Trump’s SEC pick would blow up Biden’s lawless financial agenda



The media’s narrative has done its job. Many Americans now see Donald J. Trump not as a reformer but as a symbol of corruption. That perception is both dishonest and deeply misleading.

The reality? The first 100 days of Trump’s second term leave no doubt about his goal: to reform and remake the federal government.

Reform should mean growing the economy, not growing the bureaucracy.

It’s about time. Too many unelected bureaucrats accountable to no one infest the federal government like roaches, wielding unchecked power over our lives, liberty, and happiness. They treat the mandate for reform as a nuisance. Their mission: obstruct Trump’s appointees and protect the status quo.

Organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Voice of America have deservedly drawn the president’s attention. But many others deserve the same scrutiny. One that stands out is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which repeatedly overstepped its authority during the Biden years, using vague regulatory powers to impose sweeping social mandates under the guise of financial oversight.

Trump tapped former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to fix it. As chairman, Atkins can be counted on to take a best-practices approach to administrative responsibilities and to ensure that the SEC conducts its mission as described by the law: “facilitate capital formation; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and protect investors.”

That’s a welcome clarification of responsibility. Gary Gensler, who ran the SEC for Joe Biden, was often accused of having a reach that exceeded legitimate bounds, as when, for example, he tried to regulate the market for precious metals.

Gold and silver are not securities. Neither are individual retirement accounts. Yet the Gensler-era SEC attempted to assert authority over companies offering precious-metals IRAs to individuals and families who wish to own gold and silver.

As the Heritage Foundation’s David Burton told the House Financial Services Committee in March 2024, “The commission is statutorily required to promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation by responsible participants in the capital markets.” Still, under the Biden administration, “it increasingly does the opposite.”

John Gulliver of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation told the same committee that Gensler’s SEC had “an unprecedented rulemaking agenda that will radically redesign the regulation of our securities markets and will have a major impact on the cost of being a public company and investing in our markets.”

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Photo by Tom Brenner for the Washington Post via Getty Images

Atkins can and must guide the SEC away from such nonsense. As CEO of Patomak Global Partners, Atkins oversaw the development of best practices for managing digital assets. Congress should follow his lead wherever it may go, solidifying his reforms into law and preventing the agency from trying to regulate financial instruments that are not securities.

The overreach matters. The United States is in a race with China for cryptocurrency dominance. The winner gets to establish the terms under which everyone else must live. It’s no surprise that the SEC’s failure to establish what Burton called “basic rules for responsible actors to follow” undermines America’s ability to take the lead.

“I am not entirely sure whether this irresponsible failure to provide basic rules is a function of the limited understanding of those charged with regulating in this area or their desire to simply have no rules so that the commission can engage in regulation by enforcement,” Burton told the committee.

Regulation by enforcement doesn’t just stifle innovation — it cripples the economy. It may also violate new limits the U.S. Supreme Court just imposed on federal agencies in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the Chevron deference doctrine.

But Atkins can’t fix the SEC alone. Congress must step in and rewrite the law to bar the commission from using backdoor tactics to seize authority over emerging markets and financial technologies.

If lawmakers fail, they’ll guarantee a future where financial technology innovation gets strangled in red tape while real fraudsters skate by untouched. That’s bad news not just for entrepreneurs, but for America’s investors — roughly half the population — who rely on strong markets to secure their retirements.

Reform should mean growing the economy, not growing the bureaucracy. With Atkins at the helm, the SEC finally has a chance to get back to doing what it was meant to do.

Trump's Major Supreme Court VICTORY!
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Trump's Major Supreme Court VICTORY!

Supreme Court Rulings TRIGGER Liberals | New SCOTUS Decisions Explained
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Supreme Court Rulings TRIGGER Liberals | New SCOTUS Decisions Explained

Trump's MAJOR Supreme Court VICTORY may set a new precedent for January 6 defendants



In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Joseph Fischer, a January 6 Capitol riot participant, challenging his federal obstruction conviction.

The justices ruled 6-3 to overturn a lower court’s decision that had allowed a charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding — specifically, the congressional certification of President Biden’s victory.

Like Fischer, there are over 300 defendants charged with “obstruction of an official proceeding.” Now that a new precedent has been set, these defendants may be able to look forward to similar outcomes.

“Long story short, the Court today had a very sound ruling when it comes to statutory interpretation 101 first principles. They said that this is an incorrect reading of the statute and the practical fact is that a lot of the J6ers should have their sentences heavily reduced if not thrown out altogether,” legal expert Josh Hammer tells Sara Gonzales.

Not only does this ruling affect those who were at the Capitol on January 6 — but it also is great news for former President Donald Trump.

“I think two of the four counts against Donald Trump in the Washington, D.C., indictment are now in very, very serious jeopardy. Those will likely get tossed out as well,” Hammer explains.

While the Supreme Court ruled that the case needs to go back to the lower court to be reconsidered, it shouldn’t matter that the lower court is in D.C. itself.

“They’re going to have to apply this standard still,” Hammer says, adding that “they were pretty clear that this is just not an appropriate exercise of statutory interpretation, so I’m relatively confident that this is going to play out pretty well from here.”

While many are pleased with the outcome, there is one Trump-appointed justice who, shockingly, isn’t.

“Amy Coney Barrett did dissent with Sotomayor and Kagan,” Gonzales explains.

“Amy Coney Barrett is rapidly shaping up to be perhaps perhaps Trump’s single biggest disappointment, frankly, on that court,” Hammer says.


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Democrats PANIC After Biden Has WORST Debate in US History | 6/28/24
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Democrats PANIC After Biden Has WORST Debate in US History | 6/28/24

Supreme Court Strikes Blow To Administrative State, Overturns Chevron Doctrine

The high court's decision marks a major victory for conservatives seeking to dismantle the unchecked power of unelected bureaucrats.

Supreme Court grants review of landmark case that may strip significant power from federal government



The Supreme Court will hear a case in the next term that could remove a significant amount of power from the federal government.

What is the case about?

On Monday, the court granted review of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

The case was brought by herring fishermen in New England, challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service's authority to force them to carry a monitor on their vessels who ensures the fishermen comply with federal regulations. Not only do fishermen not have a say in whether monitors are placed on their vessels, but they are forced to pay the monitor's salary.

The industry estimates the regulations reduces their profits by 20%.

What is the significance of the case?

The Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to answer the following question:

Whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly grantedelsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to theagency.

The case, then, could gut the Chevron Doctrine, established by the landmark Supreme Court case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. in 1984.

"In Chevron, the Supreme Court set forth a legal test as to when the court should defer to the agency’s answer or interpretation, holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable, so long as Congress had not spoken directly to the precise issue at question," Cornell Law explains.

In layman's terms, the Chevron Doctrine significantly empowers the federal government because in the absence of explicit statutory language (for which Congress is responsible), the courts defer to the executive branch's "reasonable" statutory interpretation.

Unsurprisingly, those interpretations almost always favor the federal government because the definition of "reasonable" has been stretched beyond reason.

The potential implications of Loper Bright cannot be ignored because the government stands to lose a significant amount of power. But as law professor Jonathan Adler explained, the Supreme Court is not likely to overrule Chevron altogether.

"[I]t is more likely the Court merely takes the opportunity to narrow the doctrine and make clear that statutory silences and ambiguities should not be construed as grants of agency authority," Alder reacted.

Ironically, the case made it to the Supreme Court because the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals applied Chevron deference, ruling 2-1 that the government is justified in its interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Thus, they ruled the monitor program, which hamstrings herring fishermen, is legal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals until last June, recused herself from the case.

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