Financial Regulatory Week Ahead

Written By Francis Kelly

The House is Gone Until September, The CLARITY Act is On a Knife’s Edge, The CFPB is a Step Closer to Having a New Director, and DoJ’s Antitrust Division Streamlines Merger Reviews

July 27 - 31, 2026

Washington is quickly going quiet in advance of the traditional August recess. The House of Representatives is now gone until September 7th, and the Senate is here for two more weeks before leaving for its August recess.

The House was able to vote on two major bills before they left, including a “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR) to extend current funding levels for the federal government through December 4th. It is highly unusual for Congress to move so early in the year on a CR, but with the very limited legislative calendar between now and the November midterms (by our count, 15 days), House Speaker Michael Johnson (R-LA) decided it would be better to err on the side of caution and avoid a government shutdown just before the elections.

While the Senate is highly unlikely to approve the House version, negotiations between the House and Senate have already begun in the hope that the House and Senate can vote on a compromise in September before the end of the fiscal year, thereby avoiding a shutdown.

The other major bill the House voted on before leaving is a new Reconciliation bill – the 3rd reconciliation bill of this Congress. While the majority of the bill is focused on defense and intelligence spending ($73 billion combined), there is also $12 billion for farm relief and assistance programs for farmers.

With that in mind, there are still several financial services-related bills hoping to reach the finish line before the midterm elections. Perhaps the biggest is the landmark crypto bill – the CLARITY Act – which is hung up in the Senate despite months of bipartisan negotiations.

This past week, a new revised version - 616 pages long - was unveiled. But that giant THUD! sound you might have heard was the Democrats’ reaction to it. The biggest issue is that they are not happy with the bill’s ethics provisions aimed at policing the involvement of senior politicians and government employees. For Senate Democrats looking at President Trump’s family crypto business, this is a “Must Do/Must Have” issue. But the White House has strongly opposed all Democratic proposals on the issue – and without Democrats’ support, we think the bill will end up dying this year. However, there are reports a last-minute bipartisan group of senators is working to come up with compromise ethics language – so, let’s see if that works before declaring the bill dead.

Also, this past week, the House voted on legislation restricting the ability of members of Congress and their families to buy and sell stocks. However, this bill is also on death’s door as House Republicans inserted a last-minute provision in the bill that is effectively the SAVE Act – the election reform measure President Trump is demanding that requires proof of citizenship and photo ID to register to vote in federal elections (and no way is going to pass in the Senate – so it either comes out of the bill or the whole bill dies in September).

Also, this past week, Brian Johnson, President Trump’s choice to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), had his confirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee. Our guess is that there is a slim chance Johnson could be confirmed before the Senate leaves for the August recess, but more likely in September. The most interesting part of his confirmation hearing was that he refused to endorse efforts to eliminate the agency. Several Senate Republicans have been seeking either to close the agency or roll it up into another bank regulatory agency – something most observers thought the Trump Administration was aiming to do.

Meanwhile, over at the Justice Department, the Antitrust Division announced it intends to further revamp merger review guidelines, as well as present a new model timing agreement. All in all, the effort is aimed at substantially reducing what companies will be required to produce as part of the reviews.

Also of note, President Trump nominated Adam Candeub, the General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, to be the new Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. He will fill the gap created when Gail Slater was fired as Assistant Attorney General last year.

Looking ahead, it is going to be very quiet. No congressional hearings, no major regulatory meetings, and no speeches by Fed Governors or other major regulators.

Below and attached is our report on financial regulatory-related events for the coming week. Please let us know if you have any questions.

U.S. Congressional Hearings

U.S. Senate

  • There are no pertinent hearings scheduled in the Senate this coming week.

House of Representatives

  • The House is in August recess until September 1st.

Federal Department & Regulatory Agency Meetings & Events

The White House

  • ·There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks

Speeches –

  • ·Tuesday & Wednesday, July 28 & 29 – The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets on interest rates. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will hold a press conference at 2:00 p.m. on July 29th.

Conferences –

  • No events are scheduled as the Federal Reserve is in its Quiet Period in advance of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting this coming week.

U.S. Treasury Department

  • ·There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Department of Commerce

  • ·There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Department of Housing and Urban Development

  • ·There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Securities and Exchange Commission

  • ·Thursday, July 30, 2:00 p.m. – The SEC will hold a Closed Meeting.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

  • ·There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

  • Nothing significant to report.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

FINRA

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

National Credit Union Administration

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Federal Trade Commission & Department of Justice Antitrust Division

  • Nothing significant to report.

Farm Credit Administration

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation

  • Nothing significant to report.

International Monetary Fund & World Bank

  • Nothing significant to report.

North American Securities Administrators Association

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Small Business Administration

  • There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Trade Associations & Think Tank Events

Trade Associations

Think Tanks and Other Events

· There are no significant events scheduled at this time.

Recommended Reading/Watching

  • Make IPOs Great Again: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins on Ending Regulation By Enforcement  Uncommon Knowledge/Hoover Institution

    America was an investment before it was a nation.” That idea anchors this video conversation between SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson. Atkins argues that vibrant capital markets are essential to American prosperity and explains why he believes excessive regulation has discouraged companies from going public and innovators from building in the United States. The discussion also covers crypto, disclosure rules, investor protection, and the role of free markets in driving economic growth.

  • Model Risk Managers See Growing Regulatory Divergence Risk Risk.Net

    The first rewrite of US model risk supervisory guidance in 15 years has received a mixed reception from the banks whose frameworks it governs, a Risk.net study finds, even as two-thirds say they expect to revisit their materiality and tiering frameworks and nearly half to redraw the scope of their model definition entirely as a result. Just four of 22 banks tackling the question in Risk Benchmarking’s study deem SR 26-2, the revised interagency letter, issued in April, a significant step forward.

  • The Economics of Regulatory Reform Jeff Rosen/Yale Journal on Regulation

    In April 2026, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued the 2026 Economic Report of the President. Though seemingly not much noticed to date, Chapter 2 of that report is titled “Promoting Prosperity through Regulatory Reform”. the chapter reviews research on regulatory accumulation, and notes that the number of binding federal regulatory restrictions grew from roughly 400,000 in 1970 to more than 1.1 million in 2024, contributing to higher compliance costs and slower economic growth. It cites one study estimating that the expansion of the administrative state reduced annual GDP growth by 0.8 percentage points between 1980 and 2012, implying that the economy would be nearly 25 percent larger today—about $5.4 trillion in additional output—absent that regulatory surge.

Please let us know if you have any questions or would like to be added to our email distribution list.

Francis Kelly
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