We stand in solidarity with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the millions of Black people subject to racial oppression, violence, and murder at the hands of the police and of white supremacists.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last night that seeks to give more power to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cleave through the supposed “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal government. The team is being given broad permission by Trump to disrupt work at key agencies and cut jobs. This expanded power likely means even more chaos within federal agencies, but for a specific preview of what’s to come—and the potential consequences for Americans—look no further than the past week at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
As Christine Chen Zinner, a senior policy counsel at the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform, pointed out in an interview, the agency has been politically under siege since its creation. “We have a bad feeling about the direction that it’s going,” she said. “This is an agency that was created after a devastating financial crisis because there were regulatory gaps.”
Americans for Financial Reform along with 17 housing, consumer, civil rights, and labor organizations sent a letter urging the Senate Banking Committee to oppose the nomination of Bill Pulte to serve as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Mr. Pulte’s residential rental real estate investments and private equity background make him uniquely unsuited to lead the FHFA.
Americans for Financial Reform along with 23 consumer, civil rights, community, labor, faith-based, small business, farm, and other organizations sent a letter urging the Senate Banking Committee to oppose the nomination of Jonathan McKernan to serve as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB’s Director should preserve the Bureau’s integrity, capacity, and independence and stand up against capricious and unlawful efforts to defund, dismantle, or diminish the agency. Jonathan McKernan fails to meet these standards.
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, led by Chair French Hill, sided with Wall Street banks and against hardworking families by voting on legislation to roll back a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cap on sky-high abusive overdraft fees at $5.
Senate Republicans voted to give Elon Musk and Big Tech the ability to operate payment apps without any meaningful oversight or accountability, a step that will leave millions vulnerable to financial predators and scammers.
A new poll shows Americans strongly support the CFPB’s mission as well as its rules lowering overdraft fees, tracking small business lending inequalities, and prohibiting medical debt from appearing on credit reports.
Today, over 100 community, civil rights, privacy, consumer, labor, technology, small business, and other organizations delivered a letter urging the U.S. Senate to oppose a resolution to rescind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) digital payment app oversight rule.
The Trump-appointed CFPB leadership dropped its case against digital payment app Zelle, a joint venture between Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America, delivering a de facto pardon to the company for failing to protect its users from fraud and identity theft that cost customers more than $870 million over seven years. The move comes only a day before the Republican Senate is expected to vote on legislation to permanently weaken oversight of digital payment apps.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund published a research memo, Private Equity’s Silicon Gold Rush, analyzing private equity’s surging investments in data centers used for artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, and cloud computing.
