The New Yorker profiles Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick who speaks with President Trump “on the phone most nights, at around one in the morning, just after Lutnick gets in bed.”

They talk about “real stuff,” like Canadian steel tariffs, and also about “nothing,” which he summarized as “sporting events, people, who’d you have dinner with, what was this guy like, can you believe what this guy did, what’s the TV like, I saw this on TV, what’d you think of what this guy said on TV, what did you think about my press conference, how about this Truth?”

“President Donald Trump’s bid to take down the Wall Street Journal over its coverage of his connection to Jeffrey Epstein has landed in the courtroom of Darrin Gayles, who is likely experiencing deja vu,” Politico reports.

“That’s because Gayles, a 2014 appointee of Barack Obama, had another brush with a litigious Trump in 2023, when the then-former president sought to punish his onetime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.”

“Trump sued Cohen in April 2023 seeking a $500 million payout for claims that Cohen violated his attorney-client relationship with Trump and enriched himself off their relationship. Six months later, Trump abandoned the lawsuit, just before Cohen’s lawyers were set to question him under oath.”

“The Trump administration is formally arguing before a federal oversight body that it has unilateral authority to fire many federal employees at any time, seeking to unwind decades of precedent and current federal law,” Government Executive reports.

“Federal workers are typically not considered at-will and current statute requires that agencies provide notice, cause and an opportunity to rebut allegations before a firing can take place.”

New York Times: “Mr. Trump has fired or demoted more than 20 inspectors general or acting inspectors general since he took office six months ago, hobbling offices that for years have served as a check on waste, fraud and abuse.”