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President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated a slate of top financial regulators, including a permanent head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that his administration has spent days dismantling, according to people familiar with the decision.
Trump picked Jonathan McKernan, who resigned Monday from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board, to lead the consumer bureau, replacing Biden appointee Rohit Chopra, an aggressive regulator whom he ousted last month. He also tapped Jonathan Gould, a Jones Day partner, to be the permanent comptroller of the currency, a bank regulator, and Brian Quintenz to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is likely to have a strong hand in overseeing the cryptocurrency market.
The moves come as Trump and his allies push for a drastic makeover of the financial regulatory system, reversing Biden-era policies that drew criticism from Republicans and industry groups for being too heavy-handed. But in many cases, Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE operation are seeking to go much further to knock down federal oversight of finance, such as slashing the workforces of banking regulators and gutting the CFPB, which was created after the 2008 financial crisis.
It’s not clear how Trump’s selection of several experienced Republican financial regulators, who are generally seen as mainstream picks that will be cheered by industry, will mesh with those efforts to tear down and reorganize existing regulatory structures.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about McKernan, Gould and Quintenz’s selections. McKernan and Gould did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Quintenz declined to comment.
McKernan, a former senior counsel at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and aide to former Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), has served in the Republican minority on the FDIC board since the beginning of 2023. At the FDIC he co-led a special committee to investigate allegations of the agency’s toxic workplace and pushed for reforms. He also sought tougher scrutiny of the stakes that the nation’s largest asset managers have in banks.
If confirmed, McKernan would return to the FDIC board where the CFPB director holds an ex officio seat. But it’s not certain what his agenda at the consumer bureau would look like after the Trump administration over the past several days has moved to shutter its operations.
Trump administration officials and Musk’s government efficiency operation have halted the consumer bureau’s examination of financial institutions, stopped investigations and sought to curtail any new funding to the agency. They’ve also kept employees away from the building and pushed out some of top career staffers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been leading the Democratic backlash against efforts to shutter the agency she helped create, suggested that Trump’s selection of a permanent leader for the agency was almost irrelevant amid his campaign to gut the bureau.
“The question is not who the nominee is,” Warren said in a statement. “The question is whether co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump will let the CFPB continue its work as the cop on the financial beat or will they keep trying to illegally shut down the agency and let Wall Street cheat American families?”
Lindsey Johnson, the president of the Consumer Bankers Association, which has been a top critic of the Biden-era CFPB, welcomed Trump’s selection of a new director.
“We are confident Mr. McKernan understands the importance of working collaboratively with industry on behalf of the millions of consumers we both industry and government serve,” she said in a statement.
Gould would take over as the full-time comptroller of the currency, an independent agency within the Treasury that regulates national banks. Gould, who has been serving on the Trump administration’s OCC landing team, previously was the agency’s chief counsel under then-Comptroller Joseph Otting, a Trump appointee, and served through the first several months of the Biden administration.
Trump’s administration earlier this week installed temporary, acting leaders for the two agencies: White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought as the acting CFPB chief and Rodney Hood, the former top regulator for credit unions, as the acting comptroller.
Quintenz, meanwhile, is set to rejoin the CFTC after previously serving as a commissioner. He currently works as head of policy for venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency arm and is a board member for the CFTC-regulated prediction market startup Kalshi. The CFTC is currently being led by Acting Chair Caroline Pham.
Quintenz would be charged with helming the small but powerful derivatives watchdog before a potential sea change in its authority. The CFTC already oversees trillions of dollars in trading in the U.S. derivatives markets, covering cattle futures, election betting and complex financial products. But the Wall Street regulator is expected to gain new power over the $3 trillion crypto market in the coming years that would significantly bolster its profile in Washington.
“[Quintenz’s] real experience in the crypto industry along with his knowledge of the CFTC makes him perfectly suited to lead the agency — and aligned with President Trump’s vision for crypto in the United States,” Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith said in a statement.
As a commissioner, Quintenz regularly stressed the importance of fostering newer technologies and the need for risk-based regulations. Now, if confirmed, he would take over the agency just as lawmakers weigh a major expansion of the CFTC’s authority over crypto.
The CFTC is currently confined to only regulating derivatives tied to digital assets, such as bitcoin futures — as well as instances of fraud or manipulation underlying those products. But lawmakers have pushed to give the CFTC more direct power over digital asset commodities like bitcoin itself, which has a total global value of almost $2 trillion. And their efforts are already ramping back up this year, as Trump vows to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”
“The future of crypto in the U.S. is bright — it’s the perfect time to build here, and we’re excited about the possibility for regulatory clarity to finally come,” Quintenz wrote in a blog post after the election, along with fellow a16z crypto officials.
Trump has also nominated several people for senior roles at the Treasury Department, according to a document viewed by POLITICO.
He named John Hurley to serve as under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, Treasury’s top official overseeing sanctions.
He also picked Brian Morrissey, a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin, to be Treasury’s general counsel. Morrissey was the principal deputy general counsel under Secretary Steven Mnuchin during Trump’s first term.
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