Administration asks the appeals court to let the President fire a Federal Reserve governor before the next rate meeting.

Hon. Quick recap. In late August, the President announced he was firing Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The basis: a mortgage application form from years ago that the President’s people said showed Cook had claimed two homes as her primary residence. The accusation was contested. Cook said she had not been fired and was not going anywhere.

A federal district judge agreed with Cook last week. The judge, in writing, said the President had not stated a legally permissible cause for Cook’s removal. The Federal Reserve Act allows the President to remove a Fed governor for cause. A mortgage paperwork dispute that the FBI is not prosecuting is not, the judge said, the kind of cause Congress was talking about when they wrote that statute. Cook stayed.

On Friday, the administration filed at the D.C. Circuit and asked them to overturn the district ruling. Quickly. Like, before the Fed meets next week to decide whether to cut interest rates. That meeting is the September FOMC. Cook is, on paper, a voting member of that committee. The administration would prefer she not be.

This is, for those of you keeping track at home, the third attempted firing of a Senate-confirmed economic-statistics or monetary official since August first. The BLS commissioner went first. The CDC director went second. The Fed governor is the third. Each one was, in some way, in the path of a number the President did not want printed.

The Fed is supposed to be independent. The independence is the whole point. The independence is what makes the dollar work. The dollar works because foreign central banks, on Sunday afternoons, do not have to wonder whether the rate the Fed prints on a Tuesday is the rate the Fed believed on a Tuesday or the rate the President wanted on a Tuesday.

You ever notice how the dollar’s independence is the kind of thing you do not think about until somebody calls the appeals court at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon.

Funny how that works.