In Spelman College in Atlanta, Lisa Cook is the “Personification of Excellence,” said Darlene Smith-Garner, a 2023 graduate from the historically black university of women, where Cook also studied.
“We see it as one of our great students, a model,” said Smith-Garner. “To get where he is, he had to overcome a lot and fight. And that is what he will do now, like a woman from Spelman. And not only a fight for his work, but for what is correct.”
The last cook fight is with Donald Trump to keep his place at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
Trump sent a letter to Cook on Monday by saying that he was saying goodbye after the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Ablicte, accused her of falsifying bank records to ensure favorable mortgage terms before she was elevated to her position.
Cook, 61, said in a statement that Trump “intended to say goodbye ‘for cause’ when there is no cause under the law, and that he has no authority to do so. I will not give up. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the US economy as I have been doing since 2022.
Cook’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said he plans to file a lawsuit that defies the basis of his removal. A White House spokesman said in a statement that Trump “exercised his legal authority to eliminate it.”
The fight has been the distinctive seal of Cook’s academic and professional career, highlighted because he became the first black woman to serve as governor of the Federal Reserve. It was confirmed after Vice President Kamala Harris cast a vote of the Senate that broken in 2022. The governors of the Federal Reserve are expected to meet terms of 14 years.
Cook’s background reported their scholarship
Cook is originally from Milledgeville, Georgia, a picturesque city about 98 miles southeast of Atlanta that served as a state capital from 1804 to 1868. After the civil war, the capital moved to Atlanta, which led to the economic fall of the city of Cook. Generations later, she and her sister were among the first black students to integrate their local schools; In 2020, Cook told NPR that he still has a “scar where the hair will not grow in my eyebrow and a scar on my leg because he was hit during that period, during the period of degregation.”
Cook has extensively studied the ways in which racial discrimination, including segregation laws and Jim Crow, affected the American economy in general. In an article of 2020 New York Times, he wrote that discrimination “inflicts an amazing cost throughout the economy.” In an academic article, he concludes that “domestic terrorism” and violence against black people represented more than 1,100 missing patents, which implies “that ethnic and political conflict can affect the level, direction and quality of invention and economic growth over time.”
His work has expanded beyond the United States, with roles that advise Nigerian and Ruandeses governments about banking reform and economic development, according to Associated Press.
After having studied at Spelman, the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a PH.D. In Economics, Cook was attached professor at Harvard University. She taught economic and economic policy for years at Michigan State University. Under President Barack Obama, Cook served in the Blanca House Economic Advisors Council.
As the first and only black woman at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Cook is also part of a very small cohort of black women with pH.ds in economics. Only 1.8% of all economic titles were for black women in 2024, and although the figure has increased in the last decade, 6.7% of the ph.D were granted to black women, according to an annual report by the American Economic Association.
She has faced republican resistance in the past
Despite Cook’s credentials, the Senate Republicans rejected their work during their confirmation audience, including JD Vance, then a republican senator of Ohio, who said at that time that an approach to diversity “can distract our ability to focus on things much, much more important.” Peter Navarro, an economic advisor for a long time for Trump, said in 2022 that Cook was “more qualified to train an NFL team” to join the Fed.
After the close vote, then Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, commented that no Republicans voted to confirm it.
“109 years and seven people have passed in the Federal Reserve at the same time, and not an African -American woman,” he told Huffpost after his confirmation. “They should be ashamed.”
How has cook fit in the Fed?
In the Federal Reserve, Cook served in the Committee on Consumers and Community Affairs, which implements federal laws “aimed at protecting and informing consumers in credit and other financial services transactions.” It also serves in the financial stability committee, as well as in the smallest regional and community banking subcommittee.
The president of the Fed in New York, John Williams, said Wednesday that Cook “has always brought integrity and a commitment to the Federal Reserve mission. He is a very esteemed and very respected economist.”
Cook is considered a more misleading voter about the Federal Open Market Committee for Rate Establishment and has voted in line with the president of the Fed, Jerome Powell, to keep interest rates on hold. She has a permanent vote on such policies until she ends her 14 -year -old mandate. If they eliminate it, it would open the way for Trump nominees to have a majority at the Fed Board, which the Institute of Economic Policy warned in a statement on Tuesday.
The future of cook and the independence of the Fed are under scrutiny
“The presidential capture of the Fed would indicate to decision makers throughout the economy that interest rates will no longer be established on the base of solid databases or economic conditions, but in the president’s whims,” the group said.
Fed members issued a statement on Monday, not to mention Trump, who emphasized that the Federal Reserve Law says that governors can be eliminated by the president only “for cause.”
The law professor at Columbia University, Lev Menand, told the New York Times that the “cause” examples would include acts of misconduct carried out in relation to their position in the Fed, such as accepting a bribery or other form of corruption. Cook has not been accused of a crime, and the bank documents in question come from before his mandate began, according to The Times.
Three years after his mandate, Cook’s future is again in debate. She is one of several high -profile officials to become objectives of the Trump administration. Antlet has made similar statements of financial fraud about the New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, who investigated Trump during the Biden administration.
Trump said Monday that he was legitimately asking Cook’s dismissal because “it seems to have had an infraction, and cannot have an infraction, especially that infraction, because it is in charge, if you think about it, mortgages. And we need people who are 100% above the board, and it does not seem that she was.”
The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y., said in a statement that the attempt to eliminate Cook was getting “without a pinch of credible evidence.”
The black Caucus of Congress described the campaign against Cook as an “illegal attack on the integrity and independence of the Federal Reserve.”
On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the main democrat of the bank committee, which backed Cook during the nomination process, said the measure was an “authoritarian power.”
Cheryl W. Turner, International President of Delta Sigma Theta, the historically black Brotherhood of Cook, condemned the attempt to expel it, warning that she would create “serious implications for families and communities” while undermining the independence of the Fed.
“As a female organization, and a justice defender, erudition, service and economic development for 112 years, Delta Sigma Theta unequivocally opposes any measure that silences black women, whose voices and leadership remain vital for the progress of our nation,” he told NBC News.
As for Cook, in a statement last week, he said he intends to take questions about his financial history seriously, but added that “I had no intention of being intimidated to give up my position due to some questions raised in a tweet.”
