President Donald Trump nominated a bipartisan slate of commissioners for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday, the White House said, sending four names to the Senate for confirmation.
For the SEC, Trump named Republican Steven Levine, a senior official on the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, for a term ending June 5, 2030, succeeding former Commissioner Hester Peirce, who left the agency in October. He also named Democrat Kristin Johnson, a former CFTC commissioner and law school professor, for a term ending June 5, 2029, succeeding Caroline Crenshaw, whose term has also expired.
For the CFTC, Trump named Republican Nathan Anonick, a senior counsel on the Senate Agriculture Committee, for a term ending June 19, 2031, succeeding former Chairman Rostin Behnam, and Democrat Matthew Rowland, a staffer for the same committee, for the remainder of a term ending April 13, 2028, succeeding Summer Mersinger.
The nominations are the first Trump has made to either commission in about a year, and they would replenish agencies that have operated with skeleton crews since he returned to the White House in January 2025. The SEC currently has only two of its five commissioner seats filled — Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda — while CFTC Chairman Mike Selig is the sole member of his five-seat commission. The CFTC last had all five commissioners on February 7, 2025, when Behnam departed.
The nominations require Senate confirmation. The Senate Banking Committee will consider the SEC nominees and the Senate Agriculture Committee the CFTC nominees before the full Senate votes. The Senate is in its lame-duck session after last week's midterm elections, in which Republicans lost control of the chamber — leaving a narrow window for confirmation before Democrats take over in January.
The picks carry particular weight for cryptocurrency regulation, an area both agencies help oversee. Peirce was one of the SEC's most prominent crypto advocates, and Anonick and Rowland both worked on the Clarity Act, the House bill that would divide oversight of digital-asset markets between the two agencies. Selig welcomed the two CFTC nominees in a post on X, calling them "strong bipartisan picks" and saying he looked forward to working with them after confirmation.
If both CFTC appointments are confirmed, the five-member commission would have three sitting commissioners, with two vacancies remaining. The White House has not announced candidates for those two remaining seats.
