Gutting CFPB Undermines Anti‑Debanking Drive

Trump ordered regulators to punish banks that deny service based on politics or religion, but his administration put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under stop‑work orders and moved to fire most of its staff. That froze ongoing probes into JPMorgan, Citi, and risk‑screening vendors that might explain or curb account closures. The result is a policy that sounds tough but lacks the investigative muscle to operate. — It shows rhetoric on politicized finance is meaningless without institutional capacity, reframing culture‑war banking fights as state‑capacity problems.