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Keeping Up With Shifting SEC Priorities

By Courtney Quirós and Carissa Lavin
September 30, 2025

The first half of 2025 brought seismic shifts in leadership, structure, procedures and priorities at the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the appointment of the new Chairman, Paul S. Atkins, and new Director of the Division of Enforcement, Judge Margaret Ryan; reorganization under new deputy enforcement directors for three newly created regions; a 15% reduction in workforce; elimination of the delegation of authority that empowered the SEC’s enforcement staff to issue subpoenas in investigations; and a “major course correction” related to the SEC’s regulatory priorities, to name a few. Many attribute these developments to the SEC’s effort to align with the Trump Administration’s policy initiatives and objectives. Take, for example, the SEC’s withdrawal of 14 major rule proposals issued by the previous Administration. The abandoned rules included proposals that would have increased disclosure requirements related to ESG-related investments, required funds to tighten up their cybersecurity risk management practices, and placed additional guardrails on the treatment of customer cryptocurrency assets — hardly priorities of the current Administration. The SEC has characterized this sea change as a return to the SEC’s “roots of promoting, rather than stifling, innovation.”

Last month, federal regulators, including the SEC, revealed their new rulemaking agendas. Commission Chairman Atkins touted the effort, saying the regulatory agenda “reflects that it is a new day” given the SEC’s “renewed focus on supporting innovation, capital formation, market efficiency, and investor protection.” Highlights from the new agenda include new rule proposals for the offer and sale of crypto assets meant to clarify the regulatory framework for those assets, a number of proposed deregulatory rules intended to reduce compliance and disclosure burdens and facilitate capital formation, and withdrawal of items introduced during the prior Administration that the current SEC deemed incongruent with its goal that regulation be “smart, effective, and appropriately tailored” to the SEC’s statutory authority.

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