When Richard Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced his resignation earlier this month, he might as well have been handing congressional Republicans an early Christmas present. The C.F.P.B., which is designed to protect consumers, has been at the top of the G.O.P.’s kill list since a provision in Dodd-Frank brought it to life in the aftermath of the financial crisis. And while the ultimate goal has always been to scrap it entirely, Republicans have maintained an unspoken understanding that ousting its Obama-era regulator and installing a pro-industry stooge in his place would be almost as good.

Unfortunately for Trump & Co., they did not anticipate that Cordray would name Leandra English, the agency’s chief of staff, as his successor, or that English wouldn’t simply step aside and let Trump’s pick for acting director—the math-illiterate Mick Mulvaney, who once called the C.F.P.B. “a joke” and in 2015 co-sponsored legislation to abolish it altogether—take over. So determined was English to stave off Mulvaney’s takeover that she filed a lawsuit on Sunday arguing that she is legally entitled to the agency’s top spot.

Mulvaney fired back with donuts, and a memo to staffers telling them to “please disregard any instructions you receive from Ms. English in her presumed capacity as acting director.” During a news conference on Monday, he sought to counter the idea that naming him interim director was, as Senator Chuck Schumer put it, like putting “a fox in charge of the hen house.” “Rumors that I’m going to set the place on fire or blow it up or lock the doors are completely false,” Mulvaney said. “We intend to execute the laws of the United States, including the provisions of Dodd-Frank that govern the C.F.P.B.” That statement would’ve been slightly more reassuring had Mulvaney waited more than a day to order a 30-day freeze on hiring and a delay of rulemaking and other actions. In the same news conference in which he claimed he would not demolish a place he once said he wished did not exist, Mulvaney added that under his watch, the C.F.P.B will run differently than it did under Obama, but declined to discuss specifics.

Late Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly deferred a ruling on English’s request to block Trump from naming Mulvaney interim director, giving government lawyers more time to file arguments.

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Defiant Anthony Scaramucci won’t back down on threats against college kids

Earlier this month, erstwhile White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci proclaimed that far from being finished with politics, he plans to play a key role in Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign. “At some point, I’ll probably be more involved from the outside . . . in a re-election capability,” he told the Associated Press, noting that he still chats with members of the president’s inner circle “regularly.” In the meantime, Scaramucci, who was fired in part for not knowing the difference between an on-the-record and off-the-record conversation, has been hard at work underscoring the fact that he wasn’t remotely qualified for the communications job he sold his company to take before being canned 10 days in. Following his decision to double down on a poll seemingly designed as a dog whistle for Holocaust deniers, over the weekend the Mooch got into a fight with a bunch of college kids, a controversy that appears to be exactly in proportion to his importance.