Politics

A federal judge will determine if the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be held in contempt after firing 90% of the bureau's staff and dismantling all offices.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is laying off more than 1,400 employees just days after a panel of judges said the bureau couldn't fire employees without an assessment of whether the workers are unnecessary to perform the bureau's legally mandated duties.

The New York megabank, which is stuck in the middle of a legal battle between climate groups and the Trump administration, had been ordered earlier this week to disburse billions of dollars in grants made during the Biden administration.

Federal Reserve Gov. Michael Barr — who recently stepped down as the central bank's vice chair for supervision — urged banks and regulators to use emerging technologies to keep pace with bad actors.

Anna Paulson, executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will replace outgoing Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker.

In a post on his social media platform Thursday morning, the president criticized the Federal Reserve's reluctance to lower rates and said the chair's departure "could not come soon enough."

An internal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau memo says the agency will shift enforcement and supervisory work to the states and cease oversight of all nonbanks and Big Tech firms.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Townstone Financial, a Chicago mortgage lender that it sued in 2020, jointly asked a federal court to vacate a settlement, saying the case should never have been filed.

The firing of National Credit Union Administration board members further erodes the political independence of bank regulators, experts say, in a way that could trickle up to the Federal Reserve.

In internal shakeup, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will unify supervision divisions, revive the Chief National Bank Examiner office, and elevate IT oversight as part of a broader streamlining push.