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California joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia Monday in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being defunded and closed by the Trump administration.

The legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore. accuses Acting Director Russell Vought of trying to illegally withhold funds from the agency by unlawfully interpreting its funding statute. Also named as defendants are the agency itself and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“For California, the CFPB has been an invaluable enforcement partner, working hand-in-hand with our office to protect pocketbooks and stop unfair business practices. But once again, the Trump administration is trying to weaken and ultimately dismantle the CFPB,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a press conference to announce the 41-page legal action.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established by Congress in 2010 after the subprime mortgage abuses that gave rise to the financial crisis, the agency is funded by the Federal Reserve as a method of insulating it from political pressure.

The Dodd-Frank Act statute requires the agency’s director to petition for a reasonable amount of funding to carry out the CFPB’s duties from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to this year that was interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s gross revenue. But an opinion from the Department of Justice claims that should be interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s profits, of which it has none since it has been operating at a loss since 2022. The lawsuit alleges the interpretation is bogus.

“Defendant Russell T. Vought has worked tirelessly to terminate the CFPB’s operations by any means necessary — denying Plaintiffs access to CFPB resources to which they are statutorily entitled. In this action, Plaintiffs challenge Defendant Vought’s most recent effort to do so,” the federal lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the agency will run out of cash by next month if the policy is not reversed. Bonta said he and other attorney generals have not decided whether they will seek a restraining order or temporary injunction to change the new funding policy.

Prior to the second Trump administraition, the CPFB boasted of returning nearly $21 billion to consumers nationwide through enforcement actions, including against Wells Fargo in San Francisco over a scandal involving the creation of accounts never sought by customers.

Other big cases have been brought against student loan servicer Navient for mishandling payments and other issues, as well as Toyota Motor Credit for charging higher interest rates to Black and Asian customers.

However, this year the agency has dropped notable cases. It terminated early a consent order reached with Citibank over allegations it discriminated against customers with Armenian surnames in Los Angeles County.

It also dropped a lawsuit against Zelle that accused Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks of rushing the payments app into service, leading to $870 million in fraud-related losses by users. The app denied the allegations.

Monday’s lawsuit also notes that the agency is critical for states to carry out their own consumer protection mission and its closure would deprive them of their statutorily guaranteed access to a database run by the CFPB that tracks millions of consumer complaints, as well as to other data.

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to reduce the size and power of the federal bureaucracy during a second Trump admistration. In February, he ordered the agency to stop nearly all its work and has been seeking to drastically downsize it since.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest legal effort to keep the agency in business.

A lawsuit filed in February by National Treasury Employees Union and consumer groups accuses the Trump administration and Vought of attempting to unconstitutionally abolish the agency, created by an act of Congress.

“It is deflating, and it is unfortunate that Congress is not defending the power of the purse,” said Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, during Monday’s press conference.

“At other times, Congress vigilantly safeguarded its authority, but because of political polarization and fear of criticizing this President, the Congress is not doing it,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV pictured in May addressing Catholic faithful from the Vatican balcony in Vatican City, Vatican. On Friday, the American-born Catholic Church head urged Italy’s intelligence officials to ground national security in ethical principles and cautioned that efforts to preserve peace must not trump human dignity or truth. File Photo by Stefano Spaziani/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 12 (UPI) — Pope Leo XIV urged Italy’s intelligence officials on Friday to ground national security in ethical principles and cautioned that efforts to preserve peace must not trump human dignity or truth.

The U.S.-born pope marked the centenary of Italy’s Security Intelligence System and noted the nation’s first coordinated intelligence service launched in 1925 established the “foundations for building a more effective and coordinated system, aimed at safeguarding the security of the state.”

He added in remarks that, about a century later, tools and capabilities may have advanced dramatically, but responsibilities and moral risks of such intelligence work have grown.

On Friday, Leo told assembled intelligence professionals visiting the Vatican they bear a “serious responsibility” of “constantly monitoring the dangers that may threaten the life of the nation, in order above all to contribute to the protection of peace.”

He praised sometimes ignored efforts to foresee a crisis before it arises but cautioned that discretion risks misuse without ethics.

The pope stressed that professionalism required “respect for the dignity of the human person.”

“Security activity must never lose sight of this foundational dimension and must never fail to respect the dignity and rights of each individual,” he said.

He urged ethical restraint in gathering intelligence and warned that a sense of urgent common good cannot justify ignoring limits on individual rights.

National security, he added, must never arrive at the expense of individual rights, including “private and family life, freedom of conscience and information and the right to a fair trial.”

The Catholic Church leader underscored the need for strong ethical standards in modern day communication, and cautioned in an era run by constant and instant connection that misinformation, manipulation and exploitation of vulnerable people was a growing threat.

He further warned that confidential information must never be deployed to intimidate, manipulate, blackmail or discredit public officials, journalists or other groups.

In addition, Leo urged attendees to pursue their profession with balance and discernment that prioritizes the common good while staying “firmly anchored to those legal and ethical principles that place the dignity of the human person above all else.”

Mega billionaire Elon Musk, in a friendly interview with his aide and conservative influencer Katie Miller, said his efforts leading the Department of Government Efficiency were only “somewhat successful” and he would not do it over again.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, who also owns the social media platform X, still broadly defended President Trump’s controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his DOGE work and its lack of popularity.

“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” he told Miller, who once worked as a DOGE spokeswoman charged with selling the agency’s work to the public.

When Miller pressed Musk on whether he would do it all over again, he said: “I don’t think so. … Instead of doing DOGE, I would have, basically … worked on my companies.”

Almost wistfully, Musk added, “They wouldn’t have been burning the cars” — a reference to consumer protests against Tesla.

Still, things certainly have turned up for Musk since his departure from Trump’s administration. Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Musk was speaking as a guest on the “Katie Miller Podcast,” which Miller, who is married to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller, launched after leaving government employment to work for Musk in the private sector. The two sat in chairs facing each other for a conversation that lasted more than 50 minutes and spanned topics from DOGE to Musk’s thoughts on AI, social media, conspiracy theories and fashion.

Miller did not press Musk on the inner workings of DOGE and the controversial manner in which it took over federal agencies and data systems.

Musk credited the agency with saving as much as $200 billion annually in “zombie payments” that he said can be avoided with better automated systems and coding for federal payouts. But that number is dwarfed by Musk’s ambitious promises at one time that an efficiency commission could measure savings in the trillions.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 10 (UPI) — Gregg Phillips has been selected for a leadership position in the Federal Emergency Management Administration, though he hasn’t managed emergencies at the state or federal level and has been critical of the agency.

Philipps, 65, is best known for claiming millions of noncitizens voted in the 2016 election.

Phillips will lead the Office of Response and Recovery, which is FEMA’s largest division, as first reported by The Handbasket. The position doesn’t need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Karen Evan, FEMA’s newly appointed interim leader, also doesn’t have major management experience. She replaced David Richardson, who resigned as FEMA’s acting administrator on Nov. 17 after being appointed on May 8, and also didn’t have emergency experience.

Phillips will be “joining the FEMA leadership team, bringing experience in emergency and humanitarian response, state government operations, and large-scale program reform,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, wrote in an email to The Hill.

In a LinkedIn post last year, he wrote: “I have been a very vocal opponent of FEMA” and believes that the agency has failed people in need.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees FEMA, has said there is a need to “eliminate FEMA as it exists today.”

Since January, the number of active FEMA employees has decreased by approximately 2,500 from around 25,800.

The FEMA’ Fiscal Year 2025 budget is approximately $59.2 billion, which includes annual appropriations and supplemental funding for the Disaster Relief Fund. The initial budget request was $27.9 billion.

Phill will “support FEMA leadership as the agency advances reforms aligned with the direction set by President Trump and Secretary Noem, focused on clarifying federal responsibilities, strengthening coordination with states, and improving accountability in disaster operations,” the spoekspereson said.

The office recommends to FEMA’s administrator whether a disaster should be declared. They distribute manufactured housing after disasters, assist communities after disasters or terrorism, provide disaster response and ensure FEMA’s field operations are timely and effective.

A longtime, unnamed FEMA official told The Washington Post: “You want that person to have deep technical knowledge to say ‘This is why this should get declared [a disaster] and why this shouldn’t.’ So the administrator can look and say ‘yep, that makes total sense, let’s send this to the White House.’ ”

He led the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and was deputy Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Phillips’ work was

He was accused of ethical misconduct in funneling contracts to his private companies.

Elections denial

Phillips has been an ardent supporter of Donald Trump.

After the 2016 election, Phillips claimed that mass voter fraud had denied Trump the popular votes against Hillary Clinton.

He said his Texas-based nonprofit, True the Vote, gathered data showing that 3 million “noncitizens.”

Trump later posted the information on Twtter, which is now X, writing: In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Phillips didn’t produce evidence about his claim and later disputed Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

In 2022, Phillips and True the Vote’s president were jailed because they defied a court order to turn over information backing their allegations that an election software company helped Biden win.

He was also featured in the discredited film 2000 Mules in 2022 about 2020 election fraud.