Catching up with a fired federal worker, a shrimper and a fraudster

I know. And just explaining what just happened, how this fits into the economy, what a 50 year mortgages, that's basically what we've been doing.

Back at the start of the year, Doge was the huge story. Elon Musk's chainsaw was ripping into government agencies, firing people en masse. One of those people was Elizabeth Aniskevich at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the cfpb.

This is from our story back in February where we learned about how Elizabeth was fired from the cfpb. That's an agency that tries to protect customers of banks and financial services from getting ripped off.

Yeah, Waylon, I had that exact question. Hello again. Hi, nice to see you. It's been months.

That firm does consumer class action lawsuits against big financial companies. So it was actually a very good match with the kind of work the CFPB does. And Elizabeth says that the kinds of people interviews that she was doing with media, including the Indicator, actually helped her

Maybe 800ft.

So she got the job, which was actually a promotion. She leads a team now, and she's very happy with what she's doing. The only dark cloud for Elizabeth is that she's sad about what's happening with the cfpb. The Trump administration has driven dropped the majority of its enforcement actions. Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vogt is trying to end the agency completely, but this is facing legal action. Elizabeth says she still stays in touch with all her old colleagues on group chats.

So, yes, Elizabeth was pretty unhappy with events earlier in the year, even though it led to pretty good position for her. Stephen, you talk to somebody who felt like he was a real winner from the government changes.

Right. Less competition. And so did that happen?

I think, based on your segment. Fraud.

I think it has something to do with student loans. Is that right?

I can imagine the starting in the schoolyard of, like, inflating the number of friends she thought said she had. Oh, no, imaginary friends and contacts on Facebook that were actually bots.

It's just getting worse and worse.

Oh, so maybe if they just said, like, okay, let's just forget this ever happened, we could have saved a lot of court time, lawyers fees, and JP Morgan would have been no worse off. Really.

So we're gonna need a rest of the story for your rest of the story.

Wow. So a case study in why we need to keep following these stories. Thanks to both of you for contributing to this Rest of the Story episode.

and I. And I have no food related things in my segment.

This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and Angel Carreras with engineering by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact checked by Cierra Juarez. Cake and Cannon edits the show and the indicator is a production of npr. Hey, it's Darren woods here. I just want to take a moment to talk about the vital role of public media. It was founded to provide news and information to everybody for free, regardless of anybody's ability to pay. We still believe in the mission of public media at npr. But as of this fall, federal funding for public media, including NPR and local NPR stations, has been eliminated. Despite that, we remain committed to this work to go beyond the headlines to show you how the economy affects your life. Just this year, we've done a bunch of big series on how batteries are changing the electric grid, on the business of crime and the changing economics of Hollywood. In 2026, with your help, we can do even more. Thank you. If you already go the extra mile as an NPR supporter. If not, you can join the PLUS community, get a bunch of perks like bonus episodes from across NPR's podcasts and support public media by signing up for NPRplus today. Just go to plus.NPR.org.