made it to a hearing yesterday in which NPR quoted the judge handling the case as saying, "It is without a doubt the most illegal search I've ever seen in my life, I'm absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search." 

And back in the Times at the bottom of the page, the headline is, “FEMA staff says Trump is gutting disaster aid, a warning of progress lost after Katrina.” 

“Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote to Congress on Monday, the Times writes, warning that the Trump administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two decades ago. The letter to Congress titled the Katrina Declaration, rebuked President Trump's plan to drastically scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response and more costs to the states. Of the 182 FEMA employees who signed the letter,” the Times writes, “36 attached their names while the rest withheld their identities for fear of retaliation. One of the employees,” the Times writes, “said many workers declined to sign their names because they worried about being put on administrative leave. That was the fate of 144 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency after they signed a similar letter criticizing the administration.” 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way. We will talk again tomorrow.