Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Sunday he would stop blocking Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Federal Reserve chair, ending a months-long standoff and handing South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott — chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — the majority needed to advance Warsh’s nomination as early as Wednesday.
Tillis had refused to support any Fed nominee while the Justice Department maintained a criminal investigation into current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The probe, opened in November 2025, targeted Powell’s oversight of a $2.5 billion renovation of Fed buildings in Washington. A federal judge quashed the DOJ’s subpoenas in March, ruling they were designed to pressure Powell into resigning rather than to pursue a genuine crime. The standoff broke Friday when U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro closed the inquiry and handed it to the Fed’s inspector general. Tillis said he received assurances the case was completely concluded.
The Senate Banking Committee votes April 30. The panel runs 13 Republicans to 11 Democrats; Tillis’s reversal secures Scott’s majority over unified Democratic opposition. Powell’s chair term expires May 15, and the Senate has confirmed a Fed chair in under three weeks only once. Powell has said he would serve as acting chair if Warsh is not seated by that date. Warsh, a former Fed governor from 2006 to 2011 nominated by Trump in January, told Scott’s committee at his April 21 hearing that he planned to overhaul the Fed’s inflation metrics and cooperate more closely with the Treasury on non-monetary policy. Democrats on the panel called him a White House accommodationist lacking genuine independence.
The outcome carries direct stakes for Upstate South Carolina. BMW Manufacturing runs its flagship U.S. plant in Spartanburg County, and Michelin operates its North American headquarters from Greenville — two pillars of a regional manufacturing economy sensitive to rate decisions and industrial borrowing costs. Scott has championed Warsh as a nominee who will keep the Fed focused on monetary policy. With Tillis committed, the confirmation path runs through Scott’s committee room Wednesday morning.
