Last February, Trump appointed Russell Vought, White House budget director, as acting director of the CFPB. Vought was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for the abolition of the agency. He has since ordered CFPB employees to stop all work, dropped dozens of pending enforcement cases and tried to fire most of the agency’s staff, a move blocked by a federal judge in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the agency’s staff union. Recent court filings reveal agency leadership aims to reduce the agency’s headcount from 1,174 to 556. [...]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to enforce federal consumer financial law, promote fair competition, protect people from deceptive or predatory financial products and compel companies to engage with consumers when they file complaints.
Since its inception, the bureau has returned more than $21bn to consumers through monetary compensation and canceled debts. A Democratic Senate banking committee report released this year found the Trump administration’s gutting of the bureau and moves to rescind industry regulations have already cost consumers billions in the past year.
by Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa, The Guardian | Read more:
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[ed. ... and the hits keep coming. See below. Until his supporters say enough is enough, we and they will continue to get screwed. The most relevant question now is if it's even possible to ever recover. Always easier to destroy than to create. See also: Why are US consumers so angry? It’s not just high prices (Guardian).]
