WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday sent the Senate four nominees to fill empty seats at the two agencies that police the nation's financial markets, his first nominations to either agency in about a year. Each agency would get one Republican and one Democrat, and the clock is already running: Republicans lose control of the Senate in January, and any nominee not confirmed by then could have to start over.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, is the agency that watches the stock market and works to protect people who invest their savings. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, oversees futures and derivatives, the contracts tied to prices for things like oil, wheat and interest rates, and a growing share of crypto trading.
For the SEC, Trump picked Steven Levine of Maryland, a Republican, for a term ending June 5, 2030, and Kristin N. Johnson of Michigan, a Democrat, for a term ending June 5, 2029. For the CFTC, he picked Nathan Anonick of Virginia, a Republican, for a term ending June 19, 2031, and Matthew Rowland of the District of Columbia, a Democrat, for the rest of a term ending April 13, 2028.
Levine knows the SEC from the inside. He worked as a lawyer at the agency, including as counsel and deputy chief of staff to Commissioner Mark Uyeda, then served as general counsel at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and he is now a senior counselor at the Labor Department. He would take the seat held by Hester Peirce, the commission's best known friend of the crypto industry, who led its crypto task force before leaving on October 2.
Johnson would move from one watchdog to the other. A law professor at George Washington University, she was a CFTC commissioner under President Joe Biden from 2022 until last year, where she pushed for stronger customer protections and conflict of interest rules for crypto firms. She would take the seat held by Caroline Crenshaw.
Anonick is legislative counsel to Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and was a lead negotiator on that committee's part of the CLARITY Act, the stalled bill to set rules for crypto markets. Rowland is a CFTC lawyer now working for the same committee, where he worked on the same bill, and he earlier worked on Johnson's staff at the CFTC.
By law, each commission has five members, with no more than three from one party. Both are running far below that. The SEC has two members left, Chairman Paul Atkins and Uyeda, both Republicans. Its Democratic commissioners left in January 2025 and January 2026 and were never replaced, and Peirce stayed past the end of her term before resigning last month. One SEC seat still has no nominee at all. The CFTC is thinner still: Chairman Mike Selig has been its only member since December 2025, after the other commissioners resigned or their terms expired.
The short staffing has real effects. The SEC changed its quorum rule in September so it can keep acting with two members, and even with one if the other is disqualified from a matter. Critics say that defeats the purpose of a five member, two party commission, and if Atkins and Uyeda disagree on a matter, it stalls. At the CFTC, the law sets no minimum number, and Selig has been approving rules alone. Both agencies are writing major crypto rules with these skeleton crews.
Confirmation runs through two committees: the Senate Banking Committee for the SEC pair and the Senate Agriculture Committee for the CFTC pair. The Banking Committee has set a hearing on the SEC nominees for Thursday, November 19, a sign that leaders plan to move fast. The Senate is in its lame duck session, floor time is scarce, and the hard deadline is January 3, when the current Congress ends. Nominations still pending then are sent back to the president. After that, a Democratic Senate would run the process, and Trump would have to submit the names again. Pairing one of each party at each agency is built for speed, since each side gets one of its own.
Reaction came quickly. Selig called Anonick and Rowland "two strong bipartisan picks" in a post on X and said he looked forward to working with them. Ji Kim, who leads the Crypto Council for Innovation, congratulated all four and said strong bipartisan representation is essential to writing durable rules. Johnson and Rowland are the first Democrats Trump has nominated to either agency in his second term. None of the four nominees had commented publicly by Friday morning.
What happens next is a sprint. If the committees approve the nominees over the next few weeks, Senate leaders must find floor time in December to confirm them. Success would lift the SEC to four of five members and the CFTC to three of five, the fullest either agency has been in a year. Failure sends all four names back to the White House in January, with a new Senate in charge.
Reporting note: Sources: the White House list "Nominations Sent to the Senate," November 12, 2026 (names, states, seats, terms); reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg Law, CoinDesk and The Block; published biographies of the nominees; legal analyses of the SEC quorum change and the CFTC vacancies by Holland & Knight and JD Supra; and the Senate Banking Committee hearing schedule as reported by Cointelegraph.
