Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Minor · Needs Congress

Let the CFTC Chairman remove the Executive Director without a Commission vote

Not started

834 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies

“Amend Section 2 of the CEA to authorize the CFTC Chairman to remove the agency’s Executive Director without a Commission vote.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Section 2 of the Commodity Exchange Act is unamended and no bill would amend it. Under 7 U.S.C. 2(a)(6)(A) the Commission, not the Chairman, appoints and removes the Executive Director; nothing in the 119th Congress changes that. The seven CFTC bills of the window (research and development modernization, the Office of the Chief Economist, proprietary information, international operational improvements, advisory committee improvement, protection of information and data, and whistleblower program improvement) were all referred and none touches the Executive Director. The office continued to be filled by the Commission in the ordinary way: the CFTC announced Marc H. Sielski as Executive Director in 2026.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Queries. bills.ndjson grepped for CFTC, Commodity Futures, Commodity Exchange, futures, derivative and swap: no bill amends CEA section 2, and none mentions the Executive Director. Federal Register full text, CFTC only, since 2025-01-20, quoted "Executive Director": two documents, a Privacy Act system-of-records notice and the whistleblower award proposal, neither about removal authority.
  • The Commission’s own record shows the post being filled normally. Release 9191-26, “CFTC Announces Marc H. Sielski as Executive Director” (https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9191-26), is a lead about the office existing, not Evidence about the removal power, and is not cited in evidence.
  • Adjacent but not this ask: Executive Order 14215 of 2025-02-18, Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/24/2025-03063/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies), read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-02-24/html/2025-03063.htm, strengthens presidential and OMB control over independent regulatory agencies including the CFTC — OIRA review of significant regulatory actions, OMB performance standards for agency heads, apportionment adjustments, a White House Liaison post — but says nothing about the removal of an agency’s Executive Director and does not shift that power from the Commission to the Chairman.
  • cftc.gov is open and its whole press-release index for the window was swept; nothing announces a legislative proposal on section 2.
Action
other
Object
Section 2 of the Commodity Exchange Act (removal of the CFTC Executive Director)
ID
2157