Powell named Fed Chair pro tempore as Warsh confirmed as successor

On 15 May 2026 the Federal Reserve Board of Governors named outgoing Chair Jerome H. Powell as chair pro tempore pending the swearing-in of his successor, Kevin M. Warsh, whom the Senate confirmed two days earlier, on 13 May 2026, as the 17th Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.¹² The Senate confirmed Warsh by a vote of 54 to 45, the narrowest Senate confirmation of a Federal Reserve Chair in the modern era and the most partisan vote on a Fed Chair nomination on record; Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was the only Democratic senator to vote for confirmation.³ The Board’s pro tempore action, framed in the 15 May 2026 release as “consistent with past practice during similar transitions between chairs,” fills the procedural gap between the expiration of Powell’s second four-year term as Chair under 12 U.S.C. § 242 and Warsh’s anticipated 22 May 2026 swearing-in for a four-year Chair term ending 21 May 2030.¹⁴ Powell continues as a member of the Board of Governors through 31 January 2028 under the separate fourteen-year Governor term to which he was confirmed by the Senate on 12 June 2014 (67-24) and sworn in on 16 June 2014, having announced on 29 April 2026 that he would remain on the Board rather than depart on the expiration of his Chair term as most of his predecessors had done.⁵⁶

1. The 12 U.S.C. § 242 Chair designation under which Warsh was confirmed requires presidential nomination and Senate advice and consent from among the seated members of the Board of Governors. Warsh was first confirmed by the Senate as a Federal Reserve Governor on 12 May 2026, filling a vacant Board seat; the Senate then proceeded to the separate Chair-designation vote, confirming Warsh as Chair on 13 May 2026. The two-step procedure was constitutionally required because § 242 provides that the Chair be designated “from among” the seated Board members; Warsh’s prior service as a Federal Reserve Governor from 2006 to 2011 had not preserved a seat for him on the Board.⁷⁸

2. The chair-pro-tempore mechanism named in the Board’s 15 May 2026 release is a Board-internal procedural instrument, not a statutory office. The Board’s Rules of Organization provide for the designation of a chair pro tempore by the seated Board members in circumstances where the statutory Chair role is unfilled but the Board is required to conduct business — including the chairing of Board meetings, the presentation of the semiannual monetary-policy report to Congress under the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (Humphrey- Hawkins Act), Pub. L. 95-523, 92 Stat. 1887 (codified at 12 U.S.C. § 225b), and the execution of correspondence and orders that statutorily require the Chair’s signature or authority. The Board’s release flagged the action as “consistent with past practice during similar transitions between chairs,” referring to prior gap periods between Chair terms across the Federal Reserve’s history.⁹¹⁰

3. The 54-45 Warsh confirmation vote on 13 May 2026 sits alongside Senator Fetterman’s lone Democratic crossover in a record of unusual partisanship on Fed Chair nominations. Powell’s own second-term confirmation on 12 May 2022 was 80 to 19; his first-term confirmation on 23 January 2018 was 84 to 13. The Warsh confirmation margin’s contraction reflects Democratic-side concern over the President’s pressure on the Federal Reserve ahead of the 16-17 June 2026 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which will be Warsh’s first FOMC meeting as Chair; Republicans framed the vote as delivering a Chair willing to act on the President’s stated preference for lower interest rates.³¹¹

4. Powell’s continuing presence on the Board of Governors after the expiration of his Chair term is unusual: of the Fed Chairs since the Banking Act of 1935, most have departed the Board on the expiration of their Chair terms. Powell stated on 29 April 2026 that he would remain at the Board “until [he was] confident the bank had fought off the Trump administration’s attacks on its independence” — language framed in press coverage as a defence of institutional independence rather than a continuing policy mandate. The for-cause-removal protection at 12 U.S.C. § 242 applies to Powell’s continuing Governor term but not to the Chair role; the constitutional question of whether the for-cause-removal protection for Governors is consistent with Article II presidential removal authority under Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197 (2020), and successor decisions has not been resolved as to the Board of Governors specifically. The Seila Law majority declined in footnote 8 to extend its holding to the Federal Reserve, observing that “even assuming financial institutions like the Second Bank and the Federal Reserve can claim a special historical status, the CFPB is in an entirely different league.”⁶¹²¹³