MAGA continues to cynically dismantle public interest protections

 In Project 2025, one of the high priority targets to destroy was the CFPB (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau). That federal agency protected consumer finance activity, including protections against discrimination in lending to women and minorities. Soon after being sworn in, Trump halted most CFPB consumer protection activities related to fair lending enforcement based on disparate impact and systemic discrimination. It now focuses on small matters. 

To make matters worse for the public interest, the MAGA CFPB is proposing new rules that will essentially eliminate key protections for woman and minorities. Trump's April 2025 Executive Order on Restoring Equality of Opportunity inspired the proposed new rules. The anti-consumer sleight of hand here is by now a standard MAGA tactic to drain power from citizen protections and shift it to special interests, financial institutions in this case. The old CFPB has rules against discriminating against women and minorities. The new proposed rules calls those old ones discriminatory. The new proposal will eliminate those protections almost completely, if not completely. As usual, MAGA elites leave a fig leaf in place to hide the gaping wound the new rules will inflict. 

MAGA cynically frames its proposal as restoring "meritocracy" and "colorblindness". But its practical effect is to remove the main legal tools the CFPB had to challenge systemic discrimination and to prohibit programs designed to specifically help underserved groups. Under the new rules, a borrower can no longer challenge lender policies that are neutral on paper but discriminatory in practice. Thanks to MAGA, redlining with its segregated neighborhoods is making a comeback!

The new rules also requiring proof of explicit intentional discrimination, "disparate treatment". That effectively legalizes institutional practices that discriminate against women and minorities, as long as a lender does not explicitly say they have a discriminatory motive or reason for denying loans to target groups. 

What are the primary motives here? Probably greed first followed by inherent MAGA bigotry-racism-misogyny. In a December 14, 2025 letter, the American Banking Association explicitly endorsed removing protections for minorities and women. The banks complained about "regulatory ambiguity" and "arbitrary government enforcement" to cover profit motive lust. While big banks previously claimed to support DEI, they now actively support removing the rules that enforce it. MAGA's demagogic "woke" panic and a crackpot "debanking" narrative provide perfect cover. Banks now claim (1) they are being forced to stop the illusory "discriminating against conservatives" (debanking) narrative, and (2) removing disparate impact is just "restoring meritocracy". Meanwhile, the financial institutions will quietly pocket profits from deregulation.

MAGA's and the banks' mendacity and cynicism in this are jaw-dropping to say the least.

Scientific measurement of routine 

MAGA demagoguery