The late, great Scott Adams may have been the first to posit what he called the Dilbert Principle, in which companies tend to promote incompetent employees to management to minimize their ability to harm productivity. The government seems to do this, as well, especially when Democrats are in charge.
Case in point: Rohit Chopra, former director of that brain-cramp of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB. Appointed to that role under the Biden administration, Chopra proved unimpressive, making one wonder if the Dilbert Principle was being exercised at the CFPB; he was fired by President Trump less than a month after Trump resumed office.
Now, the Swamp takes care of its own, and remember, the Swamp isn’t limited to the District of Columbia; it has tendrils all across the fruited plain. Now, as an illustration of that, Rohit Chopra has been tagged by California’s impeccably coiffed Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom to head up the once-Golden State’s version of the CFPB.
Yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Rohit Chopra as Secretary of the state’s newly created Business and Consumer Services Agency. The Trump administration fired Chopra from the CFPB in February 2025 after he clashed repeatedly with the financial industry over nonbank supervision, junk fees, and algorithmic lending. Companies that assumed his exit from Washington meant he was out of the picture should revisit that assumption.
The BCSA is a cabinet-level restructuring that takes effect July 1, 2026, when the existing Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency dissolves and splits into two standalone bodies. Chopra will run the consumer-facing half. His agency will house the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, the Department of Consumer Affairs, the Department of Real Estate, the Department of Cannabis Control, and the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, among others.
Yes, the Swamp looks after its own, especially when a Swamp creature was fired by Donald Trump.
Read More: Trump Fires Head of CFPB and Gets a Surprising Acting Director
So, let’s look at a few of Rohit Chopra’s Greatest Hits from his tenure as Director of the CFPB.
First, under Chopra, the CFPB harassed a small Midwestern finance firm for seven years, accusing it of illegal redlining in mortgage applications and casting aspersions of racism. THe CFPB later returned the six-figure fine that the company had been forced to pay; at that time, the new acting director, Russ Vought, said:
CFPB abused its power, used radical ‘equity’ arguments to tag Townstone as racist with zero evidence, and spent years persecuting and extorting them – all to further the goal of mandating DEI in lending via their regulation by enforcement tactics. The more we uncover at CFPB, the more we see how this agency was weaponized against targeted Americans,” said Acting Director Russ Vought.
Second, in 2023, the CFPB issued an order that proclaimed that finance companies cannot use an applicant’s immigration status as a loan consideration; in effect, forcing financial institutions to make loans to illegal aliens.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Justice Department today issued a joint statement that reminds financial institutions that all credit applicants are protected from discrimination on the basis of their national origin, race, and other characteristics covered by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, regardless of their immigration status.
Third, the CFPB instituted a rule that effectively forced lenders to gather and report demographic data on borrowers collected for loan applications. Some of that data was then released to the public by the CFPB.
- Section 1071 requires covered financial institutions to collect and report certain personal information on small business loan applicants and report that to the CFPB. The CFPB may then make certain parts of that information public, including data that could publicly identify the small business credit applicant.
- In order to comply with the Biden CFPB rule, financial institutions would have to collect information about applicants, including the applicant’s census tract, North American Industry Classification System and years in business, among other personal information.
No wonder President Trump fired him and has been trying to remove the CFPB altogether.
Read More: Elizabeth Warren Gets Wrecked by Community Notes for Trying to Spin Spirit Airlines Comments
Now, Rohit Chopra will be proving out the Dilbert Principle in California; at least he’s no longer addling the financial community at the national level anymore.
The CFPB is an institution that shouldn’t even exist. There’s no constitutional authorization for any branch of the federal government to monitor lending practices by private companies, and therefore, under the 10th Amendment, the CFPB shouldn’t even exist – at all. But it does, as do many other agencies and bureaus that shouldn’t.
As for Rohit Chopra, well, the Swamp does take care of its own.
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