Three Agencies, One Pattern
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had 1,700 employees under the Biden administration. Between 2021 and 2025, it brought 84 enforcement actions that returned $6.2 billion to consumers and assessed $3.2 billion in penalties against companies that cheated them.
In February 2025, the administration slashed the CFPB to fewer than 200 employees. The reconciliation bill halved its funding cap. Supervisory examinations dropped. “Supervisory Highlights,” the public reports documenting industry abuses, stopped being published. The agency that returned $6.2 billion to consumers was functionally closed while the cases it built were transferred to a Justice Department that had its own enforcement problems.
$6.2 billion returned to consumers by the CFPB (2021-2025). The agency was then gutted from 1,700 employees to fewer than 200.
The SEC froze enforcement. Since March 2025, zero enforcement actions have been approved without political appointee review. The enforcement chief resigned. The agency that recovered $4.6 billion for defrauded investors in a single year now runs every case through a political filter.
The EPA dropped enforcement actions by 87% in 2025. Sulfur dioxide emissions rose 18%. The agency responsible for clean air and water was run by appointees whose previous jobs were at the companies being regulated.
What Capture Looks Like
Regulatory capture is not deregulation. Deregulation removes rules. Capture keeps the agency intact but replaces the people who enforce the rules with people who benefit from breaking them.
The CFPB still exists. Its website is still up. Its name is still on a building. But 88% of its workforce is gone, its funding is halved, and the industries it regulated now face reduced federal enforcement and supervisory risks.
0 SEC enforcement actions approved without political appointee review since March 2025. The enforcement chief resigned.
The pattern is consistent across agencies. The inspector generals were fired. The people whose job was internal oversight were removed. The enforcement staff was cut. The industries that were being watched are no longer being watched.
Who Benefits
When the CFPB stops examining banks, payday lenders, and debt collectors, the banks, payday lenders, and debt collectors benefit. When the SEC stops investigating securities fraud without political clearance, the companies with political connections benefit. When the EPA stops enforcing emissions standards, the emitters benefit.
87% drop in EPA enforcement actions in 2025. Sulfur dioxide emissions rose 18%.
This is not abstract. The $9 billion border wall contract went to a company whose previous wall segment nearly collapsed. Allies get pardoned while opponents get investigated. The CFPB returned $6.2 billion to consumers. The consumers no longer have an agency advocating for them.
The companies that donated to the right campaigns, hired the right lobbyists, and sent the right people through the revolving door now face an enforcement environment where the cost of breaking the law is lower than the cost of complying with it.
The Revolving Door
The term “regulatory capture” was coined by economist George Stigler in 1971. He observed that regulated industries eventually gain control of the agencies that regulate them. The mechanism is the revolving door. Industry executives become agency heads. Agency staff leave for industry jobs. The line between regulator and regulated disappears.
What is happening now is not new. What is new is the scale. Not one agency captured, but multiple agencies simultaneously gutted, their enforcement frozen, their staff fired, and their budgets cut in the same legislative package.
Read more on the Corruption series and the SEC enforcement freeze.