Trump's attack on Lisa Cook is an attack on Black women

We all stand to lose if he gets away with it.

Cook is sworn in during her 2023 nominations hearing. (Drew Angerer/Getty)

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On August 20, news broke that Governor Lisa Cook is being probed for “mortgage fraud” by Attorney General Bondi. Since then, the president has issued multiple statements about his unprecedented plans to fire Governor Cook, and a criminal investigation of her has been officially launched by the Department of Justice.

It’s clear one of the primary reasons the president wants to oust Governor Lisa Cook is because of his fixation on interest rate cuts. He sees her as standing in his way. With Cook’s removal, Trump would have an opportunity to nominate a new and more pliant replacement.

It should be noted that a sitting president has never removed a Board Governor in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history. And more importantly, many economists, over 500 and counting, have expressed alarm that such a move would endanger the Federal Reserve’s independence from political whims. In their own words, firing Cook “threatens the fundamental principle of central bank independence and undermines trust in one of America’s most important institutions.” Trust, they assert, ensures the economic leadership of the US in the global economy.

Alongside concerns of Fed independence, many have wondered why Cook is the one being targeted in the first place. After all, her qualifications speak for themselves.

Kamala Harris’s hidden barrier

Cook is arguably one of the most recognizable faces in economic policy and the most prominent Black woman economist. She graduated from Spelman College with high honors, Oxford University as a Spelman’s first Marshall Scholar, and earned her PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley, a top economics school. She achieved tenure at Michigan State University as a professor of economics and international relations and later served on the Biden-Harris transition team prior to her nomination to the Fed Board. Her time in economic policy also includes working for the US Treasury and White House as well as the Federal Reserve system, where she’s held positions across four of the 12 banks — New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia.

On the Federal Reserve Board, Governor Cook has been among the first to publicly sound the alarm on the importance of understanding artificial intelligence in shaping our economy. That’s of a piece with her previous work on innovation and inequality as well as her experience on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. Her expertise seems to be a good fit with the Trump’s focus on AI. So why is she being targeted by the administration?

As a Black woman in economics, and the author of “The Double Tax: How Women of Color are Overcharged and Underpaid” (coming September 16), I know that part of what’s going on with Governor Cook has to do with the ongoing mistreatment Black women in economics face.

Back in 2017, Governor Cook and I authored an an op-ed in the New York Times titled “It Was a Mistake for Me to Choose this Field.” In the piece, we discussed how the disproportionate harassment and discrimination Black women face in the economics discipline as well as the severe underrepresentation we experience. Since writing the piece, the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession reported in 2024 that only four Black women graduated with doctoral degrees in economics among 1,385 graduates, or nearly 0.3 percent of doctoral recipients.

Trump’s targeting of Black communities is not a coincidence

Using Governor Cook’s rise to the Fed, I illustrate in “The Double Tax” how Black women face the compounded cost of racism and sexism as they rise through the ranks. I keenly remember when Cook was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2022. Critics and naysayers loudly questioned her expertise and the bigotry and harassment that she and I wrote about in 2017 became her harsh reality.

For me and many others in the economics profession, when Governor Cook rose to prominence, her appointment held weight not only because of the role she was taking on, but also because of the fact that she was the one appointed. Her existence among the most lauded economists in the world comes against a narrow view of who economic leaders can be and who the economy can serve. Her presence on the Fed Board serves as a powerful reminder that America and Americans are not a monolith, nor should they be. If removed from her post, our economy stands to be influenced by the whims of a man’s ego rather than reliable economic expertise.

Trump ran on identity politics and won

In an age where Black women in leadership are being used to test the limits of abuse of power, we must not ignore the individual costs women of color endure lest we face societal costs later on. We must not let an administration that deems certain groups expendable to pressure an independent institution into legitimizing bigotry.

As a Black woman, a PhD student in economics and policy, mentee, and dear friend of Governor Cook, her leadership and tenacity serve as powerful reminders that I still matter despite the tokenization and severe underrepresentation that I and many others are subjected to. In a time where there are attempts to erase the contributions of Black people and more specifically Black women from the history books, her leadership is needed now more than ever.

If democracy truly hangs in the balance, if the very institutions we hold dear are on the verge of crumbling, we must not ignore the warning signs. We must not ignore what happens to Governor Cook because as the canaries in the coal mine, ignoring the alarms that Black women sound means that we all stand to lose much more.

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