President Donald Trump fired Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra on Saturday, ending the aggressive regulator’s five year term almost two years prematurely.
Chopra shared a letter on social media confirming that his tenure running the CFPB is over and celebrated the agency’s work under his stewardship.
“Since 2021, we have returned billions of dollars from repeat offenders and other bad actors, implemented dormant legal authorities and long-overdue rules required by law, and given more freedom and bargaining leverage to families navigating a complex and confusing financial system,” Chopra said.
“I hope that the CFPB will continue to be a pillar of restoring and advancing economic liberty in America, and I wish you good luck in serving our great country,” Chopra concluded in the letter, addressed to President Trump.
Chopra lasted almost two weeks into Trump’s term, giving the CFPB time to release last minute reports on auto lending, auto repossessions, rent payment data, and mortgage refinancing. Two days before Chopra’s firing, the CFPB imposed a $2.5 million fine on a remissions payment company for illegally misleading consumers about its fee structure.
A protege of progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Chopra became a hero on the left for taking a heavy-handed approach to bank regulation and tackling fraud at the CFPB. Chopra was previously a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission and an assistant director at the CFPB.
Republican critics believe Chopra’s regulator approach increased costs for consumers and strained innovation in the financial sector. Chopra’s sympathetic view of conservative victims of debanking did little to deter GOP opponents from seeking his ouster upon the start of the Trump administration.
Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and several of his colleagues have pushed to defund the CFPB and could incorporate such legislation inside a budget reconciliation bill in the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Supreme Court upheld the CFPB’s funding mechanism in a ruling last year that determined it is Constitutional for the Federal Reserve to fund the agency in perpetuity instead of congressional appropriators.
The CFPB was created following the 2008 financial crisis when President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank regulatory package designed to overhaul regulation of the financial sector. Warren famously advocated for the CFPB as a law professor and played a central role in its creation under Obama.
“If President Trump is serious about lowering costs and capping credit card interest rates, he needs a strong CFPB and a strong CFPB Director,” Warren said in a statement shared on X.
“If he and Republicans decide to cower to Wall Street billionaires and try to destroy the agency, they will have a fight on their hands.”