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Hanna Hickman worked as an attorney in the private sector for 15 years before making a deliberate pivot. Even though it meant taking a pay cut, she wanted to work for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and help fight banks and other companies that were taking advantage of consumers. Her colleagues, from other lawyers to young software engineers who could have easily taken Big Tech jobs, had the same motivations. Theyre professionals who could be making and were making quite a bit more money in the private sector, Hickman says. But they chose to take their time and talent and bring it to the bureau and fight for consumers. And now, nearly 200 of those CFPB employees have had their jobs terminated, Hickman included. The remaining employees have been placed on indefinite administrative leave. Since CFPB opened in 2011, the agency says its provided consumers with more than $21 billion in relief, from refunds to canceled debt. It capped credit-card late fees and bank-overdraft fees. It banned medical debt from credit reports. The agency’s budget is a tiny 100th of 1% of total federal spending. Nonetheless, earlier this month, more than 10% of its workforce were fired by the Trump administration while Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rifled through the agency’s data. (It’s worth noting that Musk is trying to start a financial product that would likely be regulated by CFPB.) Congress created the agency after the mortgage crisis of 2008. One of the causes of the financial meltdown was the fact that no agency was focused on regulating consumer financial products and services, including mortgages; fraudulent marketing of mortgages helped lead to the collapse. Different banking regulators had all these different pieces of authority, but it wasnt centralized in one place, says Hickman, who served as senior litigation counsel for CFPB’s enforcement division. A big part of what contributed to the financial crisis is that the people who were regulating the soundness of banks didnt have eyes on the consumer-facing conduct. By pulling enforcement into one agency, Congress wanted to help prevent another financial crisisand better protect consumers in general. The agency has done a wide range of work. In a case that wrapped up at the end of last year, for example, the agency started sending $1.8 billion in refund checks to more than four million consumers who had been harmed by credit repair companies that charged them hundreds of dollars but didnt actually help repair their credit. In another case, the agency fined Citi for intentionally discriminating against Armenian Americans. CFPB also required TransUnion to pay consumers who were misled when they tried to freeze their credit and it didnt work. When CFPB workers were fired on February 11 and 13, 38 cases were underway against financial companies that broke the law. With the remaining staff ordered to stop all work by Russell Vought, the Trump-appointed acting director (and a Project 2025 architect), “those companies can just keep doing what they were doing,” Hickman says. Lawsuits are underway now to try to bring back fired staff and restart work. A union for federal workers is suing over the terminations, which shouldn’t be legally permissible without cause. Hickman had been in her position for less than two years, meaning she was a “probationary” employee and had fewer job protections, but still should only have been fired for performance under a specific procedure that didn’t happen. First, every probationary employee was fired; two days later, long-term employees were also fired. Another lawsuit is trying to stop the dismantling of CFPB itself. Because the agency was created by Congress, the president doesn’t have the authority to shut it down. What’s happening now to CFPBand many other federal agenciesis unprecedented. “We are out at the edges of constitutional law right now,” says Hickman. A temporary restraining order is in place that’s supposed to stop further destruction of federal agencies, with a hearing set for March 3. But the Trump administration seems to be ignoring it. “What’s particularly shocking is that in the meantime, they seem to be just proceeding right along,” she says. “They have canceled the lease on the building. They are prying the signage off the walls. They are proceeding with the dismantling of the agency.” The lawsuits over the firings will take time, but the lawyers have no intentions of giving up. “Elon Musk and the president picked the wrong bunch of lawyers to mess with,” Hickman said in an interview with ABC News. “Consumer watchdogs are a talented and tough group of people,” she told Fast Company, “and we know just how few options consumers have to get help when banks and large companies break the law. This is why youre seeing not just CFPB workers but also our union, other legal-services organizations, and state AGs stepping up to fight for CFPB. We know firsthand how important it is, how much everyday people will suffer, and how the markets will break down if the CFPB isnt there to do its work.”
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E-Commerce
As the Los Angeles area stares down the long recovery process from recent wildfires that burned thousands of homes, one architecture firm is trying to help by giving away one of its residential designs. New York-based Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture is donating all the architectural plans, sections, and 3D models of a fire-resistant home, potentially saving homeowners tens of thousands of dollars in design fees. “We were archiving unbuilt projects around the time of the Los Angeles fires, and we came across this idea that we had for a house on a coastal area,” says Enrico Bonetti, the firm’s cofounder. “We loved the floor plans and then we realized that the design, the typology, and the materials would work very well in a fire-prone area.” [Image: Bonetti Kozerski Architecture] Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture is known for its high-end work, including the headquarters of Pace Gallery in New York, the interiors of actress Angelina Jolie’s fashion house Atelier Jolie, as well as several yachts and private homes. Rather than let this home’s unbuilt design languish in its archive, the firm decided they’d offer it up for anyone to use, for free. “We felt that we could make a small contribution to the people who lost their homes by donating this project to them,” Bonetti says. [Image: Bonetti Kozerski Architecture] The free house plan is a simple but modern design, covering 3,700 square feet, with a rectangular floorplan that’s mostly open on the ground floor, with three bedrooms on the second floor. Large windows along the length of the house stretch from the floor to near the roofline, and wide picture windows punctuate one end. The design features several fire-resistant design elements, including metal cladding, masonry walls, and an eave-less roof that eliminates one of the common places falling embers can spread wildfires. This pro bono design is one of many efforts, large and small, being made by the architecture and design community to assist in L.A.’s rebuilding. Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia recently announced that his prefabricated housing startup Samara would be donating $15 million worth of homes to fire victims. Ad hoc groups of designers in L.A. are also pooling resources and sharing expertise to accelerate the rebuilding process. [Image: Bonetti Kozerski Architecture] Granted, free plans for a house are not a house, and the cost to build will be high, particularly in the fire-damaged L.A. region. But when architectural plans can account for 10% of a home’s cost or more, Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture’s donation represents tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a potential client doesn’t have to spend. Interested homeowners in the fire-affected area will be able to download the free house plans from the architects’ website. They would then need to find their own general contractor to take the next steps. The architects say the project is ready to build, but can also be tweaked to fit the needs of different sites or the spatial demands of the end users who might want less than 3,700 square feetor perhaps much more. “This plan could be adaptable but it’s a very space efficient starting point,” Bonetti says.
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E-Commerce
When Connor Hovey began talking to his co-workers at Trader Joes in Louisville about forming a union, he knew it wouldnt be easy. What he didnt expect was that the campaign would transform from a marathon into a race without a finish line. Two years after Hovey and his co-workers won a union election in Louisville, their fight for union representation remains in limbo. The grocery chain with a progressive reputation filed six objections with the National Labor Relations Board after workers voted 48 to 36 to join Trader Joes United, an independent union. Every objection was tossed twicefirst by an NLRB hearing officer and later by a regional director. But last month, the workers path to certification stalled again when President Donald Trump abruptly fired Gwynne Wilcox, a Biden appointee, leaving the board unable to rule on the companys final appeal. The boards paralysis has prevented thousands of workers like Hovey from seeking redress from an agency whose very mission is to enforce worker rights, while providing employers with new opportunities to stall disputes. At the same time, the lack of a functioning arbiter of labor relations has left workers and their advocates wondering if the time has come to employ more confrontational tactics in labor disputes. It became clear the NLRB was already underfunded, understaffed, and overworked, said Hovey. Now [with the freeze] we may not have a decision on our election for several more years. Catherine Creighton is a former National Labor Relations Board attorney now at Cornell Universitys School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Without a functioning board, she said, You can organize, but if the employer doesnt agree to recognize the union or bargain, theres nothing you can do about it. For workers, theres nowhere you can go. Trumps firing of Wilcox, whose term was not due to expire until 2028, represented an extraordinary assertion of executive power over an independent agency; on the same day, Trump fired two commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, leaving that agency, too, without a working quorum. (Wilcox has since filed a lawsuit contesting her firing, arguing that it violated some of the very labor laws she previously enforced.) The freeze at the National Labor Relations Board comes while attorneys for Elon Musks SpaceX and Jeff Bezos Amazon, which are both facing labor complaints, argue in federal court that the NLRB is unconstitutional, in part because it impedes executive power. Attorneys for Trader Joes have also asserted, in NLRB proceedings, the unconstitutionality of the NLRB. Spokespersons for the National Labor Relations Board did not respond to queries about the number of cases currently frozen at the board, though last year the board issued 372 decisions. Amazon has at least eight cases pending at the board, including an appeal of a judges decision ordering a new election at a 6,100-employee warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, due to numerous labor law violations the company committed during a 2022 campaign. In January, the NLRB reported that the board was hearing 62 separate cases in which administrative law judges had determined Starbucks had broken labor laws. Along with contesting the Louisville election, Trader Joes is appealing a judges finding that the company threatened workers and froze wages at two unionized stores. The lack of a functioning board will exacerbate the backlog of cases at the NLRB, said Caren Sencer, a labor lawyer with Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld who represents multiple unions whose cases are now stalled at the National Labor Relations Board. It already felt indefinite, she said about the slow pace of NLRB proceedings. Now it actually is. The current NLRB paralysis affects cases that have reached the board, not those at lower levels. But it does provide new motivation for employers to appeal lower-level cases, since they know that without a quorum the case will eventually stall out. The lack of a quorum can also open up new avenues for objections. This happened recently in Philadelphia, where, for the first time, Whole Foods workers voted to unionize on Jan. 27, the same day Trump fired Wilcox. Attorneys for Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, filed objections to the results, asserting among their complaints that the election wasnt viable without a quorum at the board. For Creighton, of Cornell University, the lack of a quorum renews an age-old debate among labor: Is it worth trying to organize within the slow-moving NLRB? Why go into enemy territory? she asked. It was the only game in town, but now its nothing. She said that workers and unions, faced with a nonfunctioning or hostile board, may increasingly choose tactics like strikes to get what they want. In her departing statement, former National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a staunchly pro-labor figure, hinted as much, writing that if the agency doesnt protect workers rights, she expects workers will take matters into their own hands. Hovey, the Trader Joes worker in Louisville, has come to a similar conclusion after several years of union organizing. Its important to recognize that direct action is the only way to receive the benefits youre looking for. You cant depend on a government agency. Gabriel Thompson, Capital and Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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E-Commerce
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