With staff gutted, Chicago enforcement hollowed out, and only one commissioner at the commission, Chairman Michael Selig has yet to name a single division head, leaving the nation’s chief derivatives regulator looking directionless as retail futures, prediction markets, and crypto trading explode.
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) ― February 19, 2026 ― It has been 59 days since Michael Selig was sworn in as CFTC chairman. Since then, he has named two senior advisors, a chief of staff, and a general counsel. He has yet to name a single head of any of the divisions that do the nuts and bolts work of the CFTC, or at least are supposed to, assuming there were any employees left to do it. The CFTC full-time employee headcount has been slashed by over 20 percent since the Trump administration took office.
The spirit of the remaining CFTC staff is haunted by the gutting of the CFTC divisions, as evidenced by the recent news about the Chicago offices’ enforcement attorney team. The CFTC staff has been pushed out, forcibly retired, DOGED, and stripped of its mission during the Trump administration.
The lone CFTC commissioner is the perfect emblematic representation of this personnel phenomenon across the organization. He can only be overwhelmed and feel like he’s in over his head as he captains an adrift CFTC.
Selig, who is doing the work of five commissioners and an uncountable number of departed staff, needs to get his act together and name some division heads who can help him and restore some gravitas to the agency. Right now, this commission looks like a trivial regulator, seriously lacking knowledge of the broader commodity futures markets and direction from its leader.
It took Acting Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo all of seven days to name his first division heads, those of DMO and DCR. He also named an acting head of enforcement. Tim Massad took five days to name his head of enforcement. Heath Tarbert took all of three days after being sworn in to name six leadership positions, including four who continued in their current positions.
Giving the new chairman the benefit of the doubt, I find it hard to believe he has not yet found a compatible and competent division director candidate to name. Start like Jesus, and find a rock to build your chairmanship (church) on.
The problem, I believe, is the agenda: to be the most crypto-friendly commission possible. The longer he fiddles like Nero, the greater the risk is for the rest of the industry that is seriously threatened by the largely unregulated prediction markets will burn. The gutting of the Chicago enforcement office and the hollowing out of the Chicago office, the “spiritual home” of the futures markets, have been interpreted by industry analysts as a clear signal that the government is withdrawing from active, on-the-ground monitoring of the major derivatives exchanges.
Former CFTC officials have warned that the collapse of the Chicago enforcement attorney bench represents a catastrophic loss of institutional memory. The pursuit of fraud and market manipulation in complex financial products requires deep expertise that new hires or automated systems cannot easily replace.
This is not something that a glamorous, inexperienced attorney and some good AI prompts can replace.
While direct firings and restructuring were the primary drivers of the headcount reduction, a secondary and equally impactful factor was the wave of early retirements among career staff.
The transition to a “back to basics” philosophy, championed by former Acting Chair Caroline Pham and later Chairman Selig, fundamentally alienated many staff members who viewed their traditional mission as aggressive public protection through litigation.
This “self-selection” attrition was particularly acute among mid-career attorneys and technical experts who found the new administrative environment hostile to their work. The SEC reported a similar phenomenon, with its attrition rate quintupling to 17.8% in fiscal year 2025 as staff walked out in response to the DOGE “raid.” At the CFTC, the loss of staff was compounded by the agency’s much smaller size. At the same time, the SEC lost 15% of its 5,000 employees, and the CFTC’s 21.5% loss of 700 employees left several divisions functionally incapacitated.
The leadership void
After all the other commissioners either stepped down voluntarily or reached the end of their five-year terms without being replaced, leaving Acting Chairman Caroline Pham as the sole Senate-confirmed official at the agency, the CFTC became the “commission of one.”
This leadership void made it difficult for the agency to maintain a coherent staffing strategy. While Acting Chair Pham launched an “Enforcement Sprint” to resolve open cases and secured over $8 million in fines, the broader enforcement output collapsed from the previous year’s of about $17.1 billion to significantly less than $1 billion in fiscal year 2025. The sprint cases accounted for the majority of CFTC enforcement actions in 2025, and total civil monetary penalties were dramatically lower than in 2024, with only a small set of non‑sprint fraud and trading cases adding to the tally. Pham grabbed the low-hanging fruit and then walked away from the tree.
It was not until Michael Selig’s confirmation and swearing in on December 22, 2025, that the agency had a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader. Selig, who had previously served as a senior advisor to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and had a strong private-sector background in digital assets, took the helm of an agency that was significantly smaller and thinner than the one Rostin Behnam had left to Pham.
The CFTC ship is adrift, with a captain but no lieutenants. As part of the hollowing out of the CFTC, middle management was targeted first, stripping the regional offices of their leaders and aggregating power in Washington.
Enforcement is now solely in Washington’s hands, allowing politically driven cases to proceed or be stifled. Given the pardons issued by President Trump, there has never been a better time to be a crook.
This chaotic formula for enforcement is a disaster or a cluster of disasters waiting to happen, given the explosive growth in retail futures trading, prediction markets, and legitimized crypto trading. With the CFTC off the derivatives beat, “God help us” is the last defense.
Or, Chairman Selig can pick a Peter the Rock and start to build a team at the CFTC that the broad markets, not just the trendy crypto crowd, will respect.
