Awaiting the CFPB’s next act ahead of Vought’s departure

During an October 2025 appearance on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” Vought vowed to eliminate the agency. The following month, President Donald Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach, an associate director at the OMB, to serve as CFPB director. 

But in January 2026, the Senate returned Levenbach’s nomination to Trump without taking action, a procedural move that allows Vought to remain at the agency’s helm through Aug. 1, when his authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act expires.

Vought has defended his wind-down of the agency’s operations. In testimony this week before the House Financial Services Committee, Vought said the CFPB had overstepped its congressional mandate, creating unnecessary costs for consumers and financial institutions. He also argued that the bureau’s current funding structure has contributed to what he called a “cavalier attitude” and a “swagger” in the workplace.

The agency, which will mark its 15th anniversary on July 21, now faces another turning point as Vought’s reign is set to expire. On June 10, the White House nominated Brian Johnson, a former CFPB deputy director under Kathy Kraninger, to serve as director of the CFPB. As of July 16, the nomination is still pending. 

Activity at the lower-profile bureau

Johnson’s nomination and the approaching expiration of Vought’s tenure have renewed questions about the bureau’s future. Staff reductions and shuffling, coupled with Vought’s scaled-back enforcement agenda and the agency’s avoidance of the public spotlight, have fueled speculation that the agency has largely ceased functioning. 

Unlike previous administrations, where enforcement actions, settlements and policy initiatives frequently made headlines, the bureau under Vought has released relatively little information about its day-to-day operations.

Marx Sterbcow, the managing attorney of Sterbcow Law Group and owner of the RESPA Resource Law Center, said the bureau is “still functioning” and continues to bring cases, but its emphasis has narrowed to issues with a clearer federal nexus, including protections for veterans and elderly consumers.

At the same time, Sterbcow said the CFPB has deliberately pushed more mortgage- and real estate-related matters to states to avoid duplicative oversight of the same firms by multiple regulators.

“There are Civil Investigative Demands that are still going out; you just don’t hear about them,” Sterbcow said. “Internally, the way the bureau has looked at it is that the states have multiple regulators looking at all of these different things, so instead of having six or seven regulators involved, they push some of this work off to the states so it doesn’t overburden the bureau from a regulatory perspective.”

As the CFPB has pulled back from some areas, Sterbcow said state attorneys general and financial regulators have dramatically increased their activity. “I’ve never been busier with state enforcement actions than I have been over the last three years,” he said. 

But the states taking on more isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “In my own practice, I’ve seen increased activity at both the state attorney general level as well as state banking regulators who do exams and the like,” said Lucy Morris, a partner at Hudson Cook LLP. 

Sterbow added: “Even when consumer complaints were going to the bureau, a lot of the process felt like a rubber stamp to move the file and bring up the numbers. It was more of a data play than anything else, and many consumers told me they felt that way because their disputes were closed out without any meaningful resolution.”

When asked about how consumers are perceiving the bureau’s lack of public enforcement actions, Morris said she still hears about “motivated” consumers submitting complaints. 

“I don’t know how the average consumer perceives what’s happening in Washington. I think consumers are still making complaints,” she said. “So I think if consumers have issues, and they’re motivated, they will complain to everyone they can complain to get relief, so I don’t know that that’s really affected how consumers are behaving.”

A shift from dismantling to reform?

Johnson’s nomination, however, tells a different story. Morris pointed out that nominating someone with as much relevant background and experience as Johnson could signal that the administration is shifting away from efforts to significantly curtail the CFPB’s operations.

“He’s certainly qualified, and I think somebody who, at least based on my understanding, is not looking to destroy the agency,” Morris said. She added that Johnson “would take this nomination seriously and intend to fill that role.”

Richard Horn, co-managing partner at Garris Horn LLP, agrees that the nomination represents the tide turning from reducing the agency’s footprint to focusing on regulatory change. 

“Brian Johnson has such a substantial amount of experience in consumer financial regulation,” Horn said. “You wouldn’t need to put somebody with that complete subject matter expertise at the agency just to basically undertake shutting it down; you would put somebody with that subject matter expertise if you wanted to engage in regulatory reform.”

Morris said Johnson’s previous service as deputy director under Kraninger could offer clues about his approach if he is confirmed.

“I think you would see [Johnson] being supportive of innovation and trying to have clear rules of the road for fintechs and others,” she said. “Under Kathy Kraninger, there were a lot of enforcement actions, so I think you would have a return to enforcement and supervision, and not crazy stuff, but focus on the fraud side of things.”

Morris also suggested political considerations could have influenced Johnson’s nomination. 

“Maybe another reason he was nominated is that midterm [elections] are coming and in a couple of years, you’ll have another presidential election, and I think that part of the bureau’s mission is to kind of protect consumers around issues relating to affordability, and so shutting the agency down isn’t really maybe may not be the message that folks want out there right now,” she said.

“I think that nominating somebody like Brian Johnson leaves the impression that the agency will stay in place and maybe return to normalcy, in a sense.”

But despite the nomination and Johnson’s experience, Horn said there appears to be little urgency to secure Johnson’s confirmation because CFPB deputy director Mark Paoletta — who also serves as general counsel for the OMB — has been overseeing the agency’s day-to-day operations during Vought’s tenure.

If Johnson’s nomination doesn’t pull through before Aug. 1, Paoletta would most likely take the acting director role. “The administration’s probably comfortable with the personnel that are there now,” Horn added. 

Even so, Horn said, confirming a permanent director could become increasingly important if the administration hopes to complete new rulemaking processes before the end of Trump’s second term. 

“With only a little over two years left in the administration, for new proposals that they want to finalize, they need to start working on them,” he said. “It’d be helpful to have a permanent director who has as much experience as Brian Johnson has to do that.”

Business as usual for lenders

From the perspective of one mortgage lender, the day-to-day impact of the CFPB’s quieter posture has been limited so far, said Dani Ploch, chief operating officer of DAS Acquisition Co., a dba of USA Mortgage.

“From a practical level, we’re kind of conducting business as usual,” she said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, no clear direction. So from our perspective, we’re operating as though there hasn’t been much adjustment at the CFPB level.”

Much of the industry’s anxiety is centered on the possibility that states will move to fill any perceived gaps in federal oversight. That uncertainty has left lenders looking for clear direction out of Washington rather than a patchwork of state-level edicts.

“We would love for there to still be more precise national guidance,” she said. “But until we have confirmed direction from what’s happening at the CFPB, we’re just on pins and needles, waiting for what the states are going to come out with.”

Ploch said the Johnson nomination is viewed less as a dramatic policy shift and more as a potential source of clarity for regulated firms.

“There’s just so much uncertainty, and any direction that can be given as soon as we have somebody confirmed, regardless of who that is, lenders can work within a framework,” she said. “I don’t know what that framework looks like right now, but that’s what we’re looking for, and I think many financial institutions are.”