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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.

Ever since Disney paid $4 billion for the Marvel franchise in 2009, their movies have been making less and less money. What’s going on? It turns out the problem has been baked into Marvel’s writing culture from the start. The old fashioned “Marvel method” of writing comic books has the writer provide a summary of the story to the artist, who then draws the entire issue. When the art is complete, the writer goes in and adds the dialogue.

Lately, Marvel Studios production has worked more and more in the same way. Production will start even if the script isn’t finalized, and the filmmakers, like the artists of Marvel comics, are expected to fill in the details while they’re shooting. As you can imagine, that’s financially risky. Every second on set for a blockbuster production costs millions of dollars, so waiting around as the directors or actors or on-set writers try to figure out what should happen next causes budgets to balloon.

As the budgets rise, the margins for profitability become slimmer and slimmer. “Captain American: Brave New World” cost $300 million including marketing to make, and made $415 million worldwide. “Thunderbolts” cost $280 million including marketing to make, and made $380 million worldwide. The two movies are being described as “flops” by industry commentators, and the trend seems to only be getting worse as cast members of “Avengers: Doomsday” report that they don’t know who they’re in scenes with because they were shot individually on green screens so that the directors can piece scenes together later. No wonder the upcoming crossover movie was delayed from May to December.

Director James Gunn watched this happen first hand when he worked on the “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy for Marvel, so it’s no wonder when he launched DC Studios with Peter Safan he instated the rule that no project will start production until there is a finished script everyone is happy with. “Superman,” for example, made $614 million worldwide for DC Studios against reported production and marketing budgets between $200 and $300 million. The simple lesson seems to be that you want to prioritize good writing before you begin production on a big-budget movie. But will Marvel’s owner, Disney, ever learn?

NEW YORK (AP) — Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year.

The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion.

The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin. Investors are also looking forward to the expected market debuts of the ticket exchange StubHub and the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, which is majority owned by the Winklevoss twins.

Founded in 2005 as a payments company, Klarna entered the U.S. buy now, pay market in 2015 in partnership with department store operator Macy’s. Since then, Klarna has expanded to hundreds of thousands of merchants and has embedded itself in internet browsers and digital wallets as an alternative to credit cards. The company recently announced a partnership with Wal-Mart.

The company started trading under the symbol “KLAR.” While Klarna was founded in Sweden and is a popular payment service in Europe, company executives said they made the decision to go public in the U.S. as a signal that Klarna’s future growth opportunities lay with the American shopper.

“It’s the largest consumer market in the world, and it’s the biggest credit card market in the world. It’s a tremendous opportunity, from our perspective,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Over the years and in multiple interviews, Siemiatkowski has made it clear that Klarna is looking to steal away customers from the big credit card companies, and sees credit cards as a high-interest, exploitative product that consumers rarely use correctly.

Klarna’s most popular product is what’s known as a “pay-in-4” plan, where a customer can split a purchase into four payments spread over six weeks. The company also offers a longer-term payment plan where it charges interest. The business model has caught on globally, particularly among consumers who are reluctant to use credit cards. The company said 111 million consumers worldwide have used Klarna for a purchase.

Klarna and other buy now, pay later companies have attracted increased public interest in recent years, as the business model has caught on. State and federal regulators, as well as consumer groups, have expressed some degree of worry that consumers may overextend themselves financially on these buy now, pay later loans just as much as they do with credit cards.

Siemiatkowski says the company is actively monitoring how consumers use their products, and the average balance of Klarna user is less than $100. Because the company issues loans that are six weeks or less, Klarna argues it can more easily adjust its underwriting standard depending on economic conditions.

Ahead of going public, Klarna reported in August that it had second-quarter revenues of $823 million and had an adjusted profit of $29 million. The delinquency rate on Klarna’s “pay-in-4” loans is 0.89% and on its longer-term loans for bigger purchases, the delinquency rate is 2.23%. Those figures are below the average 30-day delinquency rates on a credit card.

Klarna will now be the second-largest buy now, pay later company on U.S. public markets, behind Affirm. Shares of Affirm have surged more than 40% so far this year, valuing the company at around $28 billion, helped by a belief among investors that buy now, pay later companies may take away market share from traditional banks and credit cards.

Klarna’s primary underwriters for the IPO were JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is heading for more records on Wednesday following a surprisingly encouraging report on inflation and a stunning forecast for growth from Oracle because of the artificial-intelligence boom.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and was on track to set an all-time high for a second straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 49 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher after both likewise set records the day before.

Stocks have been hitting records in large part because Wall Street is expecting the economy to pull off a delicate balancing act: slowing enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but not so much that it causes a recession, all while inflation remains under control.

Many things must go right for that to happen, and an encouraging signal came from Wednesday’s report showing that inflation at the U.S. wholesale level unexpectedly slowed in August. It’s a relief following months of reports suggesting inflation would be tough to get under the Fed’s target of 2%, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs set to add only upward pressure on prices.

A potentially more important report is coming Thursday that will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households, but Wednesday’s update “essentially rolled out the red carpet for a Fed rate cut next week,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Traders were already convinced that the Fed will deliver its first cut to interest rates of the year at its next meeting, but they need inflation data in the interim to come up mild enough not to derail those expectations. That’s because cuts to interest rates can push inflation higher, along with giving the economy a kickstart.

“The broader narrative is increasingly anchored on expectations that the Fed will deliver a rate cut at next week’s meeting,” said Ahmad Assiri, research strategist at Pepperstone.

On Wall Street, tech stocks helped lead the way after Oracle said AI-related demand is set to send its revenue soaring. CEO Safra Catz said Oracle signed four multi-billion dollar contracts during its latest quarter, and it expects cloud infrastructure revenue to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. After that, it expects the unit’s revenue to surge to $144 billion in just four years.

“AI Changes Everything,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said in a statement.

Oracle stock soared 34.8% and was potentially heading for its best day since 1992, even though its results for the latest quarter came up just shy of analysts’ expectations.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips used in AI, saw its stock that trades in the United States climb 3.1% after it said its revenue jumped nearly 34% in August from a year before.

Nvidia, the chip company whose stock has become the poster child of the AI boom, rose 3.7%. It was one of the strongest single forces lifting the S&P 500, along with Oracle.

On the losing side of Wall Street was Synopsys, which helps customers design and engineer chips. It fell 31.3% after reporting profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations. So did its forecast for profit in the current quarter.

Klarna, the Swedish “buy now, pay later” financial services provider, will trade for the first time as a public company Wednesday after it announced a public offering of its shares at $40 each, about $4 higher than it previously estimated.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after rising across much of Asia. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.7%, and Hong Kong Hang Sang climbed 1% for two of the bigger moves.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.05% from 4.08% late Tuesday after the encouraging inflation report on wholesale prices bolstered expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.