President Trump on Tuesday named two nominees to lead top financial regulators: Jonathan McKernan for director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Jonathan Gould as the comptroller of the currency.
The consumer bureau has been in turmoil for days after Russell Vought, installed Friday by Mr. Trump as the agency’s acting director, ordered a halt to all of its operations. The leaders of the bureau’s highest-profile divisions, its supervision and enforcement offices, resigned Tuesday in protest.
Mr. McKernan resigned Monday as a board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Before that, he held positions in the Senate Banking Committee, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department. In a parting message, Mr. McKernan said on X that he trusted that the F.D.I.C. would “succeed in its mission while also reversing the regulatory overreaches of the last few years.”
Mr. Gould spent much of his career as a financial regulation attorney for companies, working most recently at Jones Day, a law firm that at times represented Mr. Trump’s political campaigns. He served as the chief legal officer for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said she was more concerned about whether Elon Musk and Mr. Trump would allow the bureau to fulfill its mission as a consumer watchdog, which she has long supported, than who leads the agency.
Mr. Musk, the billionaire who has led Mr. Trump’s efforts to cut government spending, has joked on his social media platform X about closing the consumer bureau.
Mr. Vought, who assumed temporary leadership of the consumer bureau while also heading the Office of Management and Budget, has also called for the bureau to be abolished.
News of Mr. McKernan’s appointment came on the same evening that the consumer bureau fired many probationary employees, according to current employees and one person who was terminated.
Some employees reported receiving dismissal letters that seemed hastily written. The heading “MEMORANDUM FOR [EmployeeFirstName] [EmployeeLastName], [JobTitle], [Division]” appeared on many notices.
The firings came despite an internal notice issued to agency leaders in late January by Seth Frotman, then the bureau’s general counsel, citing legal grounds for retaining the probationary workers, many of whom are attorneys.
Mr. Frotman, in a memo reviewed by The New York Times, said the work done by probationary employees helped the bureau obtain more than $30 million in remedies for consumers.
The employees learned of the firings after 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday over email. The letters came from Adam Martinez, the agency’s “chief human capital officer,” according to copies of the letters reviewed by The Times.
