President-elect Donald J. Trump has filled his administration with people who have ties to the right-wing manifesto.
During the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump swore he had “nothing to do with” a right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025 that would overhaul the federal government, even though many of those involved in developing the plans were his allies.
Mr. Trump even described many of the policy goals as “absolutely ridiculous.” And during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he said he was “not going to read it.”
Now, as he plans his agenda for his return to the White House, Mr. Trump has recruited at least a half dozen architects and supporters of the plan to oversee key issues, including the federal budget, intelligence gathering and his promised plans for mass deportations.
The shift, his critics say, is not exactly a surprise. Mr. Trump disavowed the 900-page manifesto when polls showed it was extremely unpopular with voters. Now that he has won a second term, they say, he appears to be brushing those concerns aside.
The agency had been one of Wall Street’s most feared regulators, with the power to issue rules on mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other areas affecting Americans’ financial lives.
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 the charge disclosed anywhere.
Ms. Wetzel made the payment and then filed an online complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bank quickly opened an investigation, and a month later, it sent her a $5,600 check.
“My first thought was ‘thank you.’ I was in tears,” she recalled. “That money was a year or two of savings on my mortgage. It was my little nest egg.”
A serious set of questions should be: Remind me again why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in the first place? What was going on at the time of it's creation? Who fought it's creation, and why? Why get rid of it?