Donald Trump (pictured) has fired the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), who announced yesterday that his term had been “concluded” in the latest move by the Republican president to reshape the American government.Rohit Chopra, who had been named to head the agency responsible for protecting bank customers in 2021, had been due to serve a five-year term, but in a letter posted on social platform X he said that had been cut short.“Every day, Americans from across the country shared their ideas and experiences with us. You helped us hold powerful companies & their executives accountable for breaking the law, and you made our work better,” he wrote.The advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee slammed the dismissal as “a direct giveaway to Wall Street”, accusing the president of having “caved into pressure”.Chopra had engaged in multiple skirmishes with the major US banks, particularly over excessive overdraft fees, and was also campaigning for greater regulation of Internet payment applications.The CFPB was created in 2011, in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008.The firing is the latest in a long line of dismissals as Trump roared back into the White House determined to take control of the federal government.Such personnel changes are not unusual during US transitions of power – but the speed and scale of Trump’s effort since his inauguration on January 20 have been striking.The Republican president believes that all government departments must be fully aligned with his political agenda.He has also promised, with his billionaire ally Elon Musk, to correct what he sees as the excesses of corporate regulation, while drastically reducing public spending.US media have meanwhile reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also preparing to carry out a vast purge against agents who investigated Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol building in Washington by his supporters on January 6, 2021.The shakeup, detailed in two memos seen by Reuters and by three sources familiar with the matter, is the Trump administration’s latest move to remake the US criminal justice system since he returned to the presidency last week.A group representing FBI agents issued a rare public warning of the potential for hundreds of firings at the nation’s top law enforcement agency.The new administration already has fired more than a dozen prosecutors who pursued criminal charges against Trump in two cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that have been dismissed.It also has paused all civil rights and environmental litigation and ordered criminal investigations of state and local officials who interfere with his hardline immigration initiatives.On Thursday Acting Deputy Attorney-General Emil Bove told the top federal prosecutors in each state to compile a list of all prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the investigation of the Capitol riot, which was the largest Justice Department probe in modern US history, two sources briefed on the matter said.The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.In a statement on Friday, the FBI Agents Association, a membership group of more than 14,000 active and former FBI agents, called the moves “outrageous”.“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association added.In his first day back in the White House on Jan. 20, Trump granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged with storming the Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
