Trump Administration Scraps Biden-Era Plan to Limit Sale of Americans' Personal Data

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: US News and World Report/Reuters

May 14, 2025, at 6:03 p.m.


(Reuters) -The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is scrapping a proposal issued under former President Joe Biden that would have sharply limited the sale of Americans' private information by "data brokers," according to a Federal Register notice issued Wednesday.

The agency also yanked proposals that sought to extend consumer protections to the use of new digital payment technologies including cryptocurrency, and that would have prohibited certain terms in the fine print in consumer finance products. In a statement, Consumer Reports said the withdrawal of the data broker proposal would leave consumers "vulnerable to scams and identity theft."

President Donald Trump's administration has moved this year to decimate the CFPB, initially seeking to shut it down entirely and subsequently saying it can meet its legal obligations with about 10% of its current staff. Efforts to fire large amounts of staff are currently on hold as federal courts consider the matter.

Senior officials in recent days have continued undoing much of the prior administration's work in regulation and oversight. The agency last week withdrew scores of guidance documents issued across administrations since 2011.

Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2025-05-14/trump-administration-scraps-biden-era-plan-to-limit-sale-of-americans-personal-data

[Bayard]

1. Gawd, I miss Joe!

A good man, and a good president for the people.

[Karasu]

2. I'd love to see today's Republicans try to defend this.

[0rganism]

3. They don't defend, they change the subject

There's really no viable defense for this move, so their safest maneuver is to fall back on the coward press to talk about how ex-president Biden was senile. Watch it happen before your very eyes!

[BumRushDaShow]

4. That's an excellent way to put it

I was thinking of a response to this myself and was considering - "They dip and dodge and won't answer".

But the "They change the subject" is ultimately what they do!

[0rganism]

6. Prior administrations did engage in a sort-of boxing match vs. the press, but F47's is a sideshow magic act for rubes

F47's set up a sleight-of-hand stage-magic/reality show where the front row seats are reserved for the coward press, too timid to honestly report on what they see and hear. When some Botox-riddled spokesfreak gets up there in front of them and waves around the imagery of a headless Biden administration issuing irresponsible EOs that must be summarily reversed, none of the cowards bother to ask what tricky shit they're hiding up their sleeves. The coward press has its marching orders and a schedule of consequences spelling out exactly what will happen to it and its credentials and broadcast licenses if it wanders off the approved "journalistic" path.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Most of the appointees are or were part of (and/or participated in) some "media" outlet

so they have learned how to bullshit the reporters with gish gallop and the reporters don't even know where to begin to untangle what they were just told.

[0rganism]

9. The level of shameless PR from F47's goon squad of Faux-News bozos is/will be legendary, studied for centuries

The ego and legacy of this past decade will be fascinating to future historians (humans mostly, if they're all AI they probably won't care after the first 100ms it takes to absorb the cautionary tale into a neural mesh). Sucks to live through it, but I gotta admit the good times were amazing.

The graceless bootlicking, D-grade acting, and pandering to our worst selves -- it really pulled a lot of us in. That's a major social failure, one that the world's democracies had better study thoroughly. It only takes a few decades of underfunding and overcrowding public education while steeping the population in a kettle of greed and rightwing propaganda to push a nation into a situation where enough people believe criminal bullshit artists to let them take over. This history must be understood, thoroughly, for democracy anywhere to survive.

The propagandists convinced a wealthy people that they were poor.

The propagandists convinced a privileged people that they were oppressed.

The propagandists convinced skilled and talented people that they were only viable if they worked for someone richer.

The propagandists convinced the grandchildren of immigrants that immigrants were to be distrusted by default.

I could go on but it's too damn depressing. Their triumph is monumental, as is humanity's loss.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. My mother was a polisci/history major

so we would hear a lot of "history" in the house (she would have been 95 this year). One thing she did talk about and remind us about all the time was "propaganda" and "yellow journalism". And that is exactly what we are going through. The difference is, unfortunately, that due to technology, it has gone full blown insane thanks to the internet (which now adds to the print media and broadcast media of the past that is still around). She grew up before the TV era (which happened when she was a teen) but the print, radio, and movie industries were filled with it.

The "moguls" (robber barons, media barons, train barons, etc) have always been around. Remember too that in the past, the Senators were not elected but were patronage jobs appointed by state governors (until they changed the Constitution).

[mdbl]

5. Try listening to Brian Shapiro

Magats call in and he can ask something 20 times and they won't give a straight answer

[0rganism]

7. When they can't change the subject, they desperately squirm and stutter as they attempt to deflect

They lose every debate or argument on the merits, but look over there!