Biden to nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin as vice chair for supervision at

President Joe Biden will nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the Federal Reserve’s next vice chair for supervision, arguably the nation’s most powerful banking regulator, according to people familiar with the matter.

Biden will also nominate Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson to serve as Federal Reserve governors, according to the people, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely.

Each nominee will in the coming weeks face questioning from the Senate Banking Committee, the congressional body in charge of vetting presidential appointments to the central bank. Should the Senate confirm their nominations, Cook would be the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board while Jefferson would be the fourth Black man to do so.

That committee on Tuesday held a nomination hearing for Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Biden chose to nominate to a second term. It held a similar hearing for Fed Governor Lael Brainard on Thursday, whom Biden picked to be the central bank’s next vice chair.

In choosing Raskin for the vice chair for supervision post, Biden looks to make good on Democrats’ promises to reinforce laws passed in the aftermath of the financial crisis and restore aspects of a rule named for former Fed Chair Paul Volcker that had restricted banks’ ability to trade for their own profit.

Raskin has experience at the Fed and served as a governor at the central bank from 2010 to 2014 before serving as deputy secretary of the Treasury under the Obama administration. She is married to Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Powell and Brainard are both expected to clear the Senate without fanfare and with bipartisan support, but Raskin, Cook and Jefferson could see tougher confirmation odds. Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, the ranking member of the Banking committee, was quick to pan Biden’s latest choices.

“Sarah Bloom Raskin has specifically called for the Fed to pressure banks to choke off credit to traditional energy companies and to exclude those employers from any Fed emergency lending facilities,” he said in a statement Thursday evening. “I have serious concerns that she would abuse the Fed’s narrow statutory mandates on monetary policy and banking supervision to have the central bank actively engaged in capital allocation.”

“I will closely examine whether Ms. Cook and Mr. Jefferson have the necessary experience, judgment, and policy views to serve as Fed Governors,” he added.

While Jefferson’s name had more recently come up in closed-door discussions to serve as a governor, Cook’s nomination was well telegraphed. CNBC reported in May that she was the top choice of Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Banking Committee’s chairman and an Ohio Democrat, to serve as a governor.

“With these nominees, President Biden is showing the country what a Federal Reserve standing on the side of workers and their local communities looks like,” Brown…