Mark Calabria is the latest addition to the leadership roster at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), despite the bureau’s near shutdown. Calabria, director of the FHFA in President Trump’s first term, will be serving a key role at the CFPB until Jonathan McKernan is confirmed as the permanent director. That’s according to tweets from Andrew Ackerman of the Washington Post and Brendan Petersen from Punchbowl News on Wednesday afternoon.Ackerman tweeted that Calabria started today at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and that “He will be detailed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until Jonathan McKernan is confirmed as the bureau’s new director.”Petersen confirmed the news, tweeting that Calabria “told an audience at the Exchequer Club today he will be detailed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of OMB.”The addition of Calabria caps off several volatile weeks at the bureau. Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra on Feb. 1 and named Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as interim director on Feb. 3. Five days later, Russell Vought took over that role and ordered staff to stop work, closing the headquarters and trying to shut off its funding. On Feb. 11, Trump named McKernan to the director role.Calabria’s OMB roleCalabria is currently senior advisor at the libertarian Cato Institute. In addition to his previous role at FHFA, Calabria also served as chief economist to Vice President Mike Pence, as senior professional staff for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and as deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs at HUD.Calabria’s interim stint at CFPB could be part of a much bigger role he will play at OMB. Ackerman also tweeted that he had “heard [Calabria] has been charged with bringing all the independent agencies into the OMB.” That’s a reference to Trump’s executive order on Tuesday that seeks to “rein in” all the independent agencies under his more direct control.The executive order lists the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve. “Now they will no longer impose rules on the American people without oversight or accountability,” the order reads.What Calabria envisions for the CFPBIn an interview with HousingWire Senior Reporter Flavia Nunes in July, Calabria spoke about how the CFPB might change under a Trump administration.“I don’t think the CFPB is going away — as much as that would be nice. But I do think you are going to see a difference in the stance, which will matter in the mortgage industry, in terms of enforcement and obligations. The Republicans’ approach to the CFPB is to say that there are wrongdoers; we will go after the bad guys. This [Biden] administration says the same thing, and that’s where the overlap is. The difference is this [Biden] administration also has the view that we’re going to use the CFPB to pick winners and losers to redistribute to our friends and engage in a lot of social engineering. And that’s a much different approach from just going after the bad guys,” Calabria said.“Writ large on compliance and regulatory costs, Trump’s CFPB will be considerably lower. Post Dodd-Frank, one of the problems has been that it costs so much more to originate loans. A tremendous amount of that is because of regulatory costs. It’s not like the bad guys get to run wild; you’d still see enforcement.”Bureau faces lawsuitsThe CFPB is currently facing two lawsuits over the Trump administration’s actions. A lawsuit brought by the City of Baltimore and the Economic Action Maryland Fund (EAMF) that was filed on Feb. 12 has stalled Vought’s efforts to cut off the bureau’s funding. On Feb. 13, the plaintiffs and defendants in the suit filed a joint motion stating that they’ve agreed to a preliminary injunction on any efforts by the CFPB or Vought to disrupt funding or shut down the department. The injunction expires on Feb. 28.In a separate lawsuit filed late last week, a federal district court judge temporarily prohibited the Bureau from laying off more staff until March 3 at the earliest. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also barred the CFPB from “deleting” or “removing” data and from transferring money in its reserve fund.

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The newest senior leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) might not be anticipating long-term employment.Jeffrey Clark was appointed as senior advisor to Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s new chief legal officer. Both had a tenure at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think-tank founded by Russell Vought that has advocated for the agency to be dissolved. American Banker first reported the news of Clark’s appointment over the weekend.Clark was a former acting assistant attorney general in the first Trump administration’s Department of Justice’s who allegedly helped Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election. He was indicted in Georgia and survived an effort to be disbarred in Washington, D.C. The indictment was later dropped. Vought is now the confirmed head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the acting head of the CFPB until Jonathan McKernan is confirmed by the Senate. Clark’s appointment comes at a tumultuous time for the agency, whose workers have been ordered by Vought not to work in any capacity. Vought also sought to shut off the bureau’s funding, but a lawsuit brought by the City of Baltimore and the Economic Action Maryland Fund (EAMF) that was filed on Feb. 12 has stalled that effort. On Feb. 13, the plaintiffs and defendants in the suit filed a joint motion stating that they’ve agreed to a preliminary injunction on any efforts by the CFPB or Vought to disrupt funding or shut down the department. The injunction expires on Feb. 28.In a separate lawsuit late last week, a federal district court judge temporarily prohibited the Bureau from laying off more staff until March 3 at the earliest. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also barred the CFPB from “deleting” or “removing” data and from transferring money in its reserve fund. HousingWire looked looked at McKernan’s record and what kind of agency he would potentially lead.For a complete timeline of what’s happened at the CFPB since Trump’s inauguration, see here.

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Staffing cuts at Ginnie Mae could table or delay the rollout of a complementary reverse mortgage securities program announced last year, according to an interview with a former Ginnie Mae official who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation and reports of staff cuts by multiple outlets.But a source familiar with HUD’s plans disputed such reports, saying that suggestions of “drastic staffing cuts” at Ginnie Mae were false.One of Ginnie Mae’s core functions in the reverse mortgage industry is providing liquidity through its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM)-backed Securities (HMBS) program. After challenges caused by a major lender and HMBS issuer’s bankruptcy in 2022, the government-owned company aimed to remedy these issues by developing a complementary program dubbed “HMBS 2.0.”HMBS 2.0 is designed to bolster liquidity in the secondary reverse mortgage market, including through a reduction in the HMBS pool size to 95% of the loan’s total unpaid principal balance (UPB). The program was announced in January 2024 and a final term sheet was released in November.While major industry companies, including Finance of America (FOA) and Onity Group, have stated their high levels of anticipation for the program’s eventual rollout in recent earnings calls, the debut could be at risk due to reported staff cuts at Ginnie Mae, the former official suggested.More than 40% of the company’s staff may have been impacted by large-scale reductions in force, the source said. While Ginnie Mae has a lower level of staff compared to other entities under the purview of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the company oversees key functions in managing the government’s mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolios.The cuts reportedly leave a staff of about 150 to manage a portfolio of 140 issuers and more than $2 trillion in guarantees, according to reporting by National Mortgage News, while Inside Mortgage Finance reported that 50 probationary staffers at the company were let go. The HMBS program is a smaller share of the company’s portfolio, but it provides liquidity for the commensurately smaller reverse mortgage industry’s most prominent product, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed HECM.A source familiar with HUD’s plans told HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) that “suggestions that drastic staffing cuts will be made to Ginnie Mae are false” but did not elaborate further.A HUD spokesperson previously told HousingWire on Wednesday that the agency “is carrying out President Trump’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to serve the American people at the highest standard.” The spokesperson said this will be done “while also ensuring the department continues to deliver on its critical functions, mission to serve rural, tribal and urban communities and statutory responsibilities.”Ginnie Mae’s late 2022 assumption of a sizable HMBS portfolio from an extinguished issuer put strain on its staff, leading company leadership at the time to request additional staffing and budgetary resources from Congress. These were ultimately approved, but the reported cuts are taking place at a time when only about 60% of these new resources have been deployed, according to the former official.Housing trade and advocacy groups have consistently described Ginnie Mae as underresourced. Groups including the Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA), the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) and the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) successfully lobbied Congress to approve full funding for the company ahead of a budget vote.The former official relayed a sense of perplexion on a path forward for HMBS 2.0. Much of the staff handling the potential implementation, the source said, have been impacted either by cuts, retirements or the government’s deferred resignation program.The potential impacts of HMBS 2.0 on the reverse mortgage industry could be immediate. HMBS issuance has fallen dramatically since record levels of home-price appreciation, combined with historically low interest rates, drove issuance levels to record highs in 2022. Although it is smaller today, the HMBS market is still considered generally healthy, according to recent perspectives shared by Michael McCully, a partner at New View Advisors.Regarding the potential for HMBS 2.0, the program “could almost double current issuance levels,” McCully said earlier this month.Former Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer also previously told RMD that insufficient staffing levels at Ginnie Mae could hamper the rollout of HMBS 2.0. While cuts to the agency were not being discussed at that time, Tozer suggested that a federal hiring freeze put in place by the White House could compound issues presented by the retirements of key officials.“The problem that I see right now — and I think it’s going to get worse — is Ginnie Mae’s inability to replace key people that I was able to hire when I was there 10 years ago,” Tozer said late last month. Tozer attributed some of his ability to hire “really good people” at that time to budget reductions at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac due to their federal conservatorship status.He also said he had heard rumblings that the HMBS 2.0 policy is harder to implement than originally anticipated, which he took to mean the actual work that will go into operationalizing the program.

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