Democratic lawmakers denounced President Donald Trump’s declaration that he was firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, claiming it was unconstitutional as administration officials doubled down on the move.
Trump in a Monday night Truth Social post said that he was firing Cook, a nominee of President Joe Biden, arguing that the Department of Justice’s investigation into allegations of mortgage fraud was “sufficient cause” to remove her from the board.
Democrats resoundingly condemned the move in the hours that followed, refusing to recognize its legitimacy and claiming that it reflected a slide into authoritarianism under the president, and that it was Trump’s attempt to “rig the economy.”
“Any attempt to fire Lisa Cook from her position of Governor at the Federal Reserve is just the latest in Donald Trump’s DC partisan games to rig the economy for his billionaire donors at the expense of hardworking Americans,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X, adding that the courts must step in and stop “this brazen power grab.”
“This attempted firing shreds the independence of the Fed and puts every American’s savings and mortgage at risk,” he said.
Trump’s attempt to fire the Democratic appointee is the latest in a series of moves by the president to exert control over the central bank and pressure it to lower interest rates, including repeatedly threatening to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed the “baseless attack” on Cook in a statement posted to X.
“Dr. Lisa Cook is the first Black woman ever to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Donald Trump is trying to remove her without a shred of credible evidence that she has done anything wrong,” Jeffries said.
Trump has claimed that the “executive power” granted to him as president gives him the authority to fire the fed governor. But while the Supreme Court has previously cleared the way for Trump’s attempts to remove members of the executive branch at will, the court has made clear that his authority does not extend to the Fed, a “quasi-private entity.”
Cook, for her part, has said Trump has “no authority” to fire her from her position, and said on Monday night “I will not resign.”
Trump and other administration officials, however, remained determined to move forward with Cook’s removal.
In an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday morning, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Cook should leave the fed board and “go off into the sunset.”
“The Department of Justice will go take this on and deal with this. But the fact is, if this woman committed mortgage fraud, she should be respectful to the United States of America, to the Federal Reserve — where she says she cared about them — and she should go off into the sunset and hope to God the police don't follow her,” Lutnick said. “Mortgage fraud is a serious crime. We can't have mortgage fraud in America, and you surely can't have it for your leaders.”
But Democrats remained steadfast in their denunciation of the move. In a statement on Trump’s push to fire Cook, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) — a member of the Senate finance and banking committees — cautioned that “the Fed was designed to operate insulated from political pressure so that it can make tough decisions based on data and the long-term health of the economy, not the whims of any one president.”
The move, Warner said, was an “outrageous and unprecedented attempt to fire a member of the independent Federal Reserve on the flimsiest of unproven pretexts,” and “is clearly the latest scheme from a president determined to subvert the institutions that have kept our democracy strong and our economy the envy of the world.”
Other Democrats went further in their outcry, attacking Trump directly and painting his administration as authoritarian.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, warned that the move lacks “legitimate cause” and is “unconstitutional.”
“This is what authoritarianism looks like. Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Dr. Lisa Cook is a flagrant, dangerous assault on the independence of the Federal Reserve (Fed) and part of the ongoing effort to force the central bank into slashing interest rates and doing whatever else he wants,” Waters said. “Let me be crystal clear: removing Dr. Cook from the Board without legitimate cause is unconstitutional, and I am confident it will not stand in court.”
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