Two weeks ago, a three-judge panel from the federal appeals court in Washington lifted a freeze on firing employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with some conditions. The judges, ruling on a Friday night, said that workers could be fired if agency leaders determined, after a careful assessment, that they were not needed to…
At the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump administration officials want to reverse a regulation that has required nursing homes to have more medical staff on duty. At the Mine Safety and Health Administration, powerful lobbying groups have asked the administration to eliminate a rule to protect miners from inhaling the dust of crystalline…
The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved resolutions striking down a $5 cap on most bank overdraft fees and overturning a rule that would have given a federal regulator greater oversight powers over payment apps run by large technology companies. The overdraft fee limit was struck down 217 to 211, with Representative Ryan Mackenzie of…
Years before President Trump returned to the White House, his budget chief, Russell T. Vought, began mapping out a plan to shrink the federal government. In Mr. Vought’s design, spending would be slashed by about $9 trillion over the next decade. Entire federal programs — from housing vouchers to student loans — would be eliminated….
Days before President Trump was inaugurated, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Capital One, accusing it of using deceptive tactics that the bureau said cheated customers out of $2 billion in interest payments on their savings accounts. On Thursday, the bureau abandoned that lawsuit and permanently waived its legal right to ever again pursue the…
Last week, Michelle King, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, sought to reassure Democrats on Capitol Hill about the presence of two of Elon Musk’s allies at her agency. The Social Security Administration keeps medical information, bank account numbers and other sensitive personal data about the roughly 70 million Americans it provides with…
The Trump administration is rapidly delivering wins to American companies by rolling back regulations, pausing investigations and retreating from lawsuits accusing employers of discrimination. A combination of firings, stop-work orders and litigation pauses has hobbled regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Securities…
Barely two days after Russell Vought, the new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ordered the agency to close its office and halt all its work, employees spent Monday in a state of deep confusion about what they should — or should not — be doing. Mr. Vought, the recently confirmed director of…
The day before Linda Wetzel closed on her retirement home in Southport, N.C., in 2012 — a cozy place where she could open the windows at night and catch an ocean breeze — the bank making the loan surprised her with a fee she hadn’t expected. Ms. Wetzel scoured her mortgage paperwork and couldn’t find…
Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” effectively stopping the agency’s operations, in an email from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday evening. Mr. Vought, who was confirmed this week to lead the Office of…