Trump Names New CFPB Head Amid Regulatory ‘Limbo’

President Trump has named a new CFPB director while the agency faces an uncertain future.

Jonathan McKernan , who was until recently a director on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), has been tapped by Trump to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to multiple published reports Wednesday (Feb. 12).

The nomination comes days after Russell Vought, acting director of the consumer watchdog group, ordered the agency’s offices closed. Vought — who also heads the Office of Management and Budget — instructed staff to work from home while halting all CFPB enforcement efforts.

Vought also said he would shut off the CFPB’s funding, writing on X that he had informed the Federal Reserve that the agency would not take its next draw of unappropriated funding because it wasn’t needed to fulfill its duties.

“The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment,” he wrote. “This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.”

And as Trump was nominating McKernan, several CFPB workers were being let go. Dozens of workers were fired via email Tuesday (Feb. 11) evening, according to a report by Wired.

That report, citing unnamed sources, describes the email as frenetic, with an apparently failed mail merge meaning that workers were addressed as “[EmployeeFirstName][EmployeeLastName], [Job Title], [Division].”

“This is to provide notification that I am removing you from your position of [Job Title] and federal service consistent with the above references,” the email read. “Unfortunately, the Agency finds that that [sic] you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.”

Events like these have essentially left the CFPB in “limbo,” PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote earlier this week.

“If nobody’s home, you have financial services entities just trying to make their best guess,” former Obama administration assistant treasury secretary Amias Gerety told Webster for their weekly discussion. “‘Do your best’ is not a great way to run a financial services company.”

Gerety, partner at QED Investors , said he believes that essentially suspending the CFPB’s activities is “a lawless act” as the agency was created by an act of Congress and validated by the Supreme Court .

“However, the assault on the CFPB has raised critical questions about the agency’s future and the broader implications for financial regulation,” that report said.

And it’s not just a bureaucratic reshuffling, Gerety argues, as the CFPB is charged with carrying out nonnegotiable mandates.

“We are a nation of laws, not men,” Gerety told Webster. “The CFPB has obligations. Congress wrote a bunch of ‘shalls’ into the law. These are not ‘mays,’ these are not ‘authorized to,’ these are absolute requirements that the CFPB director has to do.”