WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Thursday he intends to announce his pick to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, with speculation intensifying that the nod will go to former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
“I’ll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning,” Trump said at the Kennedy Center on Thursday, in response to a question.
The pick is “a person that won’t be too surprising to people. A lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago. It’s going to be somebody that is very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world.”
Bloomberg News later reported that the White House is preparing for Trump to nominate Warsh, citing people familiar with the matter.
Warsh went to the White House for a meeting with Trump on Thursday, according to one source familiar with the matter.
A second source, briefed on the discussion, said the former Fed governor impressed Trump, adding that nothing was final until Trump announced his pick.
Trump wants the Fed to cut interest rates deeply. His escalating pressure on Powell and the Fed for cuts has given rise to the possibility that Powell might remain at the Fed beyond May to try to safeguard the Fed from further political pressure. Powell’s separate term as a member of the Board of Governors runs to 2028.
The Fed, which cut rates three times in 2025, left its benchmark interest rate unchanged in the 3.50 percent-3.75 percent range after the end of a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. Trump says the rate should be two to three percentage points lower, a level historically consistent with a stalled or faltering economy. The economy grew at a 4.4 percent annualized rate in the third quarter, according to Commerce Department data. Over the course of the Trump administration’s months-long search for Powell’s successor, the president has been seen to favor different candidates, even as he has ramped up his campaign to exert influence over the Fed, whose independence from political pressure is seen as key to its ability to control inflation. In recent months Trump has tried to fire a Fed governor in a case now before the Supreme Court, and his Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Powell over cost overruns for renovations at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington — a move the Fed chief has called out as a “pretext” to pressure him over monetary policy.
Four candidates on Trump’s short list
All candidates to take the reins from Powell agree with Trump that rates should be lower. That was one of the president’s explicit criteria for his pick.
On Thursday, Warsh leapt to the top of betting sites’ favorites as a contender for the job, with pricing at prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi both putting his chances at more than 80 percent.
Warsh has called for regime change at the central bank and wants, among other things, a smaller Fed balance sheet, a goal seemingly at odds with Trump’s preference for looser monetary policy. Trump almost picked Warsh in 2018 for the top Fed job, but chose Powell instead, a decision the president has publicly and loudly regretted for much of the time since then.
Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of BlackRock’s global fixed income business, had as recently as Wednesday been the odds-on favorite to be Trump’s nominee. Rieder, who has never worked in government or at the Fed, would bring a fresh face to an institution that the president accuses of entrenched political bias. Fed Governor Christopher Waller, one of two policymakers who dissented this week in the central bank’s decision to keep rates unchanged, is also in the running. He was the first Fed policymaker to make the economic case for lower rates, saying that tariffs wouldn’t cause inflation and the economy needed the support, both arguments that have won over many of his colleagues and helped seal support for the rate cuts last year.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett was an early front-runner for the job but is now seen as an unlikely choice after Trump said he would rather keep him in his current post. Hassett is an economist and unapologetic cheerleader for many of the president’s orthodox-defying policies, including high tariffs and an immigration crackdown.
Trump to announce Federal Reserve chair pick Friday after meeting Kevin Warsh
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Trump to announce Federal Reserve chair pick Friday after meeting Kevin Warsh
- All four candidates for top Fed job support lower interest rates
- BlackRock’s Rick Rieder, Fed Governor Christopher Waller also on short list
Federal agents must limit tear gas for now at protests outside Portland ICE building, judge says
- The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists covering demonstrations at the flashpoint US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building
PORTLAND, Oregon: A judge in Oregon on Tuesday temporarily restricted federal officers from using tear gas at protests at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, just days after agents launched gas at a crowd of demonstrators including young children that local officials described as peaceful.
US District Judge Michael Simon ordered federal officers not to use chemical or projectile munitions on people who pose no imminent threat of physical harm, or who are merely trespassing or refusing to disperse. Simon also limited federal officers from firing munitions at the head, neck or torso “unless the officer is legally justified in using deadly force against that person.”
Simon, whose temporary restraining order is in effect for 14 days, wrote that the nation “is now at a crossroads.”
“In a well-functioning constitutional democratic republic, free speech, courageous newsgathering, and nonviolent protest are all permitted, respected, and even celebrated,” he wrote. “In helping our nation find its constitutional compass, an impartial and independent judiciary operating under the rule of law has a responsibility that it may not shirk.”
Ruling follows a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists covering demonstrations at the flashpoint US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.
The suit names as defendants the Department of Homeland Security and its head Kristi Noem, as well as President Donald Trump. It argues that federal officers’ use of chemical munitions and excessive force is a retaliation against protesters that chills their First Amendment rights.
The Department of Homeland Security said federal officers have “followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property.”
“DHS is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
Courts consider question of tear gas use
Cities across the country have seen demonstrations against the administration’s immigration enforcement surge.
Last month, a federal appeals court suspended a decision that prohibited federal officers from using tear gas or pepper spray against peaceful protesters in Minnesota who aren’t obstructing law enforcement. An appeals court also halted a ruling from a federal judge in Chicago that restricted federal agents from using certain riot control weapons, such as tear gas and pepper balls, unless necessary to prevent an immediate threat. A similar lawsuit brought by the state is now before the same judge.
The Oregon complaint describes instances in which the plaintiffs — including a protester known for wearing a chicken costume, a married couple in their 80s and two freelance journalists — had chemical or “less-lethal” munitions used against them.
In October, 83-year-old Vietnam War veteran Richard Eckman and his 84-year-old wife Laurie Eckman joined a peaceful march to the ICE building. Federal officers then launched chemical munitions at the crowd, hitting Laurie Eckman in the head with a pepper ball and causing her to bleed, according to the complaint. With bloody clothes and hair, she sought treatment at a hospital, which gave her instructions for caring for a concussion. A munition also hit her husband’s walker, the complaint says.
Jack Dickinson, who frequently attends protests at the ICE building in a chicken suit, has had munitions aimed at him while posing no threat, according to the complaint. Federal officers have shot munitions at his face respirator and at his back, and launched a tear-gas canister that sparked next to his leg and burned a hole in his costume, the complaint says.
Freelance journalists Hugo Rios and Mason Lake have similarly been hit with pepper balls and tear gassed while marked as press, the complaint says.
“Defendants must be enjoined from gassing, shooting, hitting and arresting peaceful Portlanders and journalists willing to document federal abuses as if they are enemy combatants,” the complaint states.
The owner and residents of the affordable housing complex across the street from the ICE building has filed a separate lawsuit, similarly seeking to restrict federal officers’ use of tear gas because its residents have been repeatedly exposed over the past year.
Local officials have also spoken out against use of chemical munitions. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson demanded ICE leave the city after federal officers used such munitions Saturday at what he described as a “peaceful daytime protest where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces.”
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson wrote in a statement Saturday night.
The protest was one of many similar demonstrations nationwide against the immigration crackdown in cities like Minneapolis, where in recent weeks federal agents killed two people, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
