The Shootout at the CFPB Corral Is On

Evan Walker/Planet Pix via ZUMA

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So Mick Mulvaney showed up at CFPB headquarters today to take over as director. Presumably, so did Leandra English:

Their duel was set for high noon—Excel spreadsheets at twenty paces—but there’s no word yet on how that turned out.

As a reminder, here’s the basic dispute:

  • The 1998 Vacancies Reform Act gives the president the power to fill vacant positions in the executive branch. It is the “exclusive” means for filling positions “unless” another statute expressly names a successor.
  • The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act expressly says that the deputy director of the CFPB “shall” become director in case of a vacancy.

The White House position is that Dodd-Frank doesn’t remove the president’s VRA power. It merely means that VRA is no longer the “exclusive” means of filling the vacancy. The president still has the option of using it.

The lawyers will sort this out, but here’s the part that was tickling my brain last night. It’s one thing to disagree about what statutory language means, but surely it has to mean something. Right? But if the White House interpretation is correct, then the language in Dodd-Frank is literally meaningless. VRA still controls, and the president had the power to name the deputy as the new director all along if he wanted to. So why bother even including it?

This is the question I haven’t seen addressed. If VRA is the controlling statute regardless, then why did Congress even bother including language about a CFPB successor in Dodd-Frank? It might make sense if this applied only to temporary absences (due to illness, for example), but that’s not the case. Everyone agrees that the Dodd-Frank language applies equally to both temporary absences and resignations.

My untutored view is that the Dodd-Frank language means exactly what it says: if the director resigns, then the deputy director takes over, full stop. And it was included as a means of maintaining CFPB independence from the White House, something that Congress clearly intended. This is the only interpretation that seems to make consistent sense.

But I suppose a judge will decide I’m wrong soon enough.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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