{"id":410,"date":"2026-06-29T17:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/officemovingamerica.com\/?p=410"},"modified":"2026-06-29T17:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:44:08","slug":"feds-lisa-cook-made-history-even-before-battling-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/officemovingamerica.com\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"Fed’s Lisa Cook Made History Even Before Battling Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Ann Saphir<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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June 29 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook was the first U.S. central banker to be targeted for firing by any president. She \u2060is \u2060no stranger to being first, or to being targeted.<\/p>\n

Read more The 10 Worst U.S. Presidents<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The daughter of a nursing \u2060professor mother and hospital chaplain father, Cook and her sisters were among the first Black students to desegregate the schools they attended in rural Milledgeville, Georgia. Cook, 61, has told interviewers she \u200bstill has scars above her right eye and on her leg from beatings she experienced during that time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After studying philosophy and physics at Spelman College, Cook was the first graduate of that historically Black women’s institution in Atlanta to win the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, which funded a year’s study at the \u200cUniversity of Oxford.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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HIKING UP MOUNT KILIMANJARO\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Later in Senegal, Cook found herself asking \u200cquestions about economics \u2014 why, for instance, did ballpoint pens there cost 100 times what they did in the United States? She made the decision to switch into the discipline after hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro with a British economist who encouraged her.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She broke another barrier when Democratic President Joe Biden nominated \u2060her in 2022 to become the \u2060first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, bringing what the White House said at the time would be “long overdue diversity” to \u200bthe U.S. central bank. Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking 51st vote in the U.S. Senate to secure her confirmation after a contentious approval process during which Republicans suggested Cook was unqualified and would be soft on inflation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Republican President Donald Trump in August 2025 tried to fire her from the Fed \u2014 an institution set up by Congress to be insulated from political interference \u2014 though his action was quickly blocked by the courts, and she filed a legal challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let Trump fire Cook, as it stood firm to preserve the central bank’s independence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I refused to bow to political pressure and continued \u200bto set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people,” Cook said in a statement following the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling. “Today’s ruling affirms a principle that has underpinned sound economic stewardship for generations: that the Federal Reserve \u2060must \u2060make all its policy decisions guided by evidence and \u2060independent judgment, free from political interference.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cook became a test case in \u200bTrump’s unprecedented bid to assert control over the Fed and push the limits of presidential power, as well as what his critics see as an example of his trying to roll back Biden administration diversity efforts by \u200bousting high-profile Black public officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her fight to remain at the Fed, though, looks \u2060to be far from over.\u00a0Trump vowed to press on with the case back at the trial court level, a legal process that could take months \u2014 or even years \u2014 to play out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A HAWKISH VOICE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Adding to the economic and political stakes of her legal challenge to Trump’s action, Cook in recent months has emerged as part of a growing hawkish contingent at the Fed. New Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh was appointed by Trump with the explicit expectation that he would cut interest rates. At the first Fed policymaking meeting since he became Fed chair, Warsh presided over a decision announced on June 17 to hold rates steady, and repeatedly called out the need to bring down inflation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cook in May told a group at Stanford University in California that she worries that AI is creating a fresh inflationary shock, and said she would support a rate hike if price pressures do not ease soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The \u2060event was held a block from the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution, where she was once a research fellow and where Warsh, a fellow until he became Fed chair, had recently declared that \u2060AI is a disinflationary force.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Where Trump\u2019s Efforts to Revamp Elections Stand Ahead of Midterms<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Days later, Cook attended a ceremony in Boston where former Fed Chair Jerome Powell received the John F. Kennedy Library’s “Profile in Courage” award for standing up to threats from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Powell joined Cook in attending the January 22 arguments before the Supreme Court involving Cook’s suit fighting her dismissal, and he called it the most important legal case for the Fed since its founding in 1913.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warsh in his Senate confirmation hearing declined to defend Cook, saying it would be inappropriate to weigh in on the case since he could be a party to the matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A TRUMP APPOINTEE’S ALLEGATIONS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, asked the Justice Department last year to launch criminal investigations \u2014 called a criminal referral \u2014 against Cook and other perceived enemies of the president for alleged crimes related to their mortgages. Trump on June 2 named Pulte to become acting director of national intelligence, though he has no national security experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pulte skipped over his agency’s inspector general\u00a0when making his accusations last year, bypassing rules meant to ensure that federal officials do not abuse their power for partisan purposes. Soon after, Trump in a social media post said that he was firing Cook for what he said were false statements on her mortgage applications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cook has called the allegations baseless and a pretext to fire her over monetary policy differences. The property tax authority in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was in charge of vetting Cook’s claims concerning a home in \u2060that city told Reuters that she had not broken rules for tax breaks despite Pulte’s allegations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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‘ONE OF THE STRONGEST PEOPLE’<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before her nomination to the Fed, Cook was a Michigan State University economics professor and published research on racial disparities and the negative impact of anti-Black violence and gender inequality on innovation and economic growth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She was an adviser on the presidential transition teams for Biden and for Barack Obama, and was a senior economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 to 2012 under Obama, who was the first Black U.S. president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cook received her doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, where Barry Eichengreen \u2014 who has written extensively about what is at stake when political leaders drive a central \u200bbank’s policy decisions \u2014 was one of her dissertation advisers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I know Lisa to be careful and ethical,” Eichengreen told fellow economist Paul Krugman in an interview in August 2025. “She’s also one of the strongest people \u200bI know.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Additional reporting by Marisa Taylor, Chris Prentice, Howard Schneider and Michael S. Derby; Editing by Will Dunham)<\/p>\n

Read more Consumers Perk Up on Iran Deal, Lower Gas Prices<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters<\/b>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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