ANOTHER QUESTION OF ETHICS The Deep State Challenges the President Again In November 2017, Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) stepped down several months before his term of ofce was supposed to end. Before doing so, however, he appointed Leandra English to take his place as acting director of the CFPB. In order to accomplish this, he rst appointed English, a career staffer at the CFPB, as deputy director. This move was calcu- lated to put her in direct line to the position of acting director of the CFPB because, under the Dodd Frank Act, the deputy director of the CFPB becomes the acting director when a vacancy occurs in the director's office. This provision in the law explains Cordray's haste in appointing English as his deputy just before he exited the CFPB. We all might be tempted to ask, \"Who cares about another governmental appointment? They seem to emerge every other day in DC.\" True enough, but this one caused an unprec- edented showdown between the president and administrative agents loyal to the previous administration. The clash between the president and the loyalists emerged when President Trump named his own appointee to the post. That appointee was Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget. The president's authority to make this appointment comes under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which empowers the president to choose acting directors of agencies that nd themselves \"director- less\" for a time. Upping the ante, English led a lawsuit in Federal District Court, asking the court to declare her the rightful acting director of the CFPB under the Dodd-Frank Act, which she claimed supersedes the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. English also asked the court to issue a temporary restrain- ing order that would stop Trump's appointee from taking ofce. What was at stake here was the running of a CFPB that was caught in a sea of controversy. As noted earlier, both the proposed anti-arbitration regulations and the new \"Know-BeforeYouOwe\" rules were the source of much disagreement at the time. Unfortunately, both the moves made by the deputy direc- tor and those initiated by the president did nothing more than further destabilize an already destabilized agency. Was the strategy used by the outgoing director and his appointee another example of the tactics of the Deep State in its attempt to undermine the authority an unpopular president? Was the move by the president just a show of power that was unnecessary in view of the fact that if he had just waited, he would have been able to appoint a new director when the ofcial term of the outgoing director expired a few months down the road? Which side seemed to hold the moral high ground in this case? Do not just rush to judgment here based solely on your opinion or only on your political preferences. Instead, take one of the ethical theories we discussed in Chapter lsocial contract ethics, utilitarianism, rational ethics, or Max Weber's ethical dyadand construct your argument accordingly. [See: Yuka Hayashi, \"Trump Sued in CFPB Battle," The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2017, pp. A-1 and A4. See also: Jim Puzzanghera, \"One Job, Two Chiefs as Drama Builds at Consumer Bureau,\" Tribune News Service, the Los Angeles Times, MSN NEWS, November 28, 2017, httpszllwww.scribd.com/article/365704700] One-Job-2Chiefs-As-DramaBuilds-At-Consumer-Bureau.]