President Donald Trump on Thursday rolled out four nominees to fill empty commissioner seats at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, marking his first round of picks for the two market regulators since 2025 and setting up a sprint to confirm them before Democrats take control of the Senate in January.
The White House named Steven Levine and former CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson for the SEC, and Nathan Anonick and Matthew Rowland for the CFTC, according to a posting on the administration's website. All four require Senate confirmation, with the SEC candidates routed through the Senate Banking Committee and the CFTC picks through the Senate Agriculture Committee before a full floor vote.
The slate arrives with both agencies badly understaffed. The SEC has just two of its five commissioner seats occupied, held by Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda. The CFTC is down to a single member, Chairman Michael Selig, on a five-seat commission. Both bodies traditionally operate with a bipartisan mix of commissioners.
Note: Term dates and seat assignments as announced by the White House.
Levine, an attorney, would take the seat vacated by Hester Peirce, who left the agency in October. Peirce was among the SEC's most vocal advocates for clearer rules on digital assets and led its Crypto Task Force, making her departure a notable loss for the crypto industry's allies inside the regulator. Levine's own positions on crypto policy are not yet widely documented; his background includes a stint as an SEC counselor as well as roles at the Department of Labor, the White House Council of Economic Advisers and George Washington University's law school.
Johnson, who served as a CFTC commissioner until last year, would fill the seat held by Caroline Crenshaw, whose term has expired. During her tenure at the derivatives regulator, Johnson pressed for tougher customer-protection standards and stricter conflict-of-interest oversight of digital asset firms -- a record that could shape how the SEC approaches conduct issues in crypto markets if she is confirmed.
On the CFTC side, Anonick currently works for the Republican majority staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee, while Rowland is a CFTC attorney detailed to the same committee and previously served on Johnson's staff. Both were involved in work on the Clarity Act, the market-structure legislation that has been a central focus of crypto policy debates on Capitol Hill.
Selig, the CFTC's sole commissioner, welcomed the pair, calling them "two strong bipartisan picks" and saying he looked forward to working with a full commission once the Senate signs off.
The timing is tight. Lawmakers are in a lame-duck session following last week's election, and Democrats are scheduled to assume the Senate majority in January. That leaves Republicans a matter of weeks to hold hearings, advance the nominations out of committee and win majority votes on the floor -- a compressed calendar that could leave some or all of the seats unfilled into the next Congress.
The stakes extend well beyond personnel. The SEC and CFTC divide responsibility for overseeing large swaths of the crypto market, from token offerings and exchanges to derivatives and trading platforms, and the agencies' posture has swung sharply with changes in leadership. A fuller roster of commissioners could alter the balance of votes on enforcement actions, rulemakings and interpretive guidance touching digital assets, and industry participants have been watching the vacancies as a source of uncertainty over how far the current deregulatory tilt will extend.
A bipartisan quartet, if confirmed, would also restore the cross-party structure that has historically shaped both commissions, potentially making policy less dependent on the chair's preferences alone. For now, the nominations remain proposals: each nominee must appear before the relevant committee, survive a committee vote and then secure a majority in the full Senate.