The U.S. Senate has confirmed Kevin Warsh to the Federal Reserve Board for a 14-year term that ends in 2040.
Tuesday’s 51-45 tally saw all Democrats save one, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, vote against Warsh’s nomination. No Republicans cast dissenting votes.
The full Senate also voted to invoke cloture on Warsh’s nomination for Federal Reserve chairman, a procedural move that tees up a floor vote, which may come as soon as Wednesday. Fed chair terms last four years.
Warsh, who previously served on the Fed’s board from 2006 to 2011, is a former Morgan Stanley executive who has more recently served as a partner at the Duquesne Family Office, the personal investment firm of hedge fund legend Stanley Druckenmiller.
Though Warsh gained a reputation as an inflation hawk during his previous central bank stint, he has made Fed balance sheet reduction a central tenet of his monetary platform of late.
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal last year, Warsh said the Fed’s “bloated balance sheet, designed to support the biggest firms in a bygone crisis era, can be reduced significantly.”
He is also notably bullish about artificial intelligence, believing it will increase workforce productivity and serve as a disinflationary force.
Warsh faced grilling from Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee during an April 21 hearing, some of whom are concerned that the nominee of President Donald Trump may be under pressure from the president to lower interest rates.
Warsh responded that Trump never asked him to lower rates and “never once asked him” to commit to any interest rate decision.
The imminent confirmation of Warsh as Fed chair comes just days before Jerome Powell’s term expires on May 15.
Powell disclosed during a press conference on April 29 that he plans to remain on the Fed’s board until he is confident that a legal probe by the Department of Justice into a renovation project at the central bank’s headquarters is fully resolved.
That means Warsh will take Stephen Miran’s seat on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board. Miran, who became a temporary Fed governor in September 2025, remained in place for an additional two meetings due to uncertainty over whether Powell would choose to remain on the board after his chair term ended.
Miran registered formal dissents at each of the six meetings he attended — on each occasion voting for lower interest rates than the consensus. Most recently, he voted for a 0.25% reduction to the federal funds rate at the April meeting when interest rates were left unchanged.
Three other Fed policymakers broke ranks at the April meeting — the most since 1992 — though they dissented in the opposite direction, objecting to an “easing bias” in the policy statement implying that the next directional rate move will be a rate cut.
This unusual level of central bank division means Warsh will be faced with the challenge of building consensus around his monetary vision amid ongoing economic uncertainty wrought by the war in Iran.
