CONSUMER PROTECTION/LEGAL/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “On Monday [11-27-17], Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, brought in doughnuts. Around the same time, Leandra English, the agency’s other acting director, sent an all-staff email thanking employees for their service. Awkward.
And so it goes in a capital city defined by its dysfunction, at an agency where two public servants, one a holdover from the Obama administration and another a rushed temporary appointee by President Trump, are messily and publicly vying to lead a controversial agency under constant political assault by Republicans. Ties between the Trump White House and the federal government’s top consumer financial watchdog agency were so frayed by the end of Thanksgiving weekend that hundreds of confused employees came to work not knowing who their director would be…
The bureaucratic roller coaster began with the abrupt departure on Friday of Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee who helped the agency aggressively expand its powers to punish rule-breaking companies. He named Ms. English as his acting deputy director and presumed acting director. The White House responded forcefully by saying Mr. Mulvaney, currently the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be the one in control until Mr. Trump decided on a permanent successor, whose confirmation could take months.”
-Katie Rogers, “2 Bosses Show Up to Lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” The New York Times online, Nov. 27, 2017