Turn up the volume on your real estate success at Inman On Tour: Nashville! Connect with industry trailblazers and top-tier speakers to gain powerful insights, cutting-edge strategies, and invaluable connections. Elevate your business and achieve your boldest goals — all with Music City magic. Register now.
The National Association of Realtors, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders and several other leading housing groups released a joint letter on Tuesday urging the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Urban Affairs to confirm Jonathan McKernan.
McKernan, a former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) board member and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) senior counsel, has been nominated as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). President Trump fired the former director, Rohit Chopra, a year before his five-year term was set to end. Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought is currently overseeing the bureau.
In the one-page letter, the groups said McKernan has a “wealth of experience” that makes him qualified to lead the CFPB. The groups also said they trust McKernan’s ability to work with “industry stakeholders, consumer advocates, and bipartisan policymakers” to enforce affordable and fair lending practices.
“We represent a broad range of housing industry and consumer advocacy leaders and experts, and we all agree that we need safe and affordable lending, and resilient, liquid markets that better serve borrowers and support affordable housing,” the letter read. “These are principles we know that you as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee share, as well as the broader membership of the committee.”
“The CFPB provides an important role in ensuring consumer protections, and it also provides critical functions that support the operation of the mortgage market,” it added. “Mr. McKernan brings a wealth of experience in housing finance and financial regulation. He has the expertise and thoughtfulness necessary to support a transparent, effective Bureau that upholds both its responsibility to consumers and the housing market.”
If confirmed, McKernan will be taking over a CFPB in limbo.
In his 19 days as acting director, Vought has halted supervision activity, investigations and enforcement actions, suspended the effective dates of pending final rules, slashed the bureau’s budget and closed the CFPB headquarters.
On Sunday, President Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk revealed plans to permanently shutter the CFPB, further stoking fears about the government’s ability to properly function as Musk releases — and retracts — termination notices to thousands of federal employees.
However, Trump and Musk reversed course on Monday. Vought filed a motion in the CFPB union’s lawsuit against the Administration the same day, noting “there will continue to be a CFPB.” The Acting Director argued the plaintiffs overreacted to his actions, noting that halting operations and closing the HQ weren’t signs that the CFBP would close.
“Incoming Presidents of both parties have routinely issued directives that pause policy-related decision-making to allow the reevaluation of those policies that were under consideration or under development but not finalized by the prior administration,” Vought said in the motion, according to a Politico report. “Remarkably, the CFPB employee groups and other Plaintiffs now spin these actions and others as being part of a coordinated campaign by the new administration to eliminate the CFPB.”
“Because the public has an interest in ensuring that an agency can carry out its statutory duties in line with the policy priorities of the democratically elected administration, the public interest and balance of the equities tip in Defendants’ favor,” he added.
The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing Thursday to consider McKernan’s nomination and several others, including Bill Pulte, who was nominated last month to head Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the committee, published a letter to McKernan Tuesday decrying what she characterized as “illegal efforts to dismantle the CFPB.”
Warren asked McKernan if he thought the CFPB can perform its duties with 100 employees and, if not, whether he would commit to rehiring more than 100 staffers she said have already lost their jobs.
Warren warned McKernan he “must demonstrate” at his confirmation hearing “that you are willing and able to advocate for consumers, the CFPB, and the robust enforcement of consumer protection law, no matter the directives you receive to the contrary.”
