Timeline

September 15, 2025 – A federal appeals court blocked President Trump from removing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, allowing Dr. Cook to attend the September Federal Open Market Committee meeting. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. 

September 9, 2025 – A federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, citing that Dr. Cook has shown strong evidence that her removal from the Board of Governors violated the Federal Reserve Act. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling. 

August 26, 2025 – Dr. Cook’s lawyer announced her intention to sue the Trump administration to challenge the legality of her removal from office. 

August 25, 2025 – President Trump announced that he would remove economist Lisa Cook from her position as a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. 

Lisa Cook was originally nominated to serve on the Board of Governors by President Biden in 2022, and confirmed to a 14-year term in her position by the Senate in 2023. Governor Cook is also, notably, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s Board.

This action is another part of Trump’s ongoing attempt to bring the Federal Reserve, or “Fed,” under his control. He has openly expressed that he wants to the Fed to significantly cut interest rates in order to make borrowing easier and spur economic growth. However, if he continues to try to replace other Governors or Fed Chair Jerome Powell with political loyalists rather than economic experts, the opposite effect is likely to happen. The Trump administration fully seizing control of monetary policy will fuel higher inflation and interest rates for typical working families.

The Fed is the central bank of the United States, and is responsible for the U.S. government’s monetary policy. Its key job is to maintain macroeconomic stability, which means trying to ensure both unemployment rates and inflation are kept low. (As EPI has written on extensively, the Fed has not always gotten that balance right.) Evidence-based economic decision-making and the guarantee of freedom from political interference are both central to the Fed’s operations. If there is widespread belief that interest rates or other decisions by the Fed are driven by the whims of the President or a politically-driven Board of Governors, then confidence in the Fed will evaporate and lead to serious economic consequences for the U.S., including higher inflation and interest rates in the long run.

The Federal Reserve Act makes clear that Fed governors can only be removed “for cause,” or for serious misconduct, which has not been established. The source of the allegation of “mortgage fraud” against Governor Cook is also extremely concerning: a public announcement by the head of the Federal Housing Financing Authority (FHFA), the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FHFA has access to mortgage information, including sensitive personal and financial data, for tens of millions of U.S. households—access that could be abused by a politically-motivated agency looking to harm perceived political opponents of the president with a public smear campaign, rather than an appropriate investigation finding allegations that would meet the bar for leading to an indictment for improper conduct. 

On August 26, Dr. Cook’s lawyer announced her intention to sue the Trump administration to challenge the legality of her removal from office.