On September 19, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed Daniel Aronowitz as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) by a 51-47 vote. Mr. Aronowitz was nominated by President Trump on February 11, 2025. A Senate confirmation hearing was held on June 5, 2025, and on June 26, 2025, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) voted to advance Aronowitz’s nomination to the full Senate by a vote of 14-9. Aronowitz brings to the role decades of fiduciary experience, most recently as president of Euclid Fiduciary, a company that insures employers against liability for claims they violated their fiduciary duties to participants (including, for example, by failing to protect 401(k) plan participants from high fees).
During his confirmation hearing, Aronowitz bluntly opined that EBSA has failed plan sponsors, participants, and fiduciaries. Specifically, he stated that “EBSA needs a major turnaround, and I am an experienced turnaround manager with unique fiduciary expertise and experience.”
Aronowitz outlined three goals in his opening statement during his confirmation hearing:
- Improve EBSA’s enforcement of fiduciary law, such as by ending the practice of open-ended investigations that extend for many years, ending EBSA’s historic bias against ESOPs, and ending the regulatory abuse of common-interest agreements with plaintiff lawyers.
- Seek to provide regulatory clarity and end the era of regulation by litigation.
- Champion the cause of encouraging plan sponsors to expand retirement and healthcare benefits to workers.
In response to a question from Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) regarding ESOPs, Aronowitz stated, “I believe that Congress wants ESOPs, and everybody’s for ESOPs except the Department of Labor the last 20 years. And I will end the war on ESOPs. I think it’s the best way for employees to get an additional benefit and ownership in an American company.”
Clearly, Aronowitz brings a different vision for the role of EBSA from his immediate predecessors. Now that he heads EBSA, he may need to overcome the likely resistance from EBSA’s career employees as he moves towards implementing a new vision.
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