MAGA dictatorship update: Elastic laws & the CFPB

The MAGA mindset nutshelled

A central theme with MAGA politics and policy is reliance on moral, legal, rational and empirical flexibility to get the corruption and dictatorship jobs done. Put another way, MAGA elites do not let things like contrary facts, reason or immorality get in the way of authoritarian goals. The MAGAfied USSC employs the same tactics. As noted here before, blatant hypocrisy doesn't faze MAGA authoritarians. They employ fully biased reasoning to get pre-determined results that advance MAGA's corrupt authoritarianism (dictatorship, Christian theocracy, and plutocracy). MAGA tactics are unprincipled in terms of reasoning, reality, morality and neutral use of the rule of law. Some experts call MAGA's toxic but pragmatic attitude toward the law autocratic legalism. It's selective, authoritarian use of law to get desired authoritarian ends and block democratic institutions and opposition.

Elastic laws

The CFPB is a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable federal agency. It is unconstitutional. Congress should abolish the CFPB and reverse Dodd–Frank Section 1061, thus returning the consumer protection function of the CFPB to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission. -- Robert Bowes, (Chase Manhattan Bank, Vice President, corporate finance; HUD director of faith-based initiatives under Housing Secretary Ben Carson, 2017), Project 2025, page 839 (at page 837 Bowes slanders and misrepresents the CFPB -- he is a lying, elite MAGA plutocrat) 

MAGA's subversion and complete obliteration of the CFPB (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau) was a high priority goal in Project 2025. Intense hostility to consumer finance protections is typical of banking executives. They want unfettered freedom to fleece people and fleece them hard. MAGA animosity toward the CFB this has been blogged here before. Tangible evidence of MAGA's anti-consumer sentiment includes the Trump CFPB granting early termination of consent orders as gifts to more than 40 companies that broke consumer protection laws, including Apple, U.S. Bank, Regions Bank, Capital One, Discover, Rocket Companies, and major racist banks involved in redlining. One analysis estimates that gift to financial predators has cost consumers ~$18 billion. 

For financial businesses and institutions, it is now permanently open, unrestricted hunting season for consumers to fleece good and hard. This is just getting started.

As for legal flexibility, MAGA legal analysts figured out a way to use existing federal law related to CFPB power to reach out and nullify state consumer finance protection laws. The strategy is counterintuitive but simple. Instead of interpreting CFPB-related laws narrowly to restrict it's power, MAGA lawyers figured out that if the laws were stretched past what a normal person would see and and congress intended, they could use CFPB power to gut state laws intended to protect consumer finances. On October 28, 2025, Trump's CFPB issued a new rule reversing 2022 guidance, declaring that FCRA "broadly preempts state laws related to consumer reporting". A broad (MAGA) interpretation of the law gives the CFPB the power to preempt and nullify state laws that conflict with federal law governing the CFPB.

It is a brilliant strategy. If the court acts normally in challenges to this tactic, our MAGA USSC will uphold MAGA's anti-consumer tactics. For finance interests, it's time to shoot consumer fish in a barrel. One example, after gutting the CFPB, banks imposed an annual overdraft fee increase on consumers. That was worth ~$5 billion/year. Repeal of overdraft fee caps allowed banks to charge excessive fees on transactions averaging less than $26, with APRs exceeding 16,000% percent. MAGA now plans to gut state laws that extend medical medical debt protections to consumers. This affects ~15 million Americans. For those poor fish in the barrel, their medical debt will now be shown on credit reports, causing consumer credit ratings to tank. Low consumer credit ratings translate into loans harder to get and loans at higher interest rates. 

Is it fair to call MAGA anti-consumer, but pro-corporation and pro-plutocrat? There is lots of evidence to believe that.