By Lindsay Wise
WASHINGTON -- The unstoppable force of President Trump has finally met an immovable object: Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.).
Trump wants the Senate to confirm Kevin Warsh, his nominee to succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. A confirmation hearing is scheduled before the Senate Banking Committee this week. But Tillis has vowed to block any Fed nominee until the Justice Department ends its criminal probe of Powell, related to the renovation of the Fed's headquarters and some of Powell's testimony on the matter. And this time, he's not backing down.
"There's really no path," Tillis told reporters on Wednesday, after Trump doubled down on the investigation.
It is an unusual predicament for Trump, who is used to an iron grip on his party and little to no resistance on Capitol Hill, especially in his second term.
But much has changed in the year since a pressure campaign by Trump and others in his administration succeeded in getting Tillis to drop his opposition to Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary. Tillis flipped from a no to a yes in 24 hours, casting the pivotal 50th vote to confirm Hegseth in January last year.
Five months later, Tillis tangled with Trump over Medicaid cuts in the president's tax-and-spending megabill. Following a heated phone call, Trump publicly accused Tillis of grandstanding and implied he couldn't win re-election in this year's midterms. The next day, Tillis announced his decision to retire at the end of his term.
Now senators and aides on Capitol Hill joke that Tillis is in his "YOLO era" -- leveraging his vote and raising his voice in ways that only seem possible for lawmakers who have embraced the mantra "you only live once" as their careers draw to a close.
Free from political consequences, Tillis increasingly pushes back on administration policies and personnel he dislikes, and fellow Republican senators say Trump is going to have to accept defeat on the Fed. There's no way Tillis will back down, they say, and no way to bypass him under Senate rules .
"If you're asking me if I think that Tillis is bluffing, the short answer is no. Long answer is hell no," said Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.).
"He's dug in like, you know, one of those Missouri mules that sits down in the mud and you can't budge him," Kennedy said. "He's not budging."
Trump's frustration over the impasse had him talking prematurely about Tillis's retirement in his interview on Fox Business Network's "Mornings With Maria" last week. "Thom Tillis is no longer a senator, right?" he asked host Maria Bartiromo. "Well, no, he quit. But he quit."
"I'm not dead yet," Tillis joked to reporters later that day. "I've got 263 days."
The Fed declined to comment. Tillis and Powell have demonstrated good public rapport, bantering back and forth about "Gus," Tillis's dog, in hearings.
Tillis said he also likes Warsh, wants him confirmed and has no objection to a hearing for him.
"He's got some great ideas. I'd love to see him in place," Tillis said. But when it comes time to vote Warsh's nomination out of committee, Tillis will be a hard no if the investigation into Powell is continuing. With 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the panel, Warsh's nomination would be deadlocked at 12-12.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) could try to force a vote in the full Senate, but that would require Democratic votes to overcome a 60-vote hurdle on the floor, and Thune has made it clear that isn't a realistic way forward.
Thune told reporters this past week that it's in everybody's best interests to wrap up the investigation and that he has shared that message with the White House. "At some point they're going to have to deal with the committee, and they're going to have to deal with Tillis," he said.
A former business executive, Tillis says he is determined to guard the Fed from political interference. "This is fundamental to our banking system," he said. "We have no earthly idea what would happen if, for the first time in the history of the Fed, it's just another agency under the White House."
He dismissed Trump's threat to fire Powell if he doesn't relent.
"Well he can't fire him," Tillis said. "What all of this escalation does is put him further away from somebody I'd like to have as his chair. People can escalate till the cows come home. They can escalate for the next 263 days. My position is not going to change until their posture changes, and then they can roll the dice on what the mix is in the next Congress for confirmations."
The White House didn't respond to a request for comment. A federal judge last month threw out a pair of subpoenas issued to the central bank.
Tillis's stance has made him a hero of sorts to Fed watchers and bankers worried about the Fed's independence.
" I think I have a man-crush on Thom Tillis," read the headline of a Substack article posted Monday by Peter Conti-Brown, a professor of financial regulation at the University of Pennsylvania.
In an interview, Conti-Brown said some Republicans "privately express horror, rejection, resentment, policy preferences that diverge from the Trump administration and then publicly are not just silent in the face of these divergences but actively supportive. And Thom Tillis dissented. He just said, 'I'm not on board with this,' and said the quiet part out loud."
Still, as the standoff drags on, Tillis has refrained from criticizing Trump directly. And in the president's interview with Bartiromo, Trump described Tillis as "a good man."
At one point, Trump even seemed to acknowledge that he might have been outmaneuvered. After the president first suggested that Tillis wouldn't actually delay the Fed confirmation, Trump then expressed doubt when confronted with Tillis's statements: "I know he said what he said," Trump told Fox Business. "And maybe it's true. In which case, I'll have to live with it."
Write to Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 19, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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