The Senate Banking Committee advanced Kevin Warsh's nomination to chair the Federal Reserve on a 13-11 party-line vote April 29, with Senator Thom Tillis releasing his hold after the Justice Department dropped its criminal investigation into Jerome Powell. [1] Floor confirmation tees up by May 15, the day Powell's chairmanship ends. The handover is now T-10. [2]

The paper's Fed holds 8-4 in Powell's final meeting as Warsh takes the chair May 15 carried the April 29 hold and the four-dissent split — the most at any single FOMC meeting since October 1992. The Tuesday register is the structural one. Powell confirmed at the post-meeting press conference he will remain on the Federal Reserve Board as governor, his term extending to January 2028. [3] No chair since Marriner Eccles in 1948 has chosen to remain on the Board after stepping down. The decision is the institutional brake. Warsh inherits a chair's bully pulpit but a one-of-twelve vote — and a Committee already split eight-to-four.

Warsh's first job is consensus on a Committee that fragmented under Powell. Stephen Miran wants cuts now. Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan want the easing-bias language out of the statement. The eight-vote median holds the center. Heather Long's X post tied the inflation pressure cleanly: $1.40 added to the national gas average since the Iran war began, "$70 extra a month to household costs." [4] That is the texture the FOMC's "energy-related transitory inflation" paragraph absorbs without naming. The June 17-18 SEP will be Warsh's first as chair — and the dot plot's signal of whether the easing path Powell drew is preserved or rephased. The current 2026 median dot at 3.0 percent could lift toward 3.25 percent if Warsh validates the three regional dissents; hold or fall if he validates Miran's. The Powell-governor stay-on means neither move can be made without an existing-bench vote.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco