Thom Tillis agrees to move forward with Kevin Warsh’s Fed nomination
By Auzinea Bacon, CNN
(CNN) — Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who sits on the banking committee that approves Federal Reserve nominees, said Sunday he will support Kevin Warsh’s appointment as the next Fed chair.
“I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh. I think he’s going to be a great Fed Chair,” Tillis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Tillis had previously blocked a vote to move forward with Warsh’s nomination due to the Justice Department’s probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends on May 15. The probe was dropped on Friday.
Tillis said in a statement Sunday that the DOJ’s investigation “was a serious threat” to the central bank’s independence.
“If we had allowed this (investigation) to occur, I think it would have had devastating consequences for our financial systems and the markets worldwide,” Tillis said.
The investigation was launched after months of President Donald Trump’s complaints about lower interest rates and accusations of impropriety and incompetence in Powell’s leadership of the central bank’s multibillion-dollar renovation project at its Washington, DC, headquarters.
“I feel like there were prosecutors in DC that thought this was going to be a lever to have Mr. Powell leave early,” Tillis said Sunday, adding that he has been assured an appeal would not be used to reopen an investigation.
Trump has railed against Powell for not lowering interest rates faster and has signaled that he wanted to fire the chair. Trump said he expects the new Fed chair to lower interest rates, and joked that he would sue Warsh if he didn’t cut rates if confirmed to the role.
Tillis agreed with Trump’s demands to lower inflation, saying Sunday that “we’ve got to deal with the affordability problem.”
“But you’ve got to do it by the rules,” he said, adding that he believes Warsh will act independently and Trump may be annoyed “once or twice.”
On Tuesday, Warsh was pressed by lawmakers about monetary policy and whether the central bank will operate independently from the White House. If the Trump administration were to chip away at the Fed’s independence, it could pave the way for political interference in setting interest rates for the world’s largest economy.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the leading Democrat on the banking committee, asked Warsh to “name one aspect of President Trump’s economic agenda with which you disagree.”
Warsh said his disagreement with Trump was that he “was out of central casting,” to which Warren responded, “quite adorable.”
This story has been updated with additional content.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
