Trump may be trying to fire Federal Reserve Governor Cook

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Trump does not have power to fire Fed Governor Cook

Last edited Tue Aug 26, 2025, 01:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

[gab13by13]

2. This is a BFD for only 1 response.

A poster said Krasnov will never gain total power, well if this firing stands, he is going after control of the Fed.

Don't come back to me with numbers, if this firing stands it sends a message to the rest of the Fed, be loyal to me or I will ruin your life.

Remember also, the fed does more than raise or lower interest rates, it regulates banks.

Krasnov with control of the Fed is pretty scary shit.

[newdeal2]

3. It's worse than that

He had his henchmen installed into the government to look for “dirt” on people and then uses that for extortion. This is the most corrupt presidency in history.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. MaddowBlog-Why Trump's offensive against the Fed's Lisa Cook is a 'five-alarm fire'

At issue is an attempted White House power grab that ignores the rule of law and puts global economic stability at risk.

Why should people care about Trump’s offensive against the Fed’s Lisa Cook?

At issue is an attempted White House power grab, launched by an authoritarian president, that ignores the rule of law and puts global economic stability at risk. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-26T12:52:39.622Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-offensive-feds-lisa-cook-five-alarm-fire-rcna227188

Evidently, he was serious — at least about his intentions. NBC News reported:

President Donald Trump is removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook effective immediately, according to a letter he posted to Truth Social on Monday night. In the letter, Trump writes: ‘Pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, as amended, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately.’

This is a story with a lot of moving parts, so let’s unpack the relevant details and review what we know.

Who’s Lisa Cook?

Joe Biden appointed Cook, an accomplished economist, to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors three years ago, and at that point, she became the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board. Her tenure has been uncontroversial, at least until last week.

.......Are the allegations credible?

There’s reason for skepticism. Pulte is both a critic of the Fed and a White House loyalist — The Washington Post, for example, recently described the FHFA chief as “a prominent Trump sidekick” — who’s conveniently started going after a variety of Trump targets with dubious claims of mortgage fraud.

......Has the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the subject?

As a matter of fact, it was just three months ago when Republican-appointed justices granted the president considerable power to oust officials serving in independent agencies, but simultaneously, the high court explicitly said that the Federal Reserve is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.” That distinction appears to limit Trump’s powers over the Fed.

Why would Trump be so eager to target the Fed in the first place?

Because the White House wants to seize control over U.S. monetary policy, especially as it relates to interest rates. Trump has already launched an unprecedented campaign against Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and if the president is able to force out Cook and replace her with someone who’ll do the White House’s bidding, it would gut the institution’s independence and shift power in the Oval Office’s direction.

Why would that be dangerous?

Because, as Paul Krugman explained, the Fed is responsible for everything from interest rates to bank supervision to avoiding systemic financial crises. If Trump successfully corrupts the institution and its work, Krugman said, “We become Venezuela. We become Turkey. We become a place where all of this stuff is just at the whims of the strongman in charge. ... No president should have the power to just arbitrarily control what the Fed does, and least of all this president. So, this is the road to things going completely wild — not five years down the pike, but months from now.”

He added, “This is a five-alarm fire.”

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Deadline: Legal Blog--Trump's attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor tests a weird Supreme Court move

The high court majority recently went out of its way to signal its intention to protect the Federal Reserve board’s independence.

Trump’s attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor tests a weird Supreme Court move.

Trump’s attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor tests a weird Supreme Court move www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...

— Bubbajonz (@bubbajonz.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T20:43:36.156Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/lisa-cook-fired-federal-reserve-supreme-court-humphreys-rcna227270

Back in May, when a divided Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump the power to fire members of certain labor boards without cause, the Republican-appointed majority went out of its way to signal its intention to protect the Federal Reserve board, even though the Fed itself wasn’t at issue in that case.

Now, Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook could test the high court’s strange signal.

In that May shadow docket case, Trump v. Wilcox, which involved members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board, the majority addressed those board members’ argument that the logic behind stripping their protections would also imperil the Federal Reserve’s independence.

“We disagree,” the majority wrote, citing a previous precedent in noting that the Fed “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”

Dissenting in the Wilcox case, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the Democratic appointees that she appreciated the majority’s “intention to avoid imperiling the Fed” but that its decision still posed “a puzzle.” That’s because the Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same foundation as agencies such as the NLRB and the MSPB — which, Kagan pointed out, means it rests on a nearly century-old precedent, Humphrey’s Executor. The Trump administration wants to overturn that 1935 decision, and the majority’s recent rulings on presidential power suggest that it’s on board with that effort.

“If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler — and more judicial — approach would have been to” rule against Trump “on the continued authority of Humphrey’s,” Kagan wrote in Wilcox......

While it will depend on how exactly Cook presses her legal claim and how the administration defends itself, the case’s resolution could turn on the narrower issue of the sufficiency of cause for removal, as opposed to the justices resolving the outer limits of presidential authority when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Given Kagan’s critique of the logic behind the majority’s Fed carveout in Wilcox (not that the majority has to care about that), the majority might appreciate such narrower grounds as a way of solving the “puzzle,” as Kagan put it, that the court created for itself.

We may see trump's attorney citing Justice Kagan's dissent in this litigation. I think that Justice Kagan has the better argument, but the majority may be committed to defend their prior bad shadow docket ruling which will hurt trump's argument.

[tavernier]

6. As I understand it, he can dismiss someone for cause.

Who determines if the “cause” in her case is enough of a rule breaker? I had read that she had claimed two different residences (I assume different states) in her job application, which was apparently not allowed by law.
I guess it was cleared up at the time, but now they’re returning to it. So I suppose that SCOTUS will end up being the final word on that?