Dramatic changes at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau keep surfacing, with the latest including the withdrawal of nearly 80 guidance documents, policy statements and interpretive rules released since 2011.

Furthermore, there’s likely going to be a change in the nominee to lead the bureau. On Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced President Trump’s intent to nominate Jonathan McKernan to serve as the Undersecretary of Domestic Finance at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

McKernan had been Trump’s pick to be CFPB director.

Steve Levine is the owner and chief legal and compliance officer of Ignite Consulting Partners. Levine, an auto finance lawyer with more than 30 years of experience protecting car dealers and finance companies, offered this assessment of the developments.

“Between last week’s CFPB announcement that it is climbing back a multitude of previously issued guidance, and this weekend‘s announcement that Jonathan McKernan, already nominated to become director of the CFPB, is now being nominated for a role in the Treasury Department, it seems like the only certainty is uncertainty when trying to decipher the future of the bureau,” Levine said on Monday.

Trump nominated McKernan in February for a five-year term at the CFPB. At the end of the month, the Senate Banking Committee hosted a two-hour hearing on Thursday to question McKernan along with nominees to be the Under Secretary of Commerce, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and director of Federal Housing Finance Agency.

McKernan told lawmakers that his legal career began in 2008 when the financial crisis began a chain of events that eventually led to the creation of the CFPB.

“All too often, however, the CFPB has gotten in the way of its own mission,” McKernan said in his opening statement. “It has acted in a politicized manner. It has pushed beyond the limits of its statutory authority. It has seized opportunities to expand its jurisdiction and power. It has offended our basic notions of fairness and due process when it has regulated by enforcement.

McKernan has been an advisor at the Treasury Department while awaiting Senate confirmation to lead the CFPB.

During that time, McKernan has become an integral part of the Secretary’s senior team. His continued service at Treasury will ensure that his experience and expertise are best put to advancing the President’s America First agenda,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.

McKernan previously served on the board of directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and held senior roles at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the U.S. Senate, and the Treasury Department.

Before his government service, McKernan was an attorney in private practice focused on banking and consumer finance laws.

“It’s clear that the CFPB suffers from a crisis of legitimacy,” McKernan told lawmakers in February. “This must be corrected if the CFPB is to reliably do what it’s supposed to do — look out for the American consumer.”

Perhaps that correction is coming in part with what was scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Monday.

CFPB acting director Russell Vought spelled out why nearly six dozen rules and statements were being withdrawn by the regulator.

“Americans deserve an open and fair regulatory process that imposes new obligations on the public only when consistent with applicable law and after an agency follows appropriate procedures,” Vought wrote. The CFPB has issued non-binding policy guidance in myriad forms over its history. This guidance has taken the form of guidance documents, interpretive rules, advisory opinions, and policy statements.

“In many instances, this guidance has adopted interpretations that are inconsistent with the statutory text and impose compliance burdens on regulated parties outside of the strictures of notice-and-comment rulemaking,” he continued. “But even where the guidance might advance a permissible interpretation of the relevant statute or regulation, or afforded the public an opportunity to weigh in, it is the bureau’s current policy to avoid issuing guidance except where necessary and where compliance burdens would be reduced rather than increased.”

Vought said he instructed bureau staff on April 11 to conduct a thorough review of guidance and more, resulting in the withdrawal that the acting director acknowledged “is not necessarily final.” Vought then pointed out three reasons for the entire process.

“First, the bureau is committed to issuing guidance only where that guidance is necessary and would reduce compliance burdens rather than increase them.  Historically, the bureau has released guidance without adequate regard for whether it would increase or decrease compliance burdens and costs. Our policy has changed,” Vought wrote.

“Second, the bureau is reducing its enforcement activities in light of President Trump’s directives to deregulate and streamline bureaucracy and therefore has no pressing need for interpretive guidance to remain in effect,” Vought continued. “Many of the bureau’s enforcement responsibilities overlap with or are duplicative of other federal and state regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and financial regulators. To reduce this overlap and mitigate the unnecessary compliance burdens posed by duplicative investigative and enforcement authority, the bureau is reducing its own enforcement to only those areas statutorily required.  Withdrawing guidance that might have guided or animated all of the bureau’s enforcement efforts therefore should not adversely affect regulated parties.

“Third, the bureau does not believe that any reliance interests compel retention of guidance for several reasons,” Vought went on to say. “As a threshold matter, parties understand that guidance is generally non-binding and generally does not create substantive rights.”