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The Trump administration will withdraw its nomination of attorney Jonathan McKernan to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as CFPB acting director Russell Vought presses forward with what Democratic lawmakers claim are efforts to dismantle the bureau.
In the latest development, Vought on Monday rescinded dozens of CFPB policy and regulatory guidance documents dating back to 2011 — including some issued during the first Trump administration — on topics including disclosure of consumer complaint data, fair lending, overdraft fees and mortgage loan servicing.
In notice published in the Federal Register on Monday, the CFPB outlined 67 guidance documents to be withdrawn pending further review, including eight policy statements, seven interpretive rules, 13 advisory opinions and 39 circulars and bulletins.
In some cases, the CFPB now claims its guidance relied on interpretations that were inconsistent with lawmakers’ intentions, or imposed compliance burdens without providing opportunities for notice and comment.
But even in cases where the bureau’s guidance is consistent with the law and provided opportunities for the public to weigh in, it’s now the bureau’s policy “to avoid issuing guidance except where necessary and where compliance burdens would be reduced rather than increased.”
While Monday’s recissions are not necessarily final — the bureau “will continue reviewing all guidance documents to determine whether they should ultimately be retained” — they won’t be enforced while the review is ongoing.
“Americans deserve an open and fair regulatory process that imposes new obligations on the public only when consistent with applicable law and after an agency follows appropriate procedures,” the CFPB said in a notice signed by Vought.
The American Bankers Association (ABA) welcomed the move, saying the CFPB has sometimes been too casual about issuing guidance that should have been subject to the more formal rulemaking process.
“While banks welcome guidance that helps them understand and comply with the law, too often in the past the CFPB has characterized something as guidance that is actually a rule Congress requires to go through the notice-and-comment process,” ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols said in a statement. “In the most egregious cases, the guidance announces expectations that exceed the CFPB’s statutory authority.”
As director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Vought is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the CFPB.
With Elon Musk expected to step away from his unofficial role in running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), it will be up to Vought to “lock in” many of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts throughout the federal government, through avenues including the 2025 budget, eliminating job protections for high-level federal workers, and impounding funds appropriated by Congress, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson put a temporary hold on the Trump administration’s move to fire all but 200 of the CFPB’s 1,700 employees, saying she has yet to weigh the merits of a lawsuit challenging the legality of dismantling the bureau.
Attorneys representing the CFPB’s union employees claimed that a DOGE employee who managed the bureau’s “reduction in force” (RIF) team failed to properly prepare a particularized assessment of why the employees it intends to fire are not needed to perform duties mandated by Congress.
That employee, a 25-year-old software engineer assigned to the CFPB in March, owns shares in a number of companies that are regulated by the bureau and was warned by ethics lawyers not to participate in any actions that could benefit him personally, ProPublica reported last week. Neither the employee or the CFPB responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
With oral arguments on the CFPB’s appeal of Berman’s order scheduled to be heard on May 16, more than 200 House and Senate Democrats signed an amicus brief Friday urging that Berman’s Jackson’s order be upheld.
“Without an act of Congress abolishing the CFPB or authorizing the President to do so, [Vought has] no power to shutter the bureau,” Democratic lawmakers said.
More than two dozen state attorneys general have signed a similar amicus brief.
Three of the lawmakers who signed the amicus brief — Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver — made headlines Friday after inspecting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Newark, New Jersey.
While the lawmakers said they were exercising their right to conduct a congressional oversight visit of the newly-opened, privately operated immigration detention facility, the visit generated controversy when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on trespassing charges.
On Friday, Vought’s top deputy at the OMB, Dan Bishop, suggested that those lawmakers and Baraka had “committed an insurrection” and urged law enforcement to “Hunt them down.”
Source: May 9, 2025 post by OMB Deputy Director Dan Bishop on the social media platform X.
Baraka told the New York Times that a security guard allowed him to enter the property through a locked gate, but said he was not allowed inside the facility while the three House Democrats were touring it.
“If I was on that property, I was invited there,” Baraka told the Times.
When the three Democratic lawmakers emerged, Baraka was arrested in what the Times described as “a brief but volatile clash that involved a team of masked federal agents wearing military fatigues and the three lawmakers.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that members of Congress who were at the scene could face charges for “assaulting our ICE enforcement officers.”
Watson Coleman rejected the DHS’s claim in a press release that she and Menendez, “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
“The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present,” Watson Coleman told CNN.
With the fate of the CFPB apparently up to be determined in court, the Trump administration’s pick to lead the bureau, Jonathan McKernan, is set to be nominated to serve in a different role — undersecretary of domestic finance at the Treasury Department.
McKernan’s nomination to lead the CFPB was endorsed on March 6 by the Senate Banking Committee in a 13-11 party line vote, but had not yet been voted on by the full Senate.
In the meantime, the former FDIC board member has has been working as an advisor at the Treasury Department, where he has become “an integral part” of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s senior team.
“His continued service at Treasury will ensure that his experience and expertise are best put to advancing the President’s America First agenda,” the Treasury Department said in a press release Friday.
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