The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established in the aftermath of the financial crisis, as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation, with the intended goal of protecting consumers from abusive practices by banks, mortgage lenders, and other financial institutions. In part because of its strong association with Elizabeth Warren, the liberal Massachusetts senator who originally proposed creating such an agency, the C.F.P.B. met immediate resistance from the financial industry, which argued that the agency was too powerful and its rules too onerous, and that its actions could end up stifling the economy. The industry found ready allies among Republicans in Congress—notably Representative Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee—who echoed the financial industry’s complaints and pledged to dismantle the agency, or at least dramatically reduce its reach. Part of what gave the C.F.P.B. its power was its independence; it had been designed to operate outside the bounds of influence of Congress and the White House, and it was difficult for a President to replace the person running it, which prompted its critics to argue that it had no accountability. Last week, a federal appeals court upheld the agency’s structure as legal and necessary. “Congress’s decision to provide the C.F.P.B. director a degree of insulation reflects its permissible judgment that civil regulation of consumer financial protection should be kept one step removed from political winds and presidential will,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote in the ruling. Supporters of the C.F.P.B. greeted the ruling as a major victory.

Still, with Donald Trump as President, the C.F.P.B. continues to be under existential threat. The departure of the founding director, Richard Cordray, in November, gave Trump the ability to choose the person who would oversee the agency until a permanent director was selected. Briefly, there were rumors that Trump was going to appoint his Wall Street-friendly Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to the position of interim director. Instead, he chose Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, who is on record as saying that he wanted to “get rid of” the C.F.P.B. altogether. Now Mulvaney is doing just that, using the levers he has available to him to essentially starve the C.F.P.B. of resources and let it wither. If there was ever any doubt that the Trump Administration would simply do the financial industry’s bidding, Mulvaney’s recent actions at the C.F.P.B. have cleared it up. And anyone with a bank account or a stake in the American economy should be concerned.

In January, Mulvaney submitted the agency’s quarterly funding request to the Federal Reserve, asking for “$0” to finance the C.F.P.B.’s operations for the next three months. (He argued at the time that the agency had enough money on hand to cover its expenses.) He also, somewhat inexplicably, singled out new regulations that the C.F.P.B. had put in place to rein in the widely loathed payday-lending industry. The new rules were intended to make it more difficult for consumers to borrow more money than they could realistically repay, potentially leading them into a debt trap. Mulvaney has announced that his new agency would be revisiting the payday-lending regulations to see if they should be kept or not. He then dropped a lawsuit that the C.F.P.B. had filed against a group of online payday lenders that had allegedly been charging consumers interest rates as high as nine hundred and fifty per cent.

Then, earlier this week, Reuters reported that Mulvaney had allowed an investigation into the breach of customer accounts at Equifax, one of the three major credit-reporting bureaus, to fizzle out. In September, Equifax disclosed that hackers had stolen the personal information of a hundred and forty-three million American consumers, prompting widespread outrage over how inadequately the company was protecting its sensitive data. When the breach was revealed, the C.F.P.B., under Cordray, announced that it would aggressively investigate what happened, and help the credit agency to safeguard its data in the future. According to Reuters, the investigation has lost much of its momentum since Mulvaney took over. (Mnuchin reportedly told the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday that it was something he was going to “discuss with him.”) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that the Trump Administration stripped the agency of its ability to pursue settlements with lenders accused of discriminating against borrowers.

Mulvaney has argued that it isn’t fair to subject businesses to rules and penalties from a federal agency that can operate completely independently. Yet even in this context some of his recent decisions haven’t made sense. The payday-lending industry often justifies itself by arguing that certain people can’t borrow money any other way—but this argument doesn’t counteract the demonstrable financial damage that exploitative loans can cause to people’s economic and mental health. But there is another aspect to consider. Earlier this month, the Times, citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, reported that payday lenders have contributed more than thirteen million dollars to members of Congress since 2010, most of it to Republicans. Mulvaney himself has received close to sixty-three thousand dollars in political contributions from the industry in his former incarnation as a congressman from South Carolina. This April, the Times reported, the payday-lending industry will hold its annual retreat at the Trump National Doral Golf Club, near Miami. (The group claims that the decision was made before the election, largely based on price.) W. Allan Jones, who is the owner of hundreds of payday-lending shops in the United States, as well as a lobbyist for the industry, summed it up when he expressed his feelings for Mulvaney thusly: “He seems extremely reasonable.”