From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarrow. This is the Daily.

President Trump's decision to try to fire a member of the Federal Reserve's governing board

is his most audacious attack yet on the independence of the

country's central bank. Today, Ben Castleman, on the story of how Trump decided that the road

to taking over the Fed, ran through an economics professor named Lisa Cook.

It's Wednesday, August 27.

Thanks for doing this on short, relatively short notice.

We appreciate that.

Yeah, happy to do it.

I mean, it's never good news when I'm on when I'm on this show.

No, it's never a good news on you're on the show.

Ever.

Shall we get started, Ben?

Let's do it.

Okay.

Ben, just to start, tell us about the Federal Reserve governor now at the center of this political, economic, and we assume soon enough legal firestorm.

Lisa Cook is a really remarkable figure. I've spent quite a bit of time with her over the years studying her

career from before she joined the Fed Board of Governors before we started this whole

controversy that she's in the middle of now. And, you know, it starts in the 1960s in Georgia.

I was growing up in the desegregating South, and this was called a freedom of choice period,

so white parents could choose to go to a school or they started their own white flight schools.

And she tells a really powerful story, including in an interview with the International Monetary Fund

...