This announcement comes weeks after Commissioners Summer Mersinger and Christy Goldsmith Romero announced that they intend to leave the agency by the end of the month. As a result of these announcements and the departure of former Chairman Rostin Behnam earlier this year, only acting Chair Caroline Pham remains.

While Pham remains at the CFTC, she does not intend to do so for too much longer, either. Pham has made it known that once Trump’s nominee for CFTC chair, Brian Quintenz, is confirmed, she will immediately leave the agency.

As a result of the CFTC’s significant vacancies, many expect and are preparing for disorder. Sharon Bowen, an ex-CFTC commissioner stated that when she departed the agency in 2017, it was mostly due to her experience under a two-member commission. “Having just two commissioners makes routine business difficult, but makes important policy decisions almost impossible,” Bowen said. “Without a full complement of commissioners to consider the far-reaching implications of our decisions, we are frozen in place while the markets we regulate are moving faster every day.”

However, CFTC spokesperson, Taylor Foy, said in a statement that the agency can still operate and function effectively regardless of its commissioner vacancies. “Vacancies do not impact the commission’s ability to vote on agency matters or the day-to-day work of CFTC divisions,” Foy said, per the report.

 Johnson was most notably nominated during the Biden administration. Now that she has completed her three-year term as commissioner at the CFTC, Johnson believes it is time to step away from the role and pursue new opportunities yet to be specified.

With only Commissioner Pham remaining, there are some legal contentions that may be implicated in a situation in which the CFTC is comprised of one member. Many believe that having one member to set forth an agenda can pose issues under the government’s checks and balances system. However, with Pham’s inevitable departure incoming, it is difficult to see if such contentions will be brought.  

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Atkins published a few initial potential questions to be raised at the roundtable in determining whether the CEO compensation rules are not only cost-effective but also necessary for the purpose of providing information that will enable investors to make informed investment decisions.

“While it is undisputed that these requirements, and the resulting disclosure, have become increasingly complex and lengthy, it is less clear if the increased complexity and length have provided investors with additional information that is material to their investment and voting decisions,” Atkins said in a statement.

Among Atkins proposed questions, was the chair’s inquiry into the “pay-versus-performance” and “bonus claw back” rules that were recently adopted by the SEC in 2022. The “pay-versus-performance” rule ultimately requires public companies to disclose in a clear manner the relationship between the executive compensation actually paid by the company and the financial performance of the company itself. Meanwhile, the “bonus claw back” rules originally require companies to adopt policies that require executive officers to pay back incentive-based compensation that they were awarded erroneously.

This announcement comes at a time when the agency has demonstrated a shift toward reducing regulatory enforcement, in line with the priorities set by the Trump administration “The SEC, in its regulatory capacity, is tasked to balance investor protection with promoting capital formation and market efficiency,” according to Atkins. “In years past, the commission has unfortunately demonstrated a tendency to prioritize regulatory expansion over meticulous economic analysis, potentially jeopardizing this delicate balance.”

Since President Trump took office, the SEC has largely ceased pursuing high-profile cases against companies within its jurisdiction and has released staff-level statements suggesting that meme coins and certain crypto mining activities fall outside its regulatory scope.

Regulatory Rollbacks Draw Criticism

While many are in support of deregulation, many have expressed their opposition to it. SEC Commissioner, Caroline Crenshaw, believes that such deregulation may pave a path for a crisis similar to the financial crisis that occurred in 2008. It feels all too familiar to those of us who have lived through 2008,” Crenshaw warned, quoting a report from an independent commission that found that the 2008 crisis was preventable and that “the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks.”

“After a crisis happens, the first thing people ask is, ‘How could this have happened?’ And, more specifically, ‘Where were the regulators?” Crenshaw said. “But before a crisis happens, everyone demands that regulators get out of their way. I don’t want us to suffer the same fate.”

While Atkins has yet to respond to such comments, it is almost certain the agency will address such issues at its incoming roundtable meeting. The roundtable will be open to the public and held at the SEC’s headquarters. The discussion will be streamed live on the SEC website and a recording will be posted at a later date.

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According to the parties’ joint status report, the CFPB renounced an order that initially directed the agency to oversee Google’s payment division. The status report additionally included that Google Payment agreed to drop its lawsuit against the CFPB that originally challenged the order.

The initial order was issued by the CFPB under the former CFPB Director, Rohit Chopra. It represented the agency’s broader effort in exerting pressure on larger tech companies by supervising their consumer financial activities. Such efforts were a priority of the Biden Administration, especially in regulating non-bank financial institutions such as digital wallets and payment application such as Venmo and Zelle.

However, the Trump administration has taken a different stance on such regulation efforts. Since President Trump took office in January, the CFPB has dropped numerous cases against payment application companies and other financial companies. In February, the agency dropped a lawsuit against Rocket Homes that alleged the company of offering kickbacks to brokers who referred customers to Rocket Mortgage. In March, the agency dropped a lawsuit against Zelle, Wells Fargo, and other major banks that alleged the companies of failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud.

Under the leadership of the now acting Director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, the CFPB retracted the Google Payment order on the basis that “extending Bureau supervision to GPC would be an unwarranted use of the Bureau’s powers and resources,” according to the Withdrawal Notice.

The agency continues to display its opposition to payment application regulations and enforcement actions in line with the Trump administration’s agenda. This latest dismissal could lead to additional challenges against regulations aimed at oversight of tech companies.

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According to the bill, the CFPB’s budget would take a big hit as well as its penalty money obtained from enforcement actions. The funds received from these enforcement actions will be used for victim compensation with the leftovers being sent to the Treasury. Specifically, the legislation will require that “if the Bureau makes payments to all of the direct victims of activities for which that civil penalty was imposed, the Bureau shall transfer all amounts that remain in the Civil Penalty Fund with respect to that civil penalty to the general fund of the Treasury.”

Essentially, the CFPB’s budget would decrease around 60% and its funding from the Federal Reserve would be capped at 5% of the central bank’s operating expenses under the proposal — down from the current limit of 12% as laid out in the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Legislation Represents Larger Effort to Cut Government Spending

The CFPB has come under a significant amount of fire since the start of the Trump administration. There have been many efforts by President Trump to dismantle the agency such as attempted mass firings, an order to suspend agency operations, and so on.

This legislation represents a broader effort by Republicans to create at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in order to pass a $5 trillion tax cut as part of President Trump’s policy agenda. “For too long, government spending has been on a one-way ratchet,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., said at the start of Wednesday’s markup. “We are here with one purpose, to do our part to put our nation back on a responsible fiscal trajectory.”

Republicans are in support of this funding as they see it as a means towards diminishing “reckless government spending.” Meanwhile Democrats perceive the bill as hypocritical in that such substantial spending cuts themselves are “reckless.” Accordingly, many Democrats believe that the CFPB runs a profitable business, putting more money in consumer pockets than the expenses it incurs to do so.

PCAOB to be Dissolved Into the SEC

Under the proposed legislation, the PCAOB, known to oversee the audits of public companies, will merge into the SEC. This results from Republican criticism of the agency that it lacks accountability and transparency. The SEC would essentially assume the duties and responsibilities of the PCAOB.

While many are in support of such a significant move, many believe that such a move is not practical. Congresswoman Janelle Bynum cautioned against merging the PCAOB into the SEC, describing the proposal as a significant and potentially risky shift that demands closer examination. She urged Republicans to “pump the brakes” and introduced an amendment that would delay the transfer of oversight authority until the SEC can confirm that the change would not heighten investor risk.

In contrast, many believe that that such a move is crucial towards President Trump’s government spending agenda. “I appreciate my colleague’s newfound passion for fiscal discipline,” Congresswoman Ann Wagner said. “However, the committee print before us today is a result of extensive member input to deliver on the promise to rein in out-of-control spending.  

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According to Papa’s complaint, the girlfriend gained access to hundreds of thousands of Deutsche Bank clients’ private banking information including millions of private banking transactions. The girlfriend was alleged by Papa to be a Chinese citizen with “significant computer expertise.”

As an information technology employee at Computacenter, Papa was responsible for overseeing Computacenter employees working in the Deutsche tech rooms. According to Papa, while he was working his former job, he discovered that a colleague of his gave tech room access to his girlfriend even after being told that he cannot do so by Papa.

“CC (Computacenter) and DB (Deutsche Bank) were immediately aware that this significant security breach was required to be disclosed to the [SEC] due to DB’s status as a public corporation subject to SEC regulation,” the complaint reads. “Public disclosure of the security breach at headquarters would likely endanger CC’s multi-million-dollar contract with DB and significantly damage its corporate reputation as a company responsible for computer system security for major financial institutions and Fortune 500 corporations.”

Papa said that immediately informed his employee of the alleged wrongful access as well a Deutsche Bank vice president Marc Senatore. Papa argued that Senatore as well as his supervisors should have reported the incident to the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, according to Papa, his whistleblower complaint was immediately ignored as a means to protect Computacenter and its $50 million dollar deal with the Bank. As a result, Computacenter terminated Papa on July 31^st, 2023.

Papa’s lawsuit requests of $25 million results from his request of punitive, compensatory and additional damages. Specifically, Papa alleges that both Computacenter and Deutsche Bank engaged in negligence, tortious interference, and other violations of New York Labor Law.  

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The draft provides clearer guidance on when a digital asset falls under the jurisdiction of the SEC, the CFTC, or both. Essentially, the draft would grant power and funding to the CFTC and require firms to register with the it as well. The SEC, on the other hand, would retain oversight over securities and specific hybrid assets. It will also have the authority to oversee digital commodity activities by SEC-registered broker-dealers and exchanges, even though the  firms will be required to register the activity with the CFTC as well.

In addition to allocating oversight authority to the SEC and CFTC, the draft also provides key crypto definitions such as definitions for “digital commodity,” “blockchain system,” and “stablecoins.” In fact, it explicitly excludes digital commodities and payment stablecoins from the definitions of a security.

This draft represents a longstanding effort by the Republican Party to regulate digital assets. According to many, the digital assets market is in need of regulation as it is unstable and dangerous without such.  “We made historic progress in the 118th Congress to build bipartisan, bicameral consensus in crafting a functional regulatory framework for digital assets,” House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill said. “Our discussion draft builds upon that work and provides much-needed regulatory clarity for the digital asset ecosystem by protecting consumers and safeguarding the long-term integrity of digital asset markets in the United States.”

Congress in Disagreement as to how Crypto Should be Regulated

Although many are in support of such regulations, many are skeptical of how exactly it will be regulated and whether this bill represents the most efficient and effective way of doing so. Congresswoman Maxine Waters announced that she intends to block the draft as she is concerned with conflicts of interest that may arise from the Trump family crypto investments.

Other senators, such as Ruben Gallego said that he understands the need to regulate digital assets but yet finds issue with how the bill itself addresses such a use. “[T]he bill as it currently stands still has numerous issues that must be addressed, including adding stronger provisions on anti-money laundering, foreign issuers, national security, preserving the safety and soundness of our financial system, and accountability for those who don’t meet the act’s requirement,” a group of Democratic Senators led by Gallego said. Although they are against the bill’s current version, they are “eager to continue working with our colleagues to address these issues.”

While both the Democratic and Republican parties are in agreement that the digital asset market should be a regulated one, the parties are in some sort of disagreement as to how exactly it should be regulated. Additional hearings are scheduled to take place to hear each side’s views on the matter.  

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The panel’s decision comes almost a month after an appeals court modified a trial court’s order which effectively allowed the CFPB to engage in mass firing after conducting a “particularized assessment” of each fired employee. Under this order, the CFPB was required to show that any dismissed employees were in fact “unnecessary expenses” to the agency.

The D.C. panel specifically defined “particularized assessment” as involving “a determination, conducted by the decisionmaker responsible for the reduction in force, that each division or office within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be able to perform any statutorily required duties of that division or office without the employees subject to the reduction in force.”

The complete ban of mass firings issued by the panel comes as a result of a dispute on whether the CFPB Director, Russell Vought, can execute the mass firings while in compliance with the panel’s definition of “particularized assessment.” Many top officials within the CFPB believe that the agency only requires around 200 employees to satisfy its duties and responsibilities such as supervising banks and enforcing consumer financial law. However, many agency employees believe that mass firings would essentially render it impossible for the CFPB to function properly.

The panel’s decision, although not permanent, effectively prohibits the CFPB from pursuing “reductions-in-force”.  According to the panel, it is best to restore the block of mass firings while the parties battle it out in court. By doing so, CFPB employees would still be protected in the case that President Trump loses.

The decision will ultimately be in effect until the panel rules on the original trial court’s injunction issued by Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Judge Jackson initially imposed the injunction that prohibited the CFPB from conducting mass employee firings but also deleting agency data, permanently shredding service contracts, idling employees with stop-work orders or taking the agency’s complaint-handling functions offline. Judge Jackson based her ruling on evidence that showed Director Vought’s “a hurried effort to dismantle and disable the agency entirely.

According to the panel, this order “ensures that plaintiffs can receive meaningful final relief should the defendants not prevail in this appeal, rather than continue collateral litigation over the meaning and reviewability of the ‘particularized assessment’ requirement imposed by this court’s stay order.”

“Reinforcing this conclusion, we have already accommodated the government’s interests by substantially expediting the [injunction] appeal, with oral argument scheduled less than three weeks from today,” the order added. “At that time, we will carefully consider the separation of powers and other arguments raised by the parties.”

One of the panel judges, Judge Rao, dissented from the decision to restore the injunction. He said that the panel’s order raises many separation of power issues and that the CFPB should be permitted to follow President Trump’s orders. Specifically, Judge Rao said that “because the preliminary injunction entered by the district court raises serious separation of powers concerns and has paved the way for ongoing judicial supervision of an executive branch agency, I would continue the stay pending appeal.”

The CFPB has come under fire recently for its series of voluntary lawsuit dismissals against banks and other financial institutions. The agency recently dropped its $2.25 million student loan debt collection against the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts. The lawsuit aimed at defending college students after they allegedly became victims of deceptive and unfair debt collection litigation strategies.  

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President Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya on March 27^th of this year. Slaughter and Bedoya were the only two Democratic FTC Commissioners. They brought a lawsuit against Trump, alleging that his removal of them was unlawful under a 1935 Supreme Court case of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that FTC Commissioners can only be removed for cause. However, Supreme Court rulings since then have indicated that there may be exceptions to the Humphrey’s Executor ruling.

The Court’s ruling in Seila Law v. CFPB indicated that there may be an exception to the Humphrey ruling in holding that it is unconstitutional for an administrative agency to be headed by a single director not removable by the president at will. Many point to the distinction, however, that in Seila Law the agency in question was headed by one director whereas the FTC has multiple commissioners.

The Trump response attacked the ruling in Humphrey’s Executor by saying that much has changed since that case was decided in 1935 including the added decision in cases such as Seila Law and that Humphrey’s Executor is an actually an exception and not the governing law. “The Supreme Court’s characterization of the FTC in [Humphrey’s Executor v. United States] — as primarily a legislative or judicial aid that prepared reports and recommendations for the Congress and the judiciary — bears no resemblance to the FTC today,” President Trump’s response said. “FTC commissioners must therefore be removable at will to ensure they, like the rest of the executive branch, are accountable to the people who elect the president.”

FTC Commissioners Defend Their Position 

Amit Agarwal, the attorney for Slaughter and Bedoya, said that to allow such firings is to against centuries of cases decided by the Supreme Court. He added that the idea that the constitution gives the president unlimited power to fire FTC commissioners is a “radical” one. “In fact, it ignores nearly a century of settled law that limits the circumstances under which a president can remove commissioners,” Agarwal said. “Americans are seeing right now how much damage a president can do by wielding unchecked power over the economy.”

“This isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans or liberals vs. conservatives — it’s about a stable economy governed by laws rather than political whims,” Agarwal added. “The extraordinary intrusion here is the president’s attempt to give himself a power Congress withheld for good reason.”

Slaughter and Bedoya have received support from most of the Democrats in Congress. Attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief in support of the former commissioners, arguing that their dismissals violated federal law, which restricts their removal to instances where cause is demonstrated.  

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The DMA requires that companies provide consumers with options on how their personal data is used in order to ensure fair business practices within the tech sector. Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple’s App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases. However, the EU found that Apple imposed numerous restrictions that effectively restricted consumers from doing so. The EU found that consumers could not fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. Apple did not adequately show that these restrictions are objectively necessary and thus were in violation of the DMA’s anti-steering obligation.

Meta “Consent or Pay” Advertising Model Illegal

In regard to Meta, the EU found that the social media platform giant violated the DMA by not allowing its users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data. Under the DMA, companies such as Meta are required to seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between services. Those users who do not consent must have access to a less personalized but equivalent alternative.

“In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary “Consent or Pay” advertising model. Under this model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between consenting to personal data combination for personalized advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service,” according to the EU. “However, according to the EU, this model is not compliant with the DMA “as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads’ service.”

Ultimately, the “Consent or Pay” model which provided users of Facebook and Instagram with an option to either consent to their personal data being used for advertisements or paying a subscription for an ad-free service was in violation of the DMA. However, since Meta did not provide an option to opt-in into a service that used less of their personal service, the EU found such a model noncompliant.

According to the EU, Meta introduced another version of the free personalized ads model, offering a new option that allegedly uses less personal data to display advertisements. The EU is currently analyzing the model to assess whether it is compliant with the DMA.

“Apple and Meta have fallen short of compliance with the DMA by implementing measures that reinforce the dependence of business users and consumers on their platforms,” Teresa Ribera, an executive vice president at the European Commission, said. “We have taken firm but balanced enforcement action against both companies, based on clear and predictable rules.”

Both companies are expected to appeal the decisions however, each are required to comply with the decision within 60 days or else will be subject to additional fines.  

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According to the FTC, the path to Uber One cancellation was a messy and confusing one. When customer tried to cancel their subscriptions, they were taken to multiple screens, all of which did not provide a clear option to cancel. Specifically the complaint states that “For any consumer wishing to cancel Uber One, defendants require them to take at least 12 different actions and navigate a maze of at least 7 screens, if they guess the right paths to use, despite there being no mention of cancellation until the fourth screen.”

“Americans are tired of getting signed up for unwanted subscriptions that seem impossible to cancel,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. “The Trump-Vance FTC is fighting back on behalf of the American people. Today, we’re alleging that Uber not only deceived consumers about their subscriptions but also made it unreasonably difficult for customers to cancel.”

In its complaint, the FTC alleges that Uber used deceptive billing and cancellation practices. For example, the complaint alleges:

• When signing up for Uber One, customers are wrongly promised savings of $25 a month. Even if that were true, Uber does not account for the cost of the subscription (up to $9.99/month) when calculating those savings. The company also obscures material information about the subscription (for example, by using small, greyed out text which consumers can easily miss). Many consumers say they were enrolled without consent; the complaint quotes one consumer saying they were charged despite not even having an Uber account.
• After sign-up, Uber charges consumers before their billing date. For example, some consumers who signed up for a free trial say they were automatically charged for the service before the free trial ended even though Uber promises customers the ability to cancel at no charge during the trial period.
• When customers try to cancel, Uber makes it extremely difficult. Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel. If a customer tries to proceed with cancellation, Uber can require them to say why they want to cancel, urge them to pause their membership or, if that failed, present them with offers to stay. Some users are told they have to contact customer support to cancel but are given no way to contact them; others claim that Uber charged them for another billing cycle after they requested cancellation and were waiting to hear back from customer support.

The FTC alleges that the company’s deceptive billing and cancellation practices violate the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA), which requires online retailers to clearly disclose the terms of the service they are selling, obtain consumers’ consent before charging them for a service, and provide a simple way to cancel a recurring subscription.

Uber denied the FTC’s claims, stating that that the company does not sign up or charge consumers without their consent. The FTC’s investigative process “was rushed, unconventional and compounded by the addition of new and unvetted allegations at the last minute,” according to Uber counsel and former FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson. “It is disappointing to see the FTC stray from the rigor and fairness that has long defined the agency at its best,” said Wilson, who was appointed to the FTC by President Donald Trump during his first term.  

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