Among the list of things Republicans are contractually obligated to vilify like a deranged evangelical preacher railing against the sins of the Village People, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ranks near the top. Despised by the G.O.P. since the day it was formed by Dodd-Frank, the C.F.P.B. has been deemed a “dictator” that steals money from consumers and subjects financial institutions to the type of treatment you’d expect in the Gulag. And though scrapping it entirely was always the dream, in November Donald Trump was able to install Mick “I don’t like the fact that C.F.P.B. exists” Mulvaney as the agency’s head, which essentially amounted to the same thing. Now, rather than going to the trouble of abolishing the bureau, Mulvaney can simply undermine its mission from the inside. And apparently he’s not being shy about it!

Despite telling confused staffers that he had no plans to “set the place on fire or blow it up or lock the doors,” Mulvaney kicked off his first day on the job by imposing a 30-day freeze on hiring and new rule-making. And just before Christmas, apparently figuring that there was no longer any reason to beat around the bush, the C.F.P.B changed its mission statement from this:

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives.”

. . . to this:

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by regularly identifying and addressing outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome regulations, by making rules more effective, by consistently enforcing federal consumer financial law, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives.”

Reading the new statement, one might get the sense that the C.F.P.B.’s primary focus is deregulation, which of course it is not—or at least, it hasn’t been for the past six years. “It’s bizarre to put [the focus on] deregulation in a regulatory agency’s mission statement,” a former C.F.P.B. official told me. As for just how far Mulvaney and his eventual successor will take their internal demolition job, that “is the big question . . . there are so many different options. There could be a standstill but no serious rollback [of consumer protections], or we could talk about them actively carving things back.” Right around the time the bureau rolled out its new motto, The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision to install Mulvaney—who, in case you missed it, previously described the C.F.P.B. as a “sick, sad joke”—had exposed “a divide between a White House faction and the Treasury Department over just what the role of the consumer watchdog should be,” with the former favoring an all-out gut-job. According to the former official, the bureau’s fate—and the fate of consumer protections— likely rests on which White House faction wins out: “The Mnuchin camp wants predictability, the guys like Mike Pence and the House Financial Services Committee want to burn the agency to the ground. If Mnuchin can get a candidate through, I feel optimistic. If it’s one of the crazies, then God forbid.”

Unsurprisingly, one person who is not thrilled by the sea change is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who originally proposed the idea for the agency in 2007. “Mick Mulvaney’s new slogan shows that he’s more interested in doing the bidding of big banks than standing up for American families,” she said in a statement to the Hive. “That’s disgraceful.”