New documents obtained by Reuters contradict allegations made by a Trump administration bureaucrat that Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud.

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte had previously claimed to have unearthed documents indicating Cook, who had been unwilling to follow President Donald Trump's demands to lower interest rates, had declared two separate residences as her primary home in mortgage statements, which, depending on the jurisdiction, can be against the law when it causes banks to lend under more favorable terms.

But according to Reuters, "A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook ... shows that Cook had declared the property as a 'vacation home.'"

"The document, dated May 28, 2021, was issued to Cook by her credit union in the weeks before she completed the purchase and shows that she had told the lender that the Atlanta property wouldn’t be her primary residence," said the report. "The document appears to counter other documentation that Cook’s critics have cited in support of their claims that she committed mortgage fraud by reporting two different homes as her primary residence, two independent real-estate experts said."

The revelation could be an obstacle to Trump's efforts to fire Cook from the Federal Reserve, which he justified by pointing to Pulte's unproven allegations. Cook has filed a lawsuit challenging her dismissal as unlawful.

Pulte, whose agency oversees the government-sponsored housing finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has issued similar mortgage fraud claims against other Trump critics, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom deny any wrongdoing.

A recent report found that Pulte's own father and stepmother may have been pulling that exact scheme on properties in Michigan and Florida. Upon Reuters' investigation into the matter, officials in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, revoked the couple's homestead exemption.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board ripped the Trump administration's mass deportation effort, citing the fallout from last week's "blunderbuss raid" on a Hyundai plant in Georgia.

Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a major raid on an electric vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell. Nearly 500 workers, including over 300 South Korean nationals, were detained for visa and immigration violations.

The raid caught the Journal editors' attention on Friday evening.

"Still think mass deportation has no economic or political consequences? The fallout from last week’s blunderbuss raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia continues to reverberate in South Korea, and it pays to listen to President Lee Jae Myung’s remarks this week," the editors wrote.

“This could significantly impact future direct investment in the U.S.,” Lee said at a news conference. Companies in the country “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making new investments in the United States, fearing their workers could wind up in detention facilities.

Lee noted the workers were not meant to be in the United States long term.

"When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the U.S. doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work," he said.

The Journal lamented that statement "may be hard for Americans to hear, but it’s true. The U.S. doesn’t have the workforce to do these jobs."

And while the Trump administration has insisted that some of the workers entered the country illegally and others were working on expired visas, the Journal warned that there will be repercussions.

"Whatever the case, raids like the one in Georgia are a deterrent to the foreign investment Donald Trump says he wants," the said.

The Georgia raid comes as the Trump administration cracks down on both legal and illegal immigration nationwide. In a Chicago suburb, a man was shot dead by ICE during a traffic stop confrontation.

Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration’s announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called ”forever chemicals” in the nation’s drinking water.

In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.

The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”

However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act’s robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.

“In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do,” Earthjustice said in a statement.

“Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O’Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country.”

Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that “the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

“It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals,” Thompson added. “No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court.”

PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.

Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”

Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA’s Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:

The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.

Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.

Responding to Thursday’s developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that “the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families.”

“Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap,” he added. “New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS.”

While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to “make America healthy again” by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.

“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”