Trump Nominates Four Commissioners to Fill SEC and CFTC Vacancies

President Donald Trump on Nov. 12 nominated four people — two Republicans and two Democrats — to serve as commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to a White House announcement. It's the first time since Trump returned to office that his nominees for the two agencies include Democrats.

The picks would reshape two commissions that have been operating short-handed while carrying heavy crypto-policy agendas. If the Senate confirms all four, the SEC would have four commissioners and the CFTC three. Both agencies would still need additional appointments to reach their full five-member rosters.

Who are the nominees?

Trump named Republican Stephen Levin and Democrat Kristin Johnson to the SEC. For the CFTC, he named Republican Nathan Ahnonick and Democrat Matthew Rowland.

Levin holds a senior role at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He previously served as deputy chief of staff when Mark Uyeda was acting SEC chair, giving him direct experience inside the agency he's now nominated to help lead.

Johnson is a former CFTC commissioner who left the agency last year. Her background spans finance and academia: she was a vice president at JPMorgan Chase and has taught as a professor at George Washington University Law School. If confirmed, she'd return to a derivatives regulator she knows from the inside — but this time across town at the SEC.

Why does the CFTC slate matter for crypto?

Ahnonick is the Republican senior legal counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee. He played a key role in drafting the committee's provisions of the Clarity Act, the bill that would establish a regulatory framework for the crypto market. His nomination puts a legislative architect of that framework inside the agency that would likely enforce much of it.

He also handled committee work as the prediction-market industry expanded rapidly. That work centered on a jurisdictional dispute between the CFTC and state governments over oversight of prediction-market products that let users wager on sports outcomes — a fight that has grown alongside platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket moving into sports contracts.

Rowland, the Democratic CFTC nominee, also serves as a Senate Agriculture Committee staffer. That means both CFTC picks come from the same committee that writes the agency's authorizing legislation and shepherded the Clarity Act's market-structure provisions through the House.

What happens next?

The nominations now go to the Senate, where confirmation timelines depend on committee scheduling and floor votes. Until then, both agencies operate with reduced benches: the SEC without a full complement to run enforcement and rulemaking, the CFTC with its own vacancies as it handles both crypto market-structure questions and the prediction-market jurisdiction fight.

The bipartisan composition — one Republican and one Democrat for each agency — also signals an attempt to make the commissions functional rather than leaving them deadlocked. Confirmation would still leave one vacancy at the SEC and two at the CFTC, setting up further nomination rounds as Congress weighs the Clarity Act and the SEC continues reshaping its digital-asset enforcement posture. Senate action on the four nominees is the next milestone to watch.