Who is Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook?
Federal Reserve Board Chair Lisa Cook, who is reappointed until 2038, denied claims that President Trump fired her.
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on January 21 in a case that will question the independence of the Federal Reserve and determine whether President Donald Trump can carry out his plan to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.
The case has captured the attention of Wall Street, global markets and historians as the justices consider whether the president, who has been pressuring the board for months, has the power to fire Federal Reserve officials. Some see the incident as a test of whether the country’s central bank can continue to operate independent of political influence.
Trump tried to fire Cook last August for lying on two mortgage applications in 2021. At the time, Cook said Trump did not have the authority to fire her and vowed to challenge the decision in court in a statement from her lawyers. The Supreme Court ruled in October that President Trump could not immediately fire Cook and said it would file a lawsuit in January. Mr. Cook has not been charged with a crime.
The oral arguments come a little more than a week after the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell into whether he lied to Congress about the scope of renovations to the central bank’s headquarters. Powell, who was first appointed by President Trump in 2017, called the investigation a “pretext” in a video statement released on January 11, saying the inquiry was about “whether monetary policy is guided by political pressure or blackmail.”
President Trump has denied any involvement in the Justice Department investigation, telling NBC News that the investigation had nothing to do with interest rates.
Since taking office in 2025, the president has been pressuring Federal Reserve policymakers to lower the federal funds rate, the benchmark national interest rate.
A person familiar with Powell’s schedule told USA TODAY that Powell plans to attend oral arguments in the Cook case.
Who is Lisa Cook?
Former President Joe Biden nominated Cook to head the Federal Reserve in 2022, making her the first Black woman to hold the position. She was to be reelected in 2023, and her term was scheduled to end in 2038.
Prior to joining the board, Mr. Cook served as a senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Barack Obama. From 2000 to 2001, she worked as a senior advisor for finance and development at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of International Affairs.
She also worked as a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Spelman College, a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
What does Lisa Cook do?
As one of seven members of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Cook plays a leading role in guiding U.S. monetary policy.
Together, they make up the bulk of the Federal Open Market Committee, a group that works to maintain a balance between price stability and low unemployment. One of the committee’s most powerful tools to achieve these goals is its ability to lower, raise, or hold interest rates constant. This affects how much people can borrow and has a significant impact on the overall U.S. economy.
In his termination letter, President Trump said he had the authority to fire Cook under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and the Federal Reserve Act. A 1913 law allows the president to fire Fed officials “for cause.”
The subject of a legal battle is whether her alleged misstatements on past mortgage applications qualify as “causation.”
Does Lisa Cook support rate cuts?
Mr. Cook has voted with a majority of Federal Open Market Committee members in favor of rate cuts in the past three meetings.
Mike Scordeles, Trust’s head of U.S. economics, and Timothy Chubb, Girard’s chief investment officer, previously told USA TODAY in August that Cook was generally one of the more dovish members of the committee.
Skorderes said in August that as a labor economist, Cook generally tends to be more concerned about the impact of Fed decisions on consumers and on lending rates such as mortgages and auto loans.
Contact Rachel Barber at rbarber@usatoday.com and follow her at X @rachelbarber_
