The Trump administration wants to fold the FDIC’s bank oversight duties into the OCC without congressional approval. Evan Weinberger, a banking correspondent at Bloomberg Law, details the ramifications for community banks, what’s already happening at both agencies, and what may happen next.

Victoria Guida of Politico and Brendan Pedersen of Punchbowl News sort through how and why the Trump administration is remaking banking regulation. Is the CFPB neutered for the next four years or maybe forever? Will the OCC take over the FDIC’s exam functions? Why did big bank CEOs meet with the Senate Banking Committee? What’s DOGE up to at Treasury?

Greg Baer, the CEO of the Bank Policy Institute, argues that bank supervision has gone off course, focusing on the wrong areas and making the system less safe.  He outlines how he and big banks would recommend fixing it. He also discusses stress test and AML reform, new liquidity rules, Basel III, CFPB and more.

Former Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the first lawmakers to sound alarms about the debanking of crypto firms , talks about President Trump’s accusation that large banks are systemically debanking conservatives, and what he thinks is really going on. That includes how policymakers could fix the issue permanently and why some proposed solutions might backfire. 

Rep. Maxine Waters, lead Democrat on House Financial Services, discusses how the committee and Congress have changed in her long tenure, her relationship with Chair French Hill, and the importance of community banks. She also unveils the Democratic agenda for this Congress, including housing reform, stablecoin regulation and more.

Brad Bolton, the CEO of Community Spirit Bank in Red Bay, Ala., discusses the state of community banking right now, including what challenges he and other small institutions face and how they hope policymakers can help. He dives into concerns about new small business lending data requirements and other pending regulations, calls for bank consolidation, and what worries him most.

Michael Barr’s surprising decision to step down as Fed vice chair of banking supervision next month allows the incoming Trump administration to make its own pick for the job and raises questions about the political independence of the banking regulators going forward. Andrew Ackerman, senior financial reporter with The Washington Post, walks through the implications for banks and discusses Barr’s likely successor.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu talks about his three-plus years at the forefront of bank regulation, including what regulators learned from the fall of SVB, why we still need new Basel capital rules, and whether regulatory restructuring would be worth the effort.

Evan Weinberger, the banking reporter at Bloomberg Law, talks about the Trump administration’s trial balloon to eliminate the FDIC or combine regulatory agencies. He also goes in-depth on the various fights the CFPB is engaged in, how the Trump administration could choose to tackle them, and what that would mean for banks.

Alex Johnson, the founder and publisher of Fintech Takes, tackles several hot-button topics, including how the crypto industry’s election victories will influence the next Trump administration, and why hype around stablecoins as a replacement for banks may be misplaced. He also discusses whether banks are really engaging in debanking as a prominent venture capitalist recently claimed.