Biden to withdraw embattled banking regulator nominee

By JOSH BOAK
Associated Press

President Joe Biden says Saule Omarova’s nomination to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will be withdrawn. Her candidacy has faced steep resistance in the Senate with Republican lawmakers criticizing her vision for banking regulation and her birthplace in the former Soviet Union. Omarova is a law professor at Cornell University who was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. Several Republican lawmakers have suggested her ideas such as allowing consumer deposits at the Federal Reserve are socialist. Biden defended her by saying she was subject to “inappropriate personal attacks.”