Free Republic

President Trump will nominate budget aide Kathy Kraninger to be the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a White House official said Saturday. If confirmed, she will replace Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director who has been running the watchdog agency on an acting basis. A White House representative said that Kraninger “will bring a fresh perspective and much-needed management experience to the BCFP, which has been plagued by excessive spending, dysfunctional operations, and politicized agendas.” . Last week, Mulvaney told reporters that he expected to remain at the agency until well into the fall, given the slow pace of...

The Trump administration is disbanding a panel of experts focused on protecting consumers from financial abuse. Members of the panel, called the Consumer Advisory Board, say Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has dissolved the group, which includes consumer advocates, financial industry representatives, community leaders and others. As head of the CFPB, Mulvaney has moved to eliminate or blunt a number of financial regulations, including rules for payday lending, pre-paid cards, mortgages and student loans, while also curbing its industry oversight.

Today’s Wall Street Journal publishes a letter to the editor by OMB Director and Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Mick Mulvaney. In the letter Mulvaney responds to the column by Senator Elizabeth Warren published in the Journal last week attacking his leadership of the CFPB. At NR, Ronald Rubin has another take on Warren’s column. Mulvaney’s letter seems to me a classic of the kind. I don’t think Mulvaney’s letter is subject to copyright and I am posting the whole thing below. Here it is: I write to correct misrepresentations made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in “Republicans Remain...

Driven to desperation by their fury at President Trump’s election, his presidency, and Robert Mueller’s failure to substantiate the bogus Russia conspiracy fantasy, progressives are escalating their rhetoric, and in the process, unmasking their true beliefs. For decades, they have obscured their real goals, and pretended to be interested in moderate, incremental measures that they believe would be acceptable to mainstream Americans. Using terms like “compassion” and “fairness,” they have sought to justify handing more and more power to the state, and the importation of a population amenable to state control of all aspects of life. But in reaction to...

RUSH: Here’s Chuck You Schumer. This is in Washington today on the Senate floor. Audio sound bite No. 24. SCHUMER: Overall, we Democrats are very happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish on a number of very important priorities to the middle class in America: infrastructure, education, opioid treatment, mental health, child care. This spending agreement brings that era of austerity to an unceremonious end and represents one of the most significant investments in the middle class in decades. RUSH: I don’t know, folks. I just want to puke when I hear this stuff. I just want to vomit....

Smug self-congratulation and groveling delight in being praised by progressives. Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. President Trump in his first year has succeeded at realizing many long-time conservative goals like tax reform and deregulation, to name a few. But for NeverTrump grumps, these achievements seem to intensify their bitter-ender anger at a political parvenu. Puffed up with self-regard about the purity of their “principles,” many have doubled-down on their criticisms of Trump’s brash, vulgar demeanor, coming off like the pompous Judge Smails sputtering over Al Czervik’s trashing of the Bushwood Country Club....

Having observed the workings of federal bureaucracies over a number of years, most of you are aware of how the budget process works for the various departments of the federal government. Everyone scrapes and claws for every penny they can get their hands on and studiously ensures that they spend the entire pot so they can ask for more money next time. This is one of the central premises of The Weed Agency (which you should absolutely read if you didn’t catch it when it first came out). But what happens when somebody breaks that mold? We’re about to find...

Left-wing websites led former director's attempt to subvert WH authority Newly released emails reveal the machinations of former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Richard Cordray to appoint his own successor. The failed attempt to install Leandra English as acting director of the CFPB last year began after Cordray found the idea in two left-wing websites, which argued it was "illegal" for the president to appoint the director of an executive branch agency. Cause of Action Institute, a nonprofit oversight group, obtained internal emails through a Freedom of Information Act request between Cordray, English, and other CFPB officials during...

On Monday, banners were dropped by members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa during the Super Bowl LII’s media event warning that “#WeReadyWeComin.”As the two large banners were dropped inside, hundreds of leftist protesters marched in the streets and blocked traffic surrounding the event at the Xcel Energy Center. Many of the demonstrators have formed an Antifa-aligned group calling themselves the  “Super Bowl Anti-Racist Anti-Corporate Coalition.”According to their Facebook page, the group is planning to hold protests every day leading up to the main event. “Their plans will culminate on Sunday, February 4, with a 3pm rally at Peavey Park...

FULL TITLE: After Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Freezes Data Collecting, Sen. Elizabeth Warren Demands Reversal A federal court last week again ruled in favor of Mick Mulvaney as the rightful head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which strengthens his hand on such issues as the recent decision to freeze data collection in light of cybersecurity concerns. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who conceived the idea of the consumer agency, which critics say has too much and often undefined power, strongly objected to the agency’s temporary halt in data collection just last week. “CFPB cannot fulfill its core functions without...

Newt Gingrich said Thursday that Democrats are headed for a major political upset in 2018, mostly due to the mainstream media’s dishonesty and the party’s inability to learn from its own mistakes. “The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory,” the former Republican House Speaker wrote in a column for Fox News. “After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock.” Mr. Gingrich said the...

<p>The economy is booming, with the New York branch of the Federal Reserve now estimating it will grow at the pace of 3.98% in the fourth quarter. That would represent our third straight quarter above 3% economic growth, a feat not achieved in over a decade.</p>

A vandal targeted the home and vehicle of a Donald Trump supporter with spray paint and a blunt object twice this past weekend in Somerville, Massachusetts.The man sported a “Make America Great Again” sign in a window at his home and a bumpersticker supporting the president, along with a National Rifle Association decal, on a rear window of his truck. The vandal smashed the front windshield of the Chevrolet truck and spraypainted “BLM,” an acronym for Black Lives Matter, on the hood. Paint on one side of the vehicle petitioned its owner to “F— My A– Trump F—er.” The front...

ARTICLE DATE 11/24/16...............The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the most partisan agency in the federal government in terms of donations to candidates, according to campaign finance data. Employees at the CFPB, which was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, contributed nearly $50,000 during the 2016 campaign with all of that money going to aid Hillary Clinton or her rival, the insurgent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT). Agency employees made more than 300 donations during the campaign. Not one went to a Republican candidate. Rep. Sean Duffy (R., Wis.), a frequent critic of the agency,...

Sen. Ron Johnson says woman who claims to be acting chief ‘burrowed’ into agencyA top Republican demanded answers Wednesday on how Leandra English, the woman Democrats are pushing to be acting director of the government’s top consumer advocacy agency, managed to “burrow” into her job and outlast the Obama administration. Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Ms. English held a political job at the Office of Personnel Management but managed to convert herself to a career civil service position early this year at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The process is called “burrowing,”...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., led a protest Tuesday against President Trump’s decision to appoint a new leader for an agency tasked with regulating banks and other financial institutions, instead of relying on the newly appointed deputy director. “For six years, this agency has fought for working people, and now it is time for us to fight for the agency,” Warren said Tuesday at a protest rally outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit from an official who claims that she, and not President Trump appointee Mick Mulvaney, is the rightful director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Timothy Berry of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia declined to grant Leandra English a restraining order to bar Mulvaney from serving as the CFPB’s acting director.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney just savaged the federal agency President Donald Trump recently put him in charge of during his first press conference as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney, who has long criticized the CFPB, doubled down on his hatred of the agency which was enacted in 2011 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulations passed in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn. “Yeah, my opinion of the structure of CFPB has not changed,” Mulvaney said. “I still think it is an awful example of a bureaucracy that has gone wrong. It...

Secret donors are financing the lawsuit against President Donald Trump and White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney over who runs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Deepak Gupta, the lead lawyer of a boutique law firm that launched its suit on behalf of CFPB acting director Leandra English, confirmed in a CNBC interview that English is not paying for his hourly fees, but rather unknown anonymous donors are. Gupta refused to name who is funding the lawsuit, making it difficult to ascertain the motives, intentions, or any special interests of those underwriting the case. The D.C. lawyer appeared caught off...

Deepak Gupta was in court once again this week in a role he seems increasingly comfortable filling: representing clients who are battling President Trump. This week, Gupta was in court representing Leandra English, who claims she is acting director Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. When Trump picked Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to fill the position, English sued, arguing that as deputy director the law puts her in charge. ... It wasn't Gupta's first time arguing in court against Trump this year. In January, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington hired him to sue Trump after alleging...