U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, in her first public appearance since President Donald Trump moved to fire her, said it took a "thick skin" to pursue public service in the U.S. and pledged to fulfill the mandate given through her Senate confirmation to defend the central bank's inflation and employment targets.

Top public jobs "are definitely worth the scrutiny...I had to learn to have a thick skin if I thought the principle was worth pursuing," Cook said at the Brookings Institution, a think tank that has been a bastion of Washington's once centrist policy consensus and where Cook once worked at the start of a career in economic research, teaching and public policy.

Central bank independence "is something worth pursuing," she said. "This too shall pass. I will continue doing this work on behalf of the American people...I will execute this charge given by Congress."

Cook was met with solid applause at the start and end of her event. Moderator David Wessel, director of Brookings' Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, noted the efforts by the Trump administration to have her removed from office.

"So far the courts have kept her there. She's still very much an active Fed governor so we're welcoming her today," he said.

After prepared remarks that included no mention of Trump's effort to remove her, Cook said she would not in a question and answer session comment about her still-pending dispute with Trump, which is before the U.S. Supreme Court, but that she considered her position at the Fed "the honor of my life."

Trump's attempted firing of Cook was seen as part of a broader campaign to influence the Fed which included harsh public criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, calls for him to resign, and threats that he might also be fired as part of the president's desire to claim a majority of the seven-member Board of Governors.

There are currently three Trump appointees on the board, not including Powell, who was initially promoted to Fed chair by Trump in his first term but who has been at odds with him ever since.

One of several appointees of former President Joe Biden's at the Fed whose terms outlast Trump's, Cook also is a symbol of Trump's broader frustration with independent agencies as a whole, where his efforts to remove existing policymakers have met with more success.

Cook, the first Black woman appointed to the Fed's Board of Governors, was accused by the Trump administration of misstating information on a home mortgage application, with the president saying that was enough to warrant her removal. Cook challenged her firing and it has been blocked so far by federal judges.

The case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, with a hearing expected in January.

The case is the first time a president’s ability to remove a Fed policymaker has been tested. The terms of the seven Fed board members are structured to limit a president's sway over the Fed, whose decisions on interest rates are considered best made free of political and electoral influence.

Governors by law can only be removed “for cause,” not over disputes about monetary policy, but the parameters around that have not been set out for the Fed.

At a panel discussion at the Peterson Institute for International Economics last week, legal scholars and Fed analysts said they expected the Supreme Court would keep Cook in her position by expanding on a prior ruling that acknowledged the Fed’s unique structure and role in the economy.

But the logic and scope of the decision will matter, particularly to global investors who influence key interest rates through their willingness to buy securities like U.S. government bonds.

So far, analysts at the Peterson panel said, markets seem to have retained faith in the Fed’s ability to avoid undue influence by Trump or sacrifice its inflation-fighting credentials.

Long-term inflation expectations have not begun to spike despite the pressure on the Fed and Cook's attempted firing, and rates on key Treasury bonds have actually eased recently, developments that don’t seem to anticipate a central banking crisis.

“It is much more about the credibility of the overall package and the institutions rather than the specifics of Fed independence. Fed independence is not, in and of itself, the key thing. The key is what are going to be the outcomes, and I think the markets at least right now think the outcomes will be relatively benign,” former Fed governor Randall Kroszner, currently a University of Chicago professor, said at the event.

The people on the short list to lead the Fed after Powell’s term as chair ends in May “are broadly seen as reasonable,” he said, and investors were also assured by Supreme Court language in an earlier decision “saying that the Fed is different” from other agencies Trump has targeted.