I sincerely hope that whatever Democrats or Independents vote for the catastrophic Trump nominees end up getting primaried. Yes, Democrats are in the minority. No, that does not mean folding like a lawn chair to whatever Mango Mussolini wants to happen. At least have enough guts to go on the record on the right side of history. If you have consumer problems in the future, good luck solving them. The Consumer Protections Finance Board has been shuttered and nailed shut. Maybe it will be revived in some future Democratic administration by a future Democratic president but for now, color it history.
In less than 36 hours, Mr. Vought threw the agency into chaos. On Saturday, he ordered the bureau’s 1,700 employees to stop nearly all their work and announced plans to cut off the agency’s funding. Then on Sunday, he closed the bureau’s headquarters for the coming week. Workers who tried to retrieve their laptops from the office were turned away, employees said.
The bureau “has been a woke & weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time,” Mr. Vought wrote Sunday on X. “This must end.”
Created by Congress in the aftermath of the housing crisis that set off the Great Recession, the consumer bureau became one of Wall Street’s most feared regulators, with the power to issue new rules — and penalize companies for breaking them — around mortgages, credit cards, student loans, credit reporting and other areas that affect the financial lives of millions of Americans.
The bureau’s actions made it a lightning rod for criticism from banks and Republican lawmakers — and put it squarely in the Trump administration’s cross hairs.
The agency’s foes have long called for its elimination, which only Congress has the power to do. Elon Musk, the billionaire leader of a government efficiency team that has created havoc throughout the federal government, posted “CFPB RIP” on his social media platform X on Friday. A few hours earlier, his associates had gained access to the consumer bureau’s headquarters and computer systems.
And of course it only gets worse. That is the new normal. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the bureau’s employees, filed a lawsuit against Vought Sunday night. Their argument is that granting Elon Musk’s team of tech bros access to employee records is a violation of the 1974 Privacy Act, a law which regulates how the government handles individuals’ personal information, including health and financial information. Agency workers fear their employment data could be used for online harassment or “to blackmail, threaten or intimidate them,” the complaint said. And well they should be, in this political climate.
Again, the pattern of Trump 2.0 is crystal clear: oligarchy, good. Give oligarchy whatever it wants. Little people? Screw them. Take away even their most basic avenues of redress so that they can be crushed faster and with greater ease.
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