In a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected his emergency request to immediately oust Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from her post.
The decision came in a terse, unsigned order. It didn’t say much, but the message was loud and clear: Cook stays, and the justices aren’t rushing to grant Trump his latest power grab.
Cook, who made history as the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, has found herself at the center of an unprecedented political fight. Trump’s attempt to remove her was already blocked by two lower courts. Now the Supreme Court is putting a temporary halt to his push, saying it will revisit the matter in January.
That gives Cook a reprieve and sets up a potentially explosive showdown over the limits of presidential power and the independence of the Federal Reserve.
Trump has argued that Cook should be removed immediately, accusing her of lying on mortgage applications—a charge based on claims from Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte alleges that Cook fraudulently listed two different homes—one in Georgia and one in Michigan—as her primary residence in 2021. Cook has denied any wrongdoing and is now suing Trump for trying to remove her from her post.
It’s worth noting that Pulte, a vocal Trump ally, has lobbed similar accusations against other prominent Trump critics, including Rep. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. That pattern has not gone unnoticed in Washington.
The bigger issue at play here, though, isn’t just about mortgage paperwork. It’s about who controls the Fed—and whether a president can just boot out people he doesn’t like.
The Federal Reserve is supposed to be above politics. It’s built that way. The central bank operates independently from the White House, and federal law says governors can only be removed “for cause”—a phrase that has never been clearly defined but is widely understood to mean serious misconduct or incapacity, not political disagreement.
Trump, who’s been steadily trying to reshape federal agencies to fit his agenda, is clearly taking aim at that tradition of independence.
His legal team filed the emergency request in September, asking the Court to let him remove Cook immediately, even while the case is still being litigated. So far, courts haven’t sided with him. And now, neither has the Supreme Court—at least not yet.
Interestingly, the high court has mostly backed Trump in his recent flurry of legal fights, granting 23 of his 26 emergency requests over the past nine months. That includes some major wins, like allowing him to remove officials at other independent agencies who traditionally weren’t supposed to be fired at will.
But the Federal Reserve is a different animal. It’s not just another agency. It’s the nerve center of the U.S. economy. And the Court has, time and again, stressed the importance of keeping it shielded from political interference.
For now, Lisa Cook keeps her seat on the Fed’s powerful board. Come January, though, all eyes will be on the Court as it takes up the bigger question: Can a president fire a Fed governor for reasons that look a whole lot like politics?
