The House Agriculture Committee is pressing President Donald Trump to nominate four commissioners to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), warning that the agency cannot adequately manage its growing regulatory workload with just a single commissioner at the helm.
In a joint letter issued Friday, Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson and Ranking Member Angie Craig called on Trump to appoint a full bipartisan panel of five commissioners alongside CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, who has been the agency’s only sitting commissioner since taking office in December, following a wave of departures.
“The public, the markets, and the agency itself will be best served by a full five-member commission,” the letter stated, noting that a complete panel would produce “better regulations, more durable rules, and more sensitivity to the divergent views of key derivatives market stakeholders.”
A significantly understaffed regulator
The scale of the staffing gap is stark. The CFTC currently operates with around 543 full-time employees, compared to approximately 4,200 at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). With crypto regulation expanding rapidly, lawmakers argue the agency is being stretched beyond its current capacity.
The White House had been weighing a bipartisan slate of nominees as early as January 2026, but Trump has not formally nominated anyone to fill the four vacant seats beyond Chairman Selig.
CLARITY Act expands CFTC’s mandate significantly
The urgency of the letter is tied directly to the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that passed the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 just one day before the letter was sent. The House had already passed its own version of the bill last July with 294 votes in favour.
If enacted, the CLARITY Act would hand the CFTC sweeping new oversight authority over spot digital commodity trading, a significant expansion of its existing mandate and one that would require an extensive rulemaking process.
“Congress and your Administration are also working together to add to the Commission’s work through the adoption of legislation that significantly expands the CFTC’s mandate to bring spot digital commodity transactions under federal oversight,” the letter noted.
Legal vulnerability and the prediction markets battle
Beyond the legislative workload, the committee flagged a practical legal risk: rules set by a sole commissioner are more exposed to legal challenge. This concern is already playing out in real time, as the CFTC is currently locked in a multi-state legal dispute over its authority over prediction markets.
The agency has filed lawsuits against regulators in five states, Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois, in an effort to assert federal jurisdiction over prediction market platforms operating under state gambling laws. A thinly staffed commission, the letter implies, is poorly positioned to sustain that kind of legal battle while simultaneously managing a sweeping new crypto regulatory framework.
The pressure from the committee reflects a broader consensus in Washington that the pace of crypto legislation is now outrunning the institutional capacity of the agencies tasked with enforcing it.
