Nothing Normal About This CFPB Takeover
All work at the agency has been shut down indefinitely.
by David Dayen February 4, 2025
On Saturday, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Rohit Chopra, who for two weeks had been hanging on as head of the agency despite clear Supreme Court guidance that directors served at the pleasure of the president, was fired. By Monday, President Trump had named a replacement: Scott Bessent, the current Treasury Secretary. Bessent immediately froze all rulemaking, litigation, guidance, enforcement actions, and even public communications upon taking the role, in order to “promote consistency with the goals of the Administration.” Other than activities that have to move forward by law, the agency is pretty much shut down, pending a review with no defined timeline.
In the grand scheme of unlawful actions taken over the past few days, this development trends a little closer to whatever you might call normal these days. During his first term, Trump replaced the CFPB director with someone already confirmed for another position (in that instance, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney). He was bolstered by a 2020 Supreme Court ruling allowing presidents to fire the director; Joe Biden actually fired Trump’s director faster than Trump did. And a short pause pending a review isn’t completely unprecedented; Mulvaney did it when he came in.
But the fact that it’s Bessent taking over is one red flag, given that he’s the same guy who gave Elon Musk access to the Treasury’s payment system over the weekend. The fact that Musk has expressed his eagerness to “Delete CFPB” is another red flag. Because for all intents and purposes, CFPB is deleted at the moment, despite being an agency established by Congress to protect consumers and enforce a number of financial laws going back decades.
Musk, of course, wants to turn his social media platform X into an everything app like WeChat in China, and that very much includes financial operations. Just last week, X made a deal with Visa to become a partner in its Money Account, a Venmo-like tool for peer-to-peer payments. He most certainly does not want an active consumer agency snooping around while he sets this up.
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-02-04-nothing-normal-about-this-cfpb-takeover/
Gangsters.
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