The Trump administration notched another win in federal court on Friday after a Washington, D.C. appeals court cleared the way for President Donald J. Trump’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an Obama-era agency long criticized for its lack of accountability and partisan abuse.

The ruling came just weeks after President Trump fired Biden-appointed CFPB Director Rohit Chopra on February 1, appointing Russell Vought as acting director. Vought swiftly ordered the bureau’s operations shut down and its headquarters closed. That decision sparked a lawsuit from the National Treasury Employees Union — which represents most of the CFPB’s staff — alongside other plaintiffs.

In March, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson attempted to halt the administration’s reforms with a preliminary injunction. According to Bloomberg News, the Trump administration argued her order was “an overly broad encroachment on a federal agency’s efforts to downsize in accordance with the president’s policy directives.”

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated Jackson’s injunction, handing the administration a decisive victory.

The CFPB, created in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Act, has been one of the most controversial agencies in Washington. It is funded directly through the Federal Reserve, bypassing congressional oversight — a funding structure no other federal agency enjoys.

Critics have long argued the bureau operated as a partisan weapon. As early as 2015, Investor’s Business Daily accused the CFPB of funneling “potentially millions of dollars in settlement payments for alleged victims of lending bias to a slush fund for poverty groups tied to the Democratic Party.” In 2022, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blasted its structure as unconstitutional, declaring its “perpetual insulation from Congress’ appropriations power… renders the Bureau ‘no longer dependent, and as a result, no longer accountable’ to the Congress and ultimately, to the people.”

The dismantling of the CFPB represents a signature victory for Trump’s promise to drain the swamp by shutting down bureaucratic agencies unaccountable to taxpayers.

The administration also saw another legal win this week as a federal court rejected an effort by progressive activists to block Alabama’s new law restricting divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in public schools and universities.

U.S. District Judge David Proctor denied a preliminary injunction sought by professors and students at the University of Alabama, allowing the law to remain in effect as litigation proceeds.

The measure, enacted in October, bans taxpayer-funded DEI programs designed to push radical ideology in classrooms. It specifically bars lessons or training that compel students to accept “divisive concepts” such as collective guilt based on race or ethnicity — for example, telling white students they must bear responsibility for slavery.

Judge Proctor emphasized that the law does not prevent academic discussion of controversial topics, so long as professors present them in an objective manner without ideological endorsement.

“If, alternatively, the theory she teaches about is that there is empirical evidence that racism may be a cause for health disparities, or if she frames such teaching as merely a theory, she would not violate SB 129,” Proctor wrote.

The plaintiffs claimed the law violated free speech protections. Proctor dismissed those arguments, finding they failed to meet the high standard required to pause the law’s enforcement.

The decision underscores a growing national pushback against DEI programs. States like Florida, Texas, and now Alabama are moving aggressively to dismantle what critics call taxpayer-funded indoctrination schemes designed to divide Americans by race.

Taken together, these two rulings mark a powerful moment for the Trump administration, reinforcing both its constitutional reform agenda in Washington and its support for parents and students fighting ideological capture in the classroom.